Puerto Rico was no day at the beach for Rick Santorum

This past weekend’s Republican presidential primary in Puerto Rico was notable for several reasons.  One was the low level of turnout, with only 118,696 people participating.  For comparison, the last time the island had a truly contested Republican primary (in 1980), the turnout exceeded 180,000.  Also notable were the embarrassingly poor performances by Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.  Gingrich finished with only two percent of the vote (actually finishing behind former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer, who ended his quest for the Republican nomination several weeks ago).  Paul fared even worse, finishing last with barely one percent of the vote (trailing even Fred Karger, a gay rights activist).

What is most notable is the lopsided nature of Rick Santorum’s defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney.  In spite of the fact that Santorum actively campaigned in Puerto Rico, he lost by an eighty-three percent to eight percent margin.  Romney was generally considered to be the favorite in the primary, enjoying the support of the island’s popular governor.  Santorum’s prospects in the primary were considerably dimmed after making a statement that seemed to indicate that Puerto Rican statehood would be dependent upon the Spanish-speaking island shifting to English.  Still, the Santorum campaign had hoped to at least keep Romney from gaining a majority of the vote, which would lead the twenty delegates at stake to be allocated proportionally among the candidates.  With Romney’s majority of the vote, all the island’s primary delegates were awarded to the former Massachusetts governor.

Santorum’s seventy-five point loss might very well have been the worst defeat suffered by a candidate in an actively contested presidential primary in modern American history. During the epic Ford-Reagan nomination contest of 1976, Ford scored several landslide victories in several midwestern and northeastern states.  Still, Reagan was able to secure at least 31 percent of the vote in those states in which he was listed on the ballot (Reagan chose not to contest Ford in the the presidential preference primaries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont).  Reagan’s greatest strength was in the south and west,  but even in these areas Ford never slipped below 25 percent. That same year,  Jimmy Carter scored some landslide victories in his home region of the south, particularly late in the cycle (when his principle regional opponent, George Wallace, had effectively ended his active candidacy).  Carter’s greatest victory was an 83-11 percent margin in Georgia over Jerry Brown (who didn’t actively campaign in the state).  The biggest margin of victory on the Democratic side in 1976 was actually Robert Byrd’s 89-11 percent thrasing of Wallace in West Virginia.  Byrd was essentially running as a favorite son candidate, and Wallace’s active candidacy was effectively over before this May 1976 primary.

In 1980, George Bush lost several southern and midwestern primaries to Ronald Reagan by margins in the fifty to sixty percentage range before abandoning his campaign in late May, but most of those contests were ceded by Bush to Reagan without a fight.  That same year, Edward Kennedy was crushed by Jimmy Carter in several southern states, but once again those states were largely uncontested.

While a good number of primaries were lopsided during the 1984  Mondale-Hart contest, Mondale’s largest margin was his 32 point caucus win in Iowa (along with 18 point margins in the Maryland and New York primaries).  Hart’s largest primary margin was in Vermont, where he defeated the former vice president by a fifty point margin.  A similar pattern occured in both the Democratic and Republican nomination battles in 1988.  During the active, competitive phase of the George Bush-Robert Dole Republican nomination battle (the Michigan and Iowa caucuses through the Illinois primary), the largest primary margin was a fifty point Bush victory in Texas).  During the more lengthy Michael Dukakis-Jesse Jackson contest, Dukakis (the ultimate winner of the nomination) won a long series of primary landslides, but none rivaled the margin scored by Romney this past weekend.  The same could be said of the 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2008 Democratic nomination battles,  as well as the 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2008 Republican nomination battles.  

What Rick Santorum “achieved” in Puerto Rico was truly unique in modern American presidential politics.

From Thinkprogress.com:   

That frothy mixture of bigotry, ignorance and right-wing economics known as Rick Santorum (photo from lefthemisphere.blogspot.com)

“While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.     The candidate also said that the parent and child unjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate:

GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.[...]

“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”

The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.

Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.

Santorum proceeded to lecture the mother and suggest she should be grateful to the drug companies for saving her son’s life. “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here.” He also claimed it would “freeze innovation” if pharmaceutical companies were required to offer their drugs at a reasonable price.

Although Santorum has been a vocal opponent of health care reform, his callous reaction is somewhat surprising given that he himself is the father of a daughter with a rare genetic disorder. But if the Colorado mother thought Santorum might be sympathetic to families in similar situations who happen to be less wealthy, she was sadly mistaken.”

Santorum proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but he has precious little understanding of church doctrine involving protecting the poor or promoting social justice.

“There is an apartment complex in Cincinnati with a “Whites Only” sign posted in their pool area.  They claim it’s to “protect their assests”, but in a community that boasts a 45% African American population, far higher than the rest of the state, is this really the best solution?  Is this solving anything?

From the Huffington Post:

“Jonathan Bernstein has caught Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) making what is, in his estimation, the “best self-refuting argument ever.” From her press release, announcing her plan to introduce a resolution that will wag a finger at the recent appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board:

“It’s astounding to me that the president is claiming these are recess appointments and within his authority, when Congress was not in fact in recess,” said Black. “These appointments are an affront to the Constitution. No matter how you look at this, it doesn’t pass the smell test. I hope the House considers my resolution as soon as we return to Washington so we can send a message to President Obama.”

Republican U.S. Representative Diane "dog chasing it's own tail logic" Black of Tennessee (Photo from Huffington Post/AP)

Har. Of course, what gives Black a wobbly leg to stand on is that congressional Republicans have been staging pro forma sessions — which technically keep Congress from going into recess — so that the president can’t use a recess appointment to appoint the people whose up-or-down confirmation vote they’ve been obstructing anyway. (This is, in all fairness, a trick the GOP learned from noted trickster Harry Reid.)

That said, if you walk up to reporters on the Capitol Hill beat and ask them, “Hey, where is Congress?” they will all tell you that Congress is in recess, precisely the place that Rep. Black understands herself to be, while complaining that she isn’t.”

While DeMint’s latest exercise in idiocy got ample media attention, the following story I haven’t seen reported anywhere except ThinkProgess.

“State representative Rick Womick (R-TN) has made no secret of his anti-Muslim views. A New York Times article from July described Womick on the statehouse floor, warning his constuents that Islamic law was the most urgent threat to their way of life. But in an interview on the sidelines of the “Preserving Freedom Conference” at the Cornerstone Church in Madison, TN, Womick went to new extremes to paint Muslim Americans as dangerous and seditious.

In the interview, which took place on Veterans Day, Womick told ThinkProgress that “I don’t trust one Muslim in our military” and “if they truly are a devout Muslims, and follow the Quran and the Sunnah, then I feel threatened because they’re commanded to kill me.” When asked if Muslims should be forced out of the military, Womick responded “Absolutely, yeah.” Read the exchange:

FANG: What about the thousands of Muslims that are still in the military that are veterans, that are translators, that are active personnel. Is there some sort of policy solution that you’re advocating? […]

WOMICK: Personally, I don’t trust one Muslim in our military because they’re commanded to lie to us through the term called Taqiyya. And if they truly are a devout Muslim, and follow the Quran and the Sunnah, then I feel threatened because they’re commanded to kill me.

CLIFTON: You believe they should be forced out?

WOMICK: Absolutely, yeah.

Watch it:

To see an extended version of our interview with Womick about Muslims in the military, click here.”

Just another example of teabagger douchebaggery!

One of the memories of my childhood was laying in my bedroom listening late at night to an old white clock radio.  For all the many nights listening to the static-filled AM station that it was tuned to, forty years later I can only remember two moments.  One was a news report about the death of French President Georges Pompidou.  Why?  I have no idea!   Perhaps hearing about someone dying as I laid there alone in a dimly lit room as a boy was a little jarring.

 The other memory involved a round by round summary of the first epic Ali-Frazier fight, with the the announcement of Frazier’s victory.  Once again, I’ve wondered from time to time about why this memory stayed with me.  Perhaps it was because of the overwhelming media hype surrounding this fight.  It could also be due to the personalities involved and what they seemed to represent during this time in America.   For many in White Middle-America, Muhammad Ali seemed to embody an alien ideology of  anti-Americanism (how could you be a patriot and refused to serve in Vietnam) and black radicalism.  Joe Frazier seemed less offensive and angry than the loquacious Ali, and seemed to be more in line with traditional, conservative American values.  Quite simply, Joe Frazier - whether he liked it or not - was pretty much the black fighter representing white America.  

At the time, I’m sure our family sided with Joe Frazier, although during the ensuing years I began to understand Ali’s political views better and appreciate that Ali was a performer putting on an act for the viewers at home.  Joe Frazier may not have been as colorful as Ali, but he certainly left his mark in the ring by his relentless and aggressive style.  Ali remarked after one of their epic struggles that it was the closest he had ever come to dying.

If Smokin’ Joe fought the cancer that ultimately claimed his life half as hard as he battled Ali, that cancer might have emerged victorious but badly battered and bruised.

So long to another iconic figure from the 1970s.

One of the featured speakers was the violence-espousing, hygiene-challenged, habitually-lying hate-monger by the name of Andrew  Breitbart.  It was a tailor-made incoherent rambling for the teabagger audience, devoid of facts or substantive intellectual analysis.  Instead, it was filled with reactionary raw-meat rhetoric, obscenities, baseless accusations and personal insults.  In the course of his rant, Breitbart told organized labor to “fuck off” (because they ask for outrageous things like collective bargaining rights and decent wages and benefits).  He also sputtered that Janeane Garofolo was ”Hollywood’s sympathy fuck” and that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was a “bitch”  (Andrew has a problem with women who are obviously much more intelligent than himself).  Of course, the hate-filled, know-nothing attendees roared their ignorant approval.

This latest teabagger story reminded me of a recent “news story” in the brilliant Borowitz Report.

Rabid Dog Briefly Mistaken for Tea Party Candidate

Receives Standing Ovation at Missouri Rally

JEFFERSON CITY, MO (The Borowitz Report) – A rabid Doberman Pinscher jumped on stage at a Tea Party rally in Missouri on Labor Day and barked at the crowd for nearly twenty minutes before people realized he was not a candidate.

The dog, later identified by its owner as “Mister Buster,” held the crowd spellbound as he barked, growled, and frothed at the mouth, eventually receiving a standing ovation for his exertions.

Gwendolene Thomason, 42, a Tea Party supporter from Jefferson City, was one of the hundreds on hand who were convinced that the Doberman was a Tea Party candidate until he was outed as a dog.

“I liked what he had to say,” she said.  ”He reminded me of Glenn Beck, only furrier.”

The Doberman’s canine identity finally became clear when he lunged at a man in the front row and wrested a hamburger from his right hand, taking two of the man’s fingers with it.

While the discovery that Mister Buster was not a Tea Party candidate disappointed many in attendance, Ms. Thomason held out hope that, dog or no, he might consider running for office at some point.

“I liked the way he bit off that guy’s hand, and the way he did his business in the middle of the stage,” she said.  ”We need more of that in Washington.”

I wonder who was foaming at the mouth more…Mister Buster or the flea-infested Andrew?

Of course, it would never happen on Fox News - or hardly any other place in the media for that matter - but it would be refreshing to see one of these wingnut hacks asked about the numerous reports of Bush Administration officials ignoring the potentialthreat of a terrorist attack on the United States.  Those of us who have studied the history know of the stunned reaction of officials of the out-going Clinton Administration to the casual attitude toward terrorist threat of the incoming Bush Administration.  We know of the inaction and indifference of NationalSecurity Advisor Rice, Attorney General Ashcroft, and Vice-President Cheney (the alleged head of an administration task force on terrorism).  We remember that month-long vacation Bush took in August at his photo-opp pseudo ranch down in Crawford, Texas where he ignored intelligence reports about an impeding plan by Bin Laden to strike at the United States using airplanes. 

Perhaps the biggest fantasy to emerge out of the events of 9/11 is the image of then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as a hero.  Giuliani even tried to ride that image to the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.  Unfortunately for the grandstanding Rudy “a noun, a verb and 9/11″ Giuliani, his incompetence running a presidential campaign was only matched his incompetence preparing the city for another terrorist attack.  Fortunately, there are some  courageous voices in the media willing to shine a light on this massive fraud of a human being.  Perhaps no one has cut Giuliani down to size more effectively than MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.  On the August 30th edition of his “Last Word” program, he absolutely eviscerated Guiliani’s hero image. The heart of O’Donnell’s destruction was nicely summed up by Mediaite:

“The basis of the criticism stems from Giuliani’s alleged insistence to put the crisis management center at Ground Zero, which was labeled as such before9/11 because it had already been bombed by al-Qaeda. O’Donnell reports that Giuliani’s decision was “ego-driven,” and designed more for easy media access than for acting as a safer and less vulnerable command center. ”

O’Donnnell charged that “Giuliani’s ego-driven decision was based on his craving for media attention during any possible crisis meant that when they needed it most, on 9/11, the command center was useless because Rudy Giuliani had decided to locate it at ground zero. That Giuliani decision cost lives, which is why the international association of firefighters vehemently opposed his candidacy for the president in 2008. The firefighters association reports that 121 firefighters in the north tower didn’t get out on 9/11 because they didn’t hear evacuation orders. They didn’t hear those orders, because Rudy Giuliani learned absolutely nothing from the first deadly attack on the World Trade Center.

Deep in his soul, Giuliani must know that countless deaths on 9/11 were due to his massive ego and incompetence

Firefighters’ radios failed to work back then when they responded to the bombing of the world trade center, and they failed to work again, years later, on 9/11. Even if the inadequate fire department radios worked on 9/11, they were not connectible in any way to the police department radios or police department communication of any kind, even though the city had obtained additional radio frequencies from the federal government in 1995, specifically to make that kind of communication possible. Mayor Giuliani’s failure to do anything about the primitive fire department radios meant that on 9/11 fire chiefs had no idea that police helicopters were predicting the collapse of both towers long before they fell.”

The bottom-line.  In spite of being a hero, Giuliani’s ego and incompetence actually cost countless lives on 9/11.  The same can be said about leading members of the Bush/Cheney Administration.  Of course, you’ll hear very little of this reality in the supposed “liberal media” on this tenth anniversary of 9/11.