Republican Update

Grand Old Party It Is

Huckabee Bunny
By now most people have surely seen this gem, but Huckabee in a recent debate compared Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq to an Easter Egg hunt.

"Now everybody can look back and say, 'Oh, well, we didn't find the weapons.' Doesn't mean they weren't there. Just because you didn't find every Easter egg didn't mean that it wasn't planted."

Damn, now I have an REM song stuck in my head.

It's the end of the world, as we know it....

Source: The Huffington Post

Overheard on a Train
Last night, Keith Olbermann ran a story about how McCain is proving an extremely divisive figure in the Republican party for being imperfectly loyal to their plutocratic masters and insufficiently xenophobic about the Brown People. He may well lead to a Republican party schism as the nominee, the thinking goes.

In light of that, it's worth noting this overheard train conversation with Man-on-Dog former Senator Rick Santorum, who apparently spent an afternoon bashing McCain to other arch-conservatives on his cell phone, in public, in full earshot of a known liberal activist.

Reagan's commandment about not criticizing your fellow Republican seems good and dead now.

Source: Open Left

Ron Paul Watch
So Ron Paul raised more money in the fourth quarter of 2007 than Romney and McCain *combined*.

He's making a heavy push in the 'quirky' state of Maine, which has a little watched caucus coming up... and the state Republican party thinks he might win it.

Paul is the only candidate who has visited the state, which is known for its independent streak. In 1992, Ross Perot placed second and scored more votes than former President George H.W. Bush, who owns a summer home there.

Lindelll told AP that hundreds of Paul supporters have been organizing around the state, and their efforts, such as organizing caucuses in towns where none had been planned, have not gone unnoticed by party bigwigs, including the state's Republican executive director, Julie O'Brien.

"I have felt strongly for three weeks," she told AP, "that he stood a better chance (in Maine) than any other candidate."

Shoot me. Shoot me now! I like the smell of cordite and burnt feathers!

Source: Raw Story

Even The Nation has been infiltrated by at least one Ron Paultard now!

I'm losing my mind here.

Bush Determined to Leave U.S. in Utter Ruin
So Bush seems determined to leave the United States in complete and utter ruin. First, he's spent every last thin dime of our national reserves on this pointless meat-grinder of Iraq, and now he's slashing healthcare budgets to the bone and freezing domestic spending to try and cover it up for the last year before he scurries off to Crawford to continue his vacation:

Bush has proposed nearly $200 billion in cuts to Medicaid and Medicare as part of his $3 trillion budget to be unveiled Monday, and he will provide miniscule increases in spending on other domestic programs.

In fact, he's taken on so much debt that he may actually ruin the credit rating... of the entire nation:

"The next president, if he or she serves two terms, could find the U.S. government so deeply in hock that it would face losing its Triple-A credit rating, something that has never happened since Moody's Investors Service began grading U.S. securities in 1917."

Ahh, we're well and truly boned now.

Source: Raw Story

Permanent Quagmire
In an attempt to ensure that we leave Iraq someday, somehow, Congress passed a law banning permanent bases in Iraq.

Bush signed the law, then overrode (or so he thinks) that provision with one of his charming 'signing statements'.

He thinks he can write whatever he wants onto a piece of paper and make it law, now. He honestly thinks he's the King.

Democratic lawmakers have also complained about the "signing statement" Bush issued Monday in signing the defense authorization bill, in which the president suggested he might ignore language that bars funding for permanent U.S. bases in Iraq as well as U.S. control over Iraqi oil resources.

Oh yeah, the oil had NOTHING to do with this war....

He also intends to sign a long-term mutual defense agreement with the Iraqi, ahem, government. Without Senate approval.

Sigh.

"The suggestion that he may disregard a law overwhelmingly approved by Congress, coupled with the president's intent to sign a long-term agreement obligating the United States to defend the Iraqi government from internal and external threats, only reaffirms to Americans that there is no end in sight to the war in Iraq," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

This is starting to feel like when the UK got into the Middle East, only we drink coffee, not tea, and we're NEVER GOING TO ESCAPE

Source: The Washington Post