Are Romney’s welfare ads racist?

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

A little bit softer now…

God damn, Mitt Romney knows how to wear a suit. It’s because he’s rich; put him in jeans and he looks like he lost his luggage. Back before we knew about his Olympic horse and 13% tax rate, he tried to downplay the fact that he made enough money in 2010 to buy 100 houses. Now he’s going with it. The Republican candidate for president is one Thurston Howell micky-ficky, and you should vote for him because you have money, too. Even if you don’t, you would rather act like you did. That’s why the Romney campaign released this commercial:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F4LtTlktm0

Almost nothing in that ad is true, by the way. PolitiFact called it “a drastic distortion” of actual HHS policy—an accusation that prompted one Romney operative to declare that “we won’t let this campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Thank god. I think we can all agree that fact-checkers have too much power in contemporary politics. To this home truth Thomas Edsall adds the claim that the Romney campaign is fundamentally racial.

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A birthday wish

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 4 Comments

The original filename for this image was “smug dog,” which is now the brand name of my line of yoga accessories.

Today is my thirty-fifth birthday. Now that I have ascended to the top of my demographic, I have only one more year of enjoying the exact same things as an 18 year-old. After that I like Family Circus, Harley-Davidsons and voting Republican. These sorts of changes don’t happen very often, as this poll analysis from the Times indicates. It starts out with some boring stuff about Paul Ryan and the base and a car salesman in Des Moines who is not related to me, but then you hit this:

A series of recent polls in six swing states showed that only 5 percent of voters were undecided and only about 1 in 10 likely voters who had chosen a candidate said they were open to switching. At this point four years ago, more than 1 in 4 voters nationwide said they might change their minds.

Anticipated total spending this election cycle: one billion dollars. Find out who’s going to win after the jump.

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Close Readings: Meghan McCain says stupid is worse than mean

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 5 Comments

“Everyone here is stuck up, no one has any watermelon, the copy machine doesn’t make sense…”

Yesterday in Virginia, Vice-President Joe Biden criticized Mitt Romney’s plan to “unchain Wall Street,” warning that “he’s going to put y’all back in chains.” He said that because he is Joe Biden and there were black people in the audience. Presumably, he was referring to Romney’s actual talking point about unshackling the economy, and he meant that all the members of the audience would be shackled, not just the black ones. The slip hardly lived up to his Bidentity as an unstoppable gaffe machine, but daughter of person who was almost president Meghan McCain jumped on it. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link. Joining Mac & Gaydos on Arizona’s KTAR [boinging sound,] McCain called the Vice-President an “idiot.” Her point:

I’m so sick of this BS from [Biden]. I can’t stand Joe Biden because I think stupid is worse than being mean. I just think any insinuation that in America we’re going to go back to slavery times is delusional. It’s ridiculous and it’s ignorant…If I were Obama I would’ve never picked Joe Biden in the first place.

First of all, Meghan McCain, if you were Obama people would not ask for your opinions, because you wouldn’t know your dad. Second, is stupid really worse than mean?

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Harry Reid heard Romney didn’t pay taxes for like 10 years

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 5 Comments

Harry Reid meets with a reporter from the Huffington Post.

The Senate Majority Leader noticed a hole in our politico-media system yesterday, and he exploited the hell out of it. In an interview with the Huffington post, Harry Reid said he had spoken to a former Bain investor who said Mitt Romney “didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.” Of course, Reid couldn’t say who the investor was or how said investor ran across a decade’s worth of Romney’s tax returns, just as he couldn’t say that the allegation was true. But he could say some other stuff:

He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain. But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look? You guys have said his wealth is $250 million. Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.

In keeping with its code of ethics, The Huffington Post published that stuff immediately.

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Romney continues tour of radness

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 2 Comments

Dorks from around the world

I’ll admit it: I did not think Mitt Romney was going to be a funny candidate for president. In a primary season that gave us Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, it was hard to see Romney as anything but the wealthy dowager who hires the Stooges to move her piano. How wrong I was. Fresh from his passive-aggressive tour of London, Romney went to Israel to praise the beautiful per capita income—so much nicer than what you get in Palestine. He attributed this discrepancy to “the power of culture and at least a few other things,” presumably making a praying-exploding gesture with his hands, before adding that it might also be “providence.” He was a hit in Poland.

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