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PDF versionGOP Ignorance & Its Remedy
by Michael Sean Winters on Oct. 21, 2011
Ignorance is not bliss, at least not if you're part of the 70 percent of Republicans who can’t bring yourself to develop a mad crush on Mitt Romney. It is an almost daily occurrence that one of the other candidates demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of a critical issue. This is a big problem for the GOP.
During Tuesday night’s debate, Michele Bachmann criticized President Obama’s foreign policy, saying, “the biggest problem with this administration in foreign policy is that President Obama is the first president since Israel declared her sovereignty put [sic] daylight between the United States and Israel.” Really? I suppose the Gentlewoman from Minnesota would be loathe to criticize GOP icon Ronald Reagan, but his decision to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia in 1981 certainly “put daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. Of course, Reagan’s Chief of Staff at the time, James Baker, never met an Arab oil baron or potentate he did not love. Later, during his tenure as Secretary of State in the George H.W. Bush administration, Baker spent his time putting as much daylight between the U.S. and Israel as he could.
I suppose it is expecting too much from a candidate who continually touts her commitment to Israel to think she might know anything about the 1956 Suez Crisis. Then, too, a United States President, Dwight Eisenhower put plenty of daylight between the U.S. and Israel, as well as between the U.S. and Great Britain and France.
This basic ignorance of recent history astounds, but everything about the conservative Republican embrace of Israel astounds. It is ironic that these champions of Israel spend so much time denouncing socialism and championing American exceptionalism in distinction to European, bureaucratic lethargy. They seem not to recall that the modern state of Israel was founded by European socialists. The biblical warrant for support of Israel cited by American fundamentalists, “I will bless those that bless you, and him who curses you I will curse” (Gn 12:3), was not what motivated Herzl or Weizmann or Ben-Gurion. Ask yourself a question: If asked to give a one paragraph biographical sketch of Herzl or Weizmann or Ben-Gurion, how many GOP candidates do you think could deliver? I am not a fan of “gotcha” questions, but if they are going to denounce President Obama for his policy towards Israel, they might want to know something about Zionism, no?
Poor Herman Cain misapplied his anti-government mantra the other night in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN. Morgan asked him about abortion and Cain dutifully explained that he was pro-life, that he believed life begins at conception, and that he was opposed to any exceptions including rape and incest. Had he stopped there, Cain would have been fine. But, as the video clip indicates, Cain got confused and must have thought he was talking about union-busting corporations, not pregnant women, saying that it was not up to politicians to tell a family what to do.
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Does this man have even a basic grasp of the issue? Can anyone really believe he is ready for prime time?
There is one candidate on the debate stage whose name is not Mitt Romney who is actually very intelligent. I have been indicating all summer and autumn that people have been discounting Newt Gingrich’s candidacy too quickly. Does anyone doubt that Gingrich is familiar with the events in Suez in 1956? Or with the decision to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia in 1981? Can you imagine Gingrich flubbing an answer to a simple question about abortion as Cain did? Can you imagine Gingrich having the obvious mental lapses that Gov. Rick Perry displays in every debate?
As Cain stumbles in the polls – and he will after his response on abortion – where will his support go? So far, Bachmann was the champion of the anti-Romney brigade, but then she passed the baton to Perry. When Perry stumbled, his support fled to Cain. Now that Cain has stumbled, will conservative Republicans finally accept Romney? I doubt it. My prediction: If Romney and Perry do to each other what Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt did to each other in Iowa in 2004 and run such a negative campaign that they both look bad, look for Gingrich to move up in the polls.
Since when is insulting
Since when is insulting others "distinctly Catholic?"
Gingrich is a cunning,
Gingrich is a cunning, slithering, shrewd weasel. Gingrich must be the most duplicitous as well as opportunistic one of the bunch. Though now Catholic, he must be the most Trickle-down WASPish one on stage. He also has the horrendous distinction of being the first one USING GOD and religion for political purposes. He got it from the pope, Jerry Falwell and the grinning but greedy and deadly(Iran-Contra)Reagan, whose religious underpinnings and intentions are grounded in the religiously espoused WASP greed.
They don't care about America, They don't care about the world, they don't care about people, they don't care about God or religion. They only care about M.O.N.E.Y. If they could reinstate slavery they would, only to their slave labor camps they would add Hispanics. Re that, the pope would help them enslave Hispanics. They all put institutions and money and power far above human beings.
He may be the most experienced but that is among the usual clutch of GOP candidates who are, as usual, extremely shallow in all respects and on every issue, other than the usual GOP Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz talking points. His mind is GOP vicious and foul, Par excellence. Gingrich raises to a high art/LOW ART the conflation of money, power over the lives of others, political power and very distorted religion.
IOW, they trash GOD and religion, ALL for their greed filled politics. If the pope ran for the presidency I would not vote for him for the very same reasons. Their all trashy people.
The only growth I've seen in the papacy is that they seem to have learned to NOT claim that one hurts God by how one votes. We know beyond doubt that this entire mess is so that one does not sin against the church corporation. God and the church are not the same thing and never were. I see that now and ever since JPII.
what you write, bob, about
what you write, bob, about the newt is eminently true, yet Mike here adores him as his kind of "distinctly Catholic" though he is none.
Mr. Winters and NCR have lost
Mr. Winters and NCR have lost their way and the ugly response to the article isn't what is expected from a publication that has Catholic in its name. Mr. Winters' article would better fit with the editorial bias of liberal secular publications that reflect Mr. Winters' views that certainly don't look Catholic to me.
I don't share many of NCR opinions but I read the publication regularly because I learn more about the Catholic Church from a different perspective, however, this article is over the top in vindictiveness and venom. If Mr. Winters is looking for other dragons to slay may I suggest he take on Vice President Biden's latest flub on crime in Flint, MI. It would be interesting to see how Mr. Winters would make Mr. Biden look like a hero for his strange take on violdent crime in Flint.
Cain acknowledges his grasp
Cain acknowledges his grasp of foreign affairs are limited. he insists however, to surround himself with bright people and learn once elected.
I am not sure the Presidency of the United States is a good place for on the job training in foreign policy, national defense, etc.
Gingrich will never, ever,
Gingrich will never, ever, ever get crossover support from non-Republicans. Romney will. Cain is not the first to misundertand the GOP position on abortion. Palin was fairly clueless too and I consider Cain and Palin in the same class, except that Cain at least listens to advisors while Palin is unreformable, considering allowing to be educated to be inauthentic. Also, Gingrich is keeping quiet he is Catholic. That is Santorum's niche. His southern support goes away when Southern Democrats learn of his nascent Catholicism.
Cain is doomed unless he reverses himself on cutting federal aid to states for entitlements - a provision on his web page he likely does not understand - but that the Tea Party and GOP governors and their organizations will run from unless he changes it before anyone notices. He has not yet. Here is the text - paragraph 4 on the entitlements page of his issues tab:
"The federal government has imposed expensive and often counter-productive social and welfare programs on the states and the people. It is time to admit the mistakes, and get the federal government out of the way. This will allow states, cities, churches, charities and businesses to offer a helping hand instead of a handout where they live. People closest to the problems are the best ones to solve the problems effectively."
Getting the federal government out of the way means no requirements and no funding. One of these items is Medicaid.
Well done, Mr. Winters.
Well done, Mr. Winters. There was only one person in that entire debate who really has a chance - and that is Romney. I don't think Bachmann really thinks she can get the presidential nomination but I wonder if she hangs on to be the meatless bone whoever wins the nomination throws to the far right as a vice-presidential nominee.
Romney can actually get someone who is not far right to vote for him, including many people (Republicans and Independents and disaffected Democrats) who are actually in the real middle.
Now, lets let them chew each other up and notice that Obama's policy of participating with NATO in supporting Libya's "Arab Spring" actually ended up in the overthrow of a dictator without costing us the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers and a trillion dollars. Pretty good, huh?
This country, as all
This country, as all countries, really need leaders who can recognize, speak and act on the truth. That means more than sticking to your slogans, or devising inflexible policies so that you can play to your political base. Catholics especially should know that Christ asks us first and foremost to recognize the Truth, and to work to adapt to Truth when it does not fit our mold - which quite often is the case. This demands from us that we sometimes need to recognize the Truth in others not in our "camp", and recognize the falacies in our own "camp". To do this, we need freedom of Spirit. So, I for one look for and appreciate leaders who inspire freedom of Spirit, not devise inflexible slogans.
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