Roast Hogs, Ride Harleys, and Kill Islamo-Fascists

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

10 June 15

 

will admit it, I went to the First Annual Roast and Ride, sponsored by our pig-castrating senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, looking for that Michael Dukakis moment. You remember seeing him looking like a fool with his head sticking out of a tank. Well, Scott Walker and Rick Perry didn’t look like fools on their Harleys, and those who would have were smart enough to avoid them. As far as looking like fools, they saved that for the stage. Maybe to the rest of America, they all did a great job appealing to the “bubba” crowd at the Roast and Ride. But do most Americans want “Bubba” in the White House?

What a contrast between the Ernst-sponsored event and the Harkin Steak Fry. To be fair, this was the first Roast and Ride, but if only 1,500 had showed up for a Harkin Steak Fry during a competitive caucus season it would have been a disappointment. In 2007, the last time the Democratic Party presidential nomination was in play, 15,000 people attended the Steak Fry in Indianola. In the final Harkin Steak Fry last year 5,000 people got a full plate of politics that included Hillary Clinton. For 40 years, steaks have filled the grills, but this year it was whole pigs that were roasting. Joni Ernst arrived on her Harley with Scott Walker, leading a roaring group of motorcycles. A second group of mostly Harleys came from Perry, Iowa, and it was of course led by former Texas governor Rick Perry. 

A pig being roasted at Joni Ernst’s 1st annual Roast and Ride. (photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)

Other than the campaign volunteers and staff, there were not many young people in the crowd. I heard one of Governor Perry’s young volunteers attempt to get a couple of undecided Iowa voters to sign up for updates from the campaign. After they refused to sign, the volunteer asked the man, who was in his sixties, if he carried a gun. The volunteer then announced that he carries a Glock. His tone was pleasant and he said it with a smile. I guess it’s a cultural thing. The couple was not alarmed. If, after I refused to sign something, the volunteer had told me he was carrying a Glock, I might have taken it as a threat, and in some neighborhoods I have lived in, the volunteer might have ended up with a gun pointed at him.

The crowd was mostly bikers and farmers, and mostly over 50 years old. The candidates seemed to want to focus on what they are against and blame Obama and Hillary Clinton for it. I wonder what would happen if Hillary Clinton were not the Democratic nominee. Republican strategists would have to revise their whole campaign strategy.

How many of you think the solution to our problems is to increase military spending so we can kill the Muslims? If you had been in Boone, Iowa, on Saturday that is what you would have heard from the seven presidential hopefuls who stood in front of a barn and tractor and made their case to a couple of thousand Iowans enjoying a pig roast. Speaker after speaker blasted Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, immigrants, Islamo-fascists, and taxes.

While some acknowledged that the middle class has been squeezed, none addressed student debt, climate change, or poverty for that matter. They blamed everything on Obama, taxes, immigrants, and Muslims. Their solutions were lower taxes, more war, and kissing Netanyahu’s ass. Oh yeah, they would also like to make you work longer so you can pay more into Social Security. They would stop helping you get health care, because that’s between you and your doctor. Oh and Marco Rubio would “turn the page.” So far, his vision for the next page looks a lot like the pages we’ve seen in the past, but hey, he is the young one – that must count for something. 

Let’s start with the biggest losers.

Lindsey Graham

First of all, if I were Senator Charles Grassley I would tell him to stop implying that I’m a cheapskate at every event. I keep hearing Graham tell crowds that the only reason Charles Grassley is in attendance is that there is free food. I know public speaking classes recommend telling a joke or two to break the ice, but Graham takes the stage and tries to be a standup comic, telling bad joke after bad joke. Then he tries to scare you and convince you that only he can protect you.

If you want an all-expenses-paid trip to Iraq or Syria, Lindsey is for you. He wants to send a minimum of ten thousand troops to Iraq. He is going to finish off the Muslims, a project started George W. Bush and abandoned by Obama. You see, America should not be weary of war. If you are tired of war, he is not the candidate for you. After all, he has been to Iraq and Afghanistan 30 times, according to him. At least this time around he really traveled there. He claimed to be a veteran of the first Gulf War, even though he never left South Carolina. Then he said he never said he was a combatant, and if he had lied about his service he wouldn’t be fit to serve as a member of Congress. Well now, in every stump speech, he makes a big deal about having been to Iraq and Afghanistan 30 times, leaving interpretation of what he did there up the voter. So why doesn’t he tell you that he was a JAG? Maybe because he advised on detainee policy. I guess he isn’t saying he was a combatant, but then again he isn’t saying he wasn’t. That wouldn’t be consistent with his warmongering rhetoric.

I really don’t think Graham wants to talk about what he did in Iraq, especially since he has made public statements that indicate he might have supported torture by US forces and the CIA in Iraq. He told Politico, “The techniques employed after Sept. 11 were in response to fear of another attack. When you roll up some of these guys, you’re very anxious to get out of them whatever you can to prevent the next attack. I understand why people did this.” While Graham said waterboarding violates “what we are about,” he added that it would be “pretty absurd” to limit interrogation techniques to the Army Field Manual and urged that “some latitude” be allowed in questioning detainees. I think it’s safe to say that is not the kind of advice a JAG colonel should be giving.

Graham also uses the Social Security scare card, telling everyone that we are going to have to work longer to save Social Security. He doesn’t tell you that all we have to do is raise the cap on the payroll tax and we can expand Social Security, not cut back on it. And we don’t have to work ourselves to death. Social Security is in great shape everyone, don’t believe the Republican scare machine.

Rick Perry

He looks at home on a Harley, but if any one of the Republican candidates comes across like a cheerleader expressing phony enthusiasm, it is Perry. A good speaker raises his voice at the key moments and brings the crowd to its feet. Perry just shouts and shouts, with no thought to picking the right moments. Perry is another one who is going to flex America’s muscles. Corporations will get their nonexistent taxes lowered. His phony enthusiasm caused him to deliver his speech so fast that he left a minute or two before he had to. I guarantee the other seven speakers used all of their nine minutes.

So Perry will protect our values and the border. The problems we face are all caused by Mexicans and Muslims, and he is going to protect us. It’s not like the wealth rising to the top and not trickling down is the problem. Mexicans are taking our jobs, and corporations are being taxed too much to hire people. Yup, that’s it Rick – keep following W’s blueprint, the country was in such good shape when he left office.

Okay, so maybe Rick Perry did look foolish. (photo: Jennifer Jacobs, Des Moines Register)

Dr. Ben Carson

Carson is a smart guy, but please tell me how sitting on corporate boards is equivalent to running a country. I agree with him that politics in this country is too adversarial. A candidate for president needs a plan, not just “common sense.” He talks about his philosophy, but he just wants us to trust that he has the common sense to make the right decisions. He always reminds me of someone in an infomercial, everything carefully scripted to sell, sell, sell. He will defend Christian values and fight the Muslims too. 

We really only needed to hear one speech and then just imagine all of them saying it in their own style. There really was not much difference in any of these candidates.

Mike Huckabee

Mr. Fair Tax. Hold onto your wallet – we are all going to pay the same tax rate under Huckabee. Huckabee is the nationalist in this race. His opposition to the trade deals is a plus, but it comes from his isolationist beliefs. A religious Pat Buchanan, Huckabee will have a tough time gaining traction with Rand Paul in the race. He had his chance eight years ago and couldn’t beat McCain nationally. I don’t see Iowans giving him a boost again. And there was nothing memorable is his speech on Saturday.

Carly Fiorina

She might have had a good day. I never get the appeal, but the pundits always say she hit it out of the park. All I hear from her is that she is not Hillary Clinton. You see, she rode a tractor in a parade in Story City, and wonders if Hillary ever rode a tractor that wasn’t a photo op. Hello? It’s not like you plowed a field, Carly. The parade was a photo op. Fiorina also has met world leaders and done business with them. She didn’t just pose for pictures with the world leaders. Hello? The secretary of state just poses for pictures with world leaders? Fiorina is a businesswoman who, like George W., knows how to run a company into the ground. Hewlett Packard paid her off to get as far away from her as they could. She is a walking contradiction. Some think she is running a great campaign. I just don’t get it.

The Winners

Marco Rubio

At first glance he is different from the rest, but as you listen closely, he is just packaging the same old failed Republican policies in a shiny new way. He stands out as someone who will appeal to Republican voters looking for something new. He talks about turning the page, but to me he is turning the pages backward. Many Republicans in Iowa don’t know him yet, and I heard many say that he impressed them and they are giving him a chance to introduce himself. He gets points for not accepting Joni Ernst’s offer to ride in on the back of her bike – that would have been the Dukakis moment I was looking for.

Senator Marco Rubio hasn’t been in Iowa often, so he had a lot to gain on Saturday.
(photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)

Donald Trump

Wait, he wasn’t there. His volunteers were though, and they were inviting everyone to a launch party in Des Moines on the 16th. Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t there: it was very windy, and I don’t think The Donald’s hair would have held up.

Scott Walker

Iowa is Walker’s to lose. Wisconsin is where Harley engines are made, so riding a hog to a pig roast was an event made for Walker. He did face a tough question before the ride, and he told MSNBC that he would not rule out a large invasion of Iraq. The question was the result of Lindsey Graham being so focused on the issue, which is forcing the other candidates to take positions they would rather avoid. Jeb was at Barbara Bush’s birthday party, so Walker had the day to solidify his lead over Bush in Iowa. The Republican field is crowded, but let’s be real – some of them will compete in Iowa, like Huckabee and Santorum, but nationally there is a top tier: Walker, Bush, Cruz, and Rubio will at some point emerge as the four with a shot at the nomination. So Walker riding alongside Ernst had the best photo op. He played it safe from the stage and sounded like the front runner. He even staked a favorite-son claim, pointing out that he had lived in Iowa while his father was a Baptist preacher in Plainfield. His father being a preacher in Iowa is icing on the cake. I think Walker will win Iowa and is the front runner nationally. Labor had better get ready, their worst nightmare is poised to be the Republican nominee. 

Scott Walker, leader of the pack? (photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)

Well, that about sums it up. Walker and Rubio had the best days. I didn’t hear any pigs squeal, but they were being roasted whole on the grill. At least they weren’t roasting donkeys. Should I have said that? I don’t want to give Steve King any ideas.

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Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

In Classic Clintonian Fashion, Dems Insult Their Own Voters

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

10 June 15

 

ay this for the Democrats in the Clinton era: they're never boring.

From brilliant responses to sex scandals to impossible smoke-but-not-inhale policy hedges to calculated collapses on everything from gay rights to financial deregulation, the Clinton Dems over the years have proven themselves masters of messaging and political survival.

They've turned the act of choosing winning over principle into an art form.

The latest trick? Insulting their own voters at the start of a race. It would be unbelievable, if they hadn't spent decades preparing us to believe it.

The background for the latest chutzpah-rich gambit has been an alarming slide in Hillary Clinton's recent polling numbers. A series of different surveys have all shown that in the wake of her email scandal and revelations about the Clinton Foundation, Hillary's negatives have jumped, and her positives are way down.

"Less than 50 percent of respondents" have favorable feelings about the candidate, as Michael Barone at Real Clear Politics put it.

In response, the Clinton campaign is launching a campaign to fire up the liberal base. They're going to accomplish this, they say, by having Hillary adopt "polarizing" positions she doesn't actually believe in. This comes via a trial balloon the campaign itself floated in The New York Times over the weekend.

In "Hillary Clinton Traces Friendly Path, Troubling Party," Clinton aides reveal to reporters Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman that Hillary is being forced to abandon her preferred political path – as they breathlessly describe it, "the nationwide electoral strategy that won her husband two terms in the White House and brought white working-class voters and great stretches of what is now red-state America back to Democrats." 

Hillary Clinton hosts a small business forum with members of the business and lending communities in
Cedar Falls, Iowa on May 19th, 2015. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)

They go on:

"Instead, she is poised to retrace Barack Obama's far narrower path to the presidency: a campaign focused more on mobilizing supporters… than on persuading undecided voters.

Mrs. Clinton's aides say it is the only way to win in an era of heightened polarization… Her liberal policy positions, they say, will fire up Democrats, a less difficult task than trying to win over independents in more hostile territory — even though a broader strategy could help lift the party with her." 

The first thing that jumps out about this story is that it comes directly from the Clinton campaign.

The main sources on the news part of the piece are unnamed "Mrs. Clinton's aides." The quotes in the analysis portion, meanwhile, come mainly from a list of current and former Democratic operatives like David Plouffe, Dan Pfeiffer and Robby Mook.

So this wasn't leaked out to the Times by accident. It was spoon-fed to the paper by the party, which put this "left turn" out there to see how it plays.

Either that, or they already know how it's going to play and just need the press to blow out the story for them.

Given the sources, the way the strategic turn is described is incredible. Both the named and unnamed Democrats spend the whole text pissing on their own strategy (and by extension their own targeted voters) from a great height.

They make it clear that turning away from Bill Clinton's cherished demographic of southern white moderates, and toward the Obama base of "young, nonwhite and female voters," is something they're only doing with extreme reluctance.

They describe rhetoric for the young-female-nonwhite coalition as "narrow," while a Bill Clinton-style turn toward the red states would be a "broader" strategy that would "lift the party with her." 

In the Times piece, this line is followed by a slew of quotes from establishment Dems about the perils of turning toward the base. And it's capped by an on-the-record quote from Mook, Hillary's current campaign manager, who is described as "unmoved" by such concerns: 

"I think everybody understands how tough it's going to be next year if we get through the primary… So I'm not concerned about hand-wringing on the strategy."

In other words: "We hate doing this, but it's the only way to win. Bear with us."

As political messaging goes, it's a remarkably perverse way to kick off a campaign. It's like going on a date and announcing before the appetizers arrive that the only reason you're here is that the person you really wanted to go out with turned you down.

As in: "Please don't think I really like you. It's just that going out with you is the only way I'm going to get laid."

The Clintons have long been masters of this kind of rhetoric, only in the other direction. The Democratic Party spent much of the nineties and 2000s reassuring their base through similar leaks and off-the-record/background comments. 

The whispers back then told us that Third Way Democrats like the Clintons or Al Gore were really raging liberal pacifists at heart, and only voted for things like the Iraq War or the Patriot Act or "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" because they needed to head rightward to win elections and keep the big bad evil Republicans at bay.

What they're saying now is the opposite. The country, they say, has become so polarized that they need to head left and "narrowly" pick sides, instead of "broadly" hedging in order to win.

Citing Democratic sources, the Times reporters dismissively describe this turn toward the base as the "Obama strategy." And they say the party has concluded it has no choice but to embrace it. As the Times puts it:

"[The Obama strategy] is unavoidable, given that there are few genuine independents now and that technology increasingly lets campaigns pinpoint their most likely voters."

In pursuing this strategy, Hillary will be asking for forbearance from social conservatives while she targets women, gays and nonwhite voters on social issues, instead of going after middle-class whites the way her husband did using platforms like welfare reform. 

Moreover, the party wants big business to hang tough while Hillary slings Warren-Sanders-style anti-business rhetoric in an effort to increase turnout.

The truly crazy thing about this is that the Warren-Sanders strategy actually would be the broad bipartisan strategy, if only the Democrats would stop apologizing for it.

Particularly on the Wall Street front, there is a broad left-right coalition to be built, if the Democrats had any interest in building it.

Such coalitions have already succeeded in the House and the Senate, where politicians like Ron Paul and Sanders have teamed up to audit the Fed, and Republicans like David Vitter have teamed up with Dems like Sherrod Brown in campaigns against Too-Big-To-Fail banking monopolies.

It's called the 99 percent for a reason. Very few actual people on the left or the right genuinely like the way the modern economy works. The right kind of criticism would fly in both camps.

Liberals are critical of modern high finance because it leads to unchecked abuses of corporate power. True conservatives are against it because the current financial system is a perverted form of capitalism that discourages competition in favor of state-supported pseudo-monopolies, putting taxpayers on the hook to bail out loser companies.

If the Democratic Party had the stones to dive into that issue with both feet, they would build a true bipartisan coalition overnight and keep the White House for decades.

Instead, they use leaks like this Times piece to reassure donors the anti-Wall Street rhetoric coming is all talk. Doing the right thing is so totally alien to them that they feel they need to apologize before they do it.

The irony is, Hillary probably wouldn't have such high negatives right now if the public didn't have decades of exactly this sort of Clintonian face-switching and poll-chasing to stew over.

In fact, in a just world, this latest decision to overcome voter indifference by putting on an Elizabeth Warren mask through the primary season would be rewarded by even stiffer slides down the polls. Even hardcore progressives would probably respect her more if she stuck to the eely faux-center the Third Way Dems have been staking out since the late Eighties. 

But if history is any guide, that won't happen. The guess here is that Hillary and Democrats have run the numbers. They'll shake a few fists at The Man on the campaign trail, just enough to sneak by on poll day. Then, once in office, they'll revert back in office to being the shameless policy sellouts they've always been.

It would be gross even if they weren't openly telling us that's the plan. But with this trial balloon, that's exactly what they're doing. It'll be interesting to see if American voters have enough self-respect to be offended.