Tag: nominee

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Politics

Republican Senator Meets with Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee

Sen. Mark Kirk on Tuesday became the first Republican to say he might be willing to vote for President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, The Hill reports.

“Obviously I would consider voting for him,” the Illinois senator told reporters before he met with the nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. “That’s the whole purpose.”

Kirk, who is facing a difficult reelection race this year, rebuked his colleagues for refusing to give any consideration to the judge.
“We need open-minded, rational, responsible people to keep an open mind to make sure the process works,” Kirk told a throng of reporters packed in his Capitol office. “I think when you just say ‘I’m not going to meet with him at all,’ that’s too close-minded.”

Kirk’s meeting with Garland — the first by any Republican on Capitol Hill — came just hours after the Supreme Court issued its first major split decision since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The 4-4 deadlock represented a major victory to labor unions, which had faced the possibility of mandatory union fees being overturned for public sector workers.

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Barack Obama Politics

GOP Senator to GOP Pals – “Man Up” and Vote on Obama’s Nominee

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) took a swing at his party Friday, saying Republicans need to “man up” and give Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a vote, The Hill reports.

“Just man up and cast a vote. The tough thing about these senatorial jobs is you get yes or no votes. Your whole job is to either say yes or no and explain why,” he told “The Big John Howell Show” on WLS-AM in Chicago.

The Illinois Republican, who faces a tough reelection bid, was quick to break with the party’s strategy to block President Obama’s Supreme Court pick from getting a hearing, a vote or, in most cases, a meeting.

He told The Hill last month he would accept a meeting with the president’s nominee and added this week that “I will assess Judge Merrick Garland based on his record and qualifications.”

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Barack Obama Politics

President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee is…

The Constitution of the United States command the president of the United States to appoint nominees for the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Obama is fulfilling his Constitutional duties.

President Obama will announce federal appeal court Judge Merrick Garland on Wednesday as his nominee for the Supreme Court, according to reports.

Garland, 63, was selected by the President to fill the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death last month, both The Associated Press and The New York Times reported.

Garland is the chief judge of the Washington, D.C., court of appeals. He was among those considered for the seat taken by Justice Elena Kagan in 2010.

Obama’s choice will pit the President in a bitter battle with Senate Republicans, whose leaders vowed to turn their back on his candidate — no matter who was chosen.

Obama has simply responded that he was fulfilling his Constitutional duties as President, rather than letting a seat on the nine-member court go vacant for 11 months.

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Mitt Romney Politics

We Have A Winner

It’s been a long time coming, but we finally have incontrovertible evidence that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. Of course, forward-thinking readers of the Farmer Blog know that this was a foregone conclusion because they read it here, here, here, here, and, oh yeah, here.

Just sayin’

Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich put up a heck of a fight and did more to dent, ding, derail and at times demoralize Romney and his supporters, and for that Obama voters can be eternally grateful. Romney’s comments about trees in Michigan or how many Cadillacs he has also hurt him and planted in people’s minds just how wealthy he is, but I suspect that those independents who will decide the race will forgive him if the economy stalls or he’s able to make the case that Obama doesn’t deserve a second term. The president is already running a spot that highlights Romney’s conservatism in anticipation of Mitt coming back to the center for the general campaign.

For his part, Romney will have difficulty running away from some of the harder right positions he took in the primaries, especially support of the contraception and abortion legislation that has alienated women from the GOP. Winning them back is possible, but it’s always more difficult to do that if women’s attitudes have already hardened. Look for Romney to try to be warmer and fuzzier, but that’s not playing to his strength. Right now he’s about as warm as the Titanic’s iceberg and as fuzzy as a Brillo Pad. And if he says any more rich-guy stuff he’ll be in real trouble.

As challenger, Romney is in a position where he’ll need to remind Americans that times are still bad and he’ll need to hope that they don’t improve or improve so slowly that he can label Obama as inept on the economy. Job growth slowed in March, but as the economy improves, and it is improving, Romney will need to accentuate the negative at a time when he’ll need to project a positive image. Tough to do.

Gas prices are another issue that he’ll use against Obama, but there are signs that prices are peaking at the pumps. Plus, the media is finally catching on to the fact that we are now a net exporter of fuel and are finding sources of energy in places unimaginable 10 years ago. This is also tricky for Romney because he’s essential saying that Obama should fiddle with the free market to lower prices, which is something that runs exactly opposite to the GOP’s free market ideology.

The President has his work cut out for him as well. The right-wing PACs have much more money than his left-wing supporters, and Romney was tremendously successful at using that money, and his, to beat back a zesty challenge from Gingrich and then Santorum, both of whom were running shoestring campaigns. Romney’s message will find some sympathetic ears in the battleground states, and although polls show Obama ahead nationally, that support will weaken somewhat under an onslaught of advertisements and right-wing media messages.

Here are links to analyses of what both Romney and Obama need to do to win. We’ll look at more as the race proceeds.

The latest polls show Obama’s job approval in positive territory and he’s presently in command of the Electoral College. I would certainly expect these numbers to change, but it’s always nice to be in the lead when the campaign starts.

For more, please go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest  

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured Republican Voter registration

Donald Trump Throws Republicans Under The Bus. He’s Now An Independent

Just what the Independents need, a self absorbed, narcissistic, lunatic who refuses to come to terms with the fact that no one cares about him… except PETA, as they continue their never-ending quest to free that animal on his head.

NEW YORK — Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has changed his voter registration in New York state from Republican to unaffiliated to preserve his option of running for president as an independent.

Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump, said Friday that Trump could enter the race if Republicans fail to nominate a candidate who the real estate mogul believes can defeat President Barack Obama.

Cohen told to NBC News that Trump would consider his position “after the finale of ‘The Apprentice’ in May of 2012 if he is not satisfied with the Republican nominee for president.”

If Independents know what’s best for them and their cause, they will call the exterminator and get this parasite out from within their ranks and back into the Republican party where he belongs!

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Iowa Newt Gingrich Politics presidential Republican

We Hardly Knewt Ye!

That was close.

And scary.

The idea that Newt Gingrich might actually win the GOP presidential nomination sent shivers down the spines of enough Republicans that they actually came to their senses this week and  began to support Ron Paul in the Iowa caucus polls. As for the national trends, it looks like Mitt Romney is the betting favorite on Internet sites.

The Gingrich flirtation lasted only as long as voters knew little about what he might do in office. His tirades against the federal judiciary might play well with the ultra-conservatives, but they seem to be non-starters among the more moderate voters who will come out in later primary states. Also, his lack of organization is showing, but that shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Gingrich never seemed to be in the race for anything other than to get his ideas in the marketplace. He succeeded. Now there’s a 50% off sticker on them and they’re not long for the discontinued bin.

Republican voters have sampled all of the candidates over the course of the last few months and they seem to be coalescing around Romney, despite conservative suspicion that he’s not fully committed to their causes. There’s a good reason for this; he’s not, but he’s the only electable candidate in the field. So that leaves us with a volatile race in Iowa with Romney, Paul (my favorite to pull out a win), Bachmann and Perry able to cobble together enough caucus voters to move on to the next set of states. Rick Santorum is getting a little love this week from evangelicals, but that will all come to naught after Iowa.

Then the serious race will begin in earnest. Depending upon what happens in the next few days, Romney will have to defend Republican obstruction that led to the end of the payroll tax cut, or he’ll have to run against it as flawed policy, despite the cut being popular among voters and economists. He’ll also have to harness the Tea Party faction that doesn’t want to compromise on anything, and is losing support, even with Republicans. Add on the fact that President Obama’s poll numbers are improving, and Mitt suddenly has a more daunting task ahead of him than he did in October (did he just announce his first major policy decision?).

But that’s all in the future. Right now, we should be thanking Newt Gingrich for a spirited campaign that ultimately showed his best days to be behind him. His rise and fall was swifter than Herman Cain’s and the reality of a Gingrich presidency was always going to present problems in a world that’s moved beyond the 1990s. Perhaps Romney can find room for Newt in his administration as, say, ambassador to Libya?

For more spirited debate, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives

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Abortions Newt Gingrich Politics presidential Republican

A Stroll Down Memory Lane – Gingrich On Abortion

As Herman Cain falls off the leader-board for the Republican nomination, we now turn our attention to the new flavor of the month, Newt Gingrich – a man who has perfected the art of the flip-flop,  and who has paved the way for other indecisive Republican “leaders” like Mitt Romney.

One well documented issue that is now causing Gingrich a major headache among his base, is his support for abortion. Of course, he has already flipped on this issue, but this is a vetting process, so let’s take a stroll down memory lane…

TAXPAYER-FUNDED ABORTION

The New York Times on April 10, 1995, reported, “House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday supported the availability of federally financed abortions for poor women who are victims of rape or incest and expressed opposition to organized school prayer, positions that are at odds with many conservatives in his party.”

Also asked that year on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether he agrees with Republicans who oppose federal abortion payments in cases of rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother, Gingrich answered: “No. First of all, I think you should have funding in the case of rape or incest or life of the mother, which is the first step.”

Later that year, Gingrich urged his colleagues in the U.S. House to accept language in an abortion bill that would not completely ban abortions under federal employee health plans, leaving in place exemptions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, the Washington Times reported on Aug. 7, 1995.

TAXPAYER-FUNDED EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH

Bill O’Reilly on “The O’Reilly Factor” asked Gingrich on July 19, 2001: “Stem cell research, should President Bush approve some federal funding for that?”

Gingrich answered: “Well, I agree with Senator Bill Frist, as the only medical doctor in the Senate and as a world-class heart surgeon. I think that there are ways to have appreciation for life, to recognize the sanctity of life, but nonetheless to look at fertility clinics where there are cells that are sitting there that are not going to be used to create life. They literally today, they’re unregulated, they can be thrown away. And I think the president, I hope the president, will find a way to agree that there ought to be federally funded research.”

On ABC News’ “This Week” on July 8, 2001, Sam Donaldson asked: “So he should approve stem cell research on embryos?”

Gingrich answered: “On embryonic cells that, that are pre-fetal.”

PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION

Gingrich helped quash an effort to deny Republican Party funds to candidates who opposed legislation outlawing so-called partial birth abortions, a Jan. 21, 1998, article by the Associated Press said.

The Republican National Committee at its winter meeting that year wanted to deny party campaign funds to Republican candidates who opposed banning most late-term, or partial-birth, abortions.

Gingrich addressed the RNC meeting on Jan. 16, 1998, calling for tolerance of candidates who support partial-birth abortion, saying he would campaign for them: “It’s the voters of America who have a right — in some places they’re going to pick people who are to my right, some places they’re going to pick people who are to my left and in both cases, if they’re the Republican nominee, I am going to actively campaign for them, because when they get to Congress, whether they are a moderate Republican from the northeast, whether they are a very conservative Republican from the south or west, whatever their background.”

With Gingrich leading in the Republican nomination process and about five weeks remaining before primary voters head to the polls, the Gingrich campaign will be in high gear, trying to distance Newt Gingrich ‘Version 2’ from Newt Gingrich 1.0.

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