Republican Leadership Line Up

Republican leadership has splintered into the absurd, the paradoxical, the hypocritical and the people who believe in fanciful thinking. 

If they weren't so dangerous, the line up might even be funny. 

 Unfortunately, they're a scary group; all of them must be voted off the "political island" of Congress, where they misuse their positions, to grandstand about right wing extremist causes.

Who are among this GOP line-up of of quasi leaders?

1.  Governor Mitt Romney - Believes 47 percent of Americans are fundamentally free loaders, who want the government to take care of them.  This absurd statement has no merit whatsoever.  It's an embarrassment to Romney and to people who work for a living.  Meanwhile, Romney built a mega fortune on the backs of these stereotyped free loaders, especially those who worked for his Father George Romney, Chairman of American Motors, in Detroit's automobile industry.  Without the working class, who helped build American Motors' fortune, Governor Romney's father might still be living in his birthplace, in Mexico, and Mitt might be trying to figure out how to get through the immigration wall in Arizona. This 47 percent remark was recorded, it was wrong minded and it is counter intuitive, because American workers are the most productive in the world, and Romney knows it.  American workers get more done per hour than anybody, other than the Norwegians.

Romney's 47 percent comments were hypocritical.  His wealth was created on the backs of the working class; but he marginalizes working class people who created his wealth.

2.  Congresswoman Michelle Bachman (R- Minnesota) - She's a Congresswoman who lives in the home  state of American Democratic Leaders (both Vice-Presidents) Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978) and Walter Mondale (she's quite an embarrassment to both men, I'm pretty sure).  But, beyond Bachman's ideological differences with the two statesmen, she's a woman who engages in fanciful thinking.  In other words, she makes things up.  During her failed bid to gain the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, Bachman told the national media how she believed the HPV vaccine, an effective prevention against cervical cancer, is a cause of mental retardation.  This ridiculous conclusion is based entirely on Bachman's fanciful thinking and without any medical evidence whatsoever.  After criticizing Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) for mandating a vaccine for school girls, Rep. Michele Bachmann added some scary charges: She claimed to have met a woman whose daughter suffered mental retardation from the vaccine, that it has "very dangerous consequences" and that it puts "little children's lives at risk."  This is ridiculous fanciful thinking was created so Bachman could capture headlines, but without any merit.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky -  This man is a master of paradox. Senator Paul knows the Republican Party is entering a "death spiral" if immigration reform is left undone, but he just won't vote for it, because he doesn't want to.  Paul's reason for not voting for the bipartisan immigration bill are completely nonsensical.  “Without some congressional authority and without border security first, I can’t support the final bill,” Paul said on CNN’s “State of  The Union.”   Maybe, Senator Paul wants to spend even more money to send Congress to police the nation's borders.  Let's remember, America has two international borders, let's not discriminate by only policing one of them.  Unfortunately, Senator Paul is blind to the expensive and enormous anti-immigration border security wall, erected in Arizona, more hideous than the Berlin Wall in Germany; neither does he experience the sadness of law abiding immigrant families, who deserve a path to citizenship, so they can be free of the ominous threat of deportation.

If Republicans, like Senator Paul, don't support the bipartisan immigration reform going through the Congress, the growing number of Hispanic voters will simply stop supporting the GOP. Classic paradox, yet Paul doesn't get it.  

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican from Florida - is the most hypocritical of all, because his family are Cuban refugees; but he won't lead his party out of  its "death spiral", anti immigration positions.  Rubio has no leadership skills. If Rubio were a leader,  he'd stop the GOP anti immigration rhetoric; rather, Rubio is an ethnic puppet for Republicans to dress up and show off in public, to seemingly display how (hypocritically) supportive they are of Hispanic voters.  Cuban voters might buy it, because of loyalty to one of their own, but Hispanic voters see through Rubio's hypocrisy.  Worse, he's ambitious and hypocritical.  

Pope Francis said hypocrites must be revealed.  “Be uncompromising against this spiritual illness (hypocrites). May the Lord not let us be hypocrites. Hypocrites don’t know the meaning of forgiveness, joy and the love of God," he said in a recent post on Twitter.

Republicans have no inspired leadership. Their self appointed leaders are partisan and ambitious zealots. 

Republicans like Party Chairman Reince Priebus must rebrand the party, absent the line up of hypocrites and fanciful thinkers, who pulled the party away from American working class values and ethical immigration policies.

Power of Incumbency Implodes the One Term Presidency

http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/14/rep-michele-bachmann-vows-to-make-president-obama-a-one-term-president/

Statisticians and  pollsters like Nate Silver, and others, gave a favorable mathematical weight to President Obama's "power of incumbency" in projecting the 2012 election results.  They ignored purely political projections about the President's re-election chances to focus on statistical probability. Social science predictions debunked political rhetoric.


Indeed, statistics debunked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann sang "one term presidency" mantra.  In fact, the power of the President's incumbency, coupled with his campaign's well designed and strategic re-election plan, imploded her failed prediction.  In January, President Barack Obama will begin his second term as our nation's leader.  Congresswoman Bachmann's mantra debunked.

Bachmann's failed prediction relied on right wing zealots, who she thought would rise again, like those who drowned out the 2010 mid-term elections. Bachmann's political groupies turned the nation's  House of Representatives into an obstructionist arm of our US government. They believed their power of intimidation would work, again, against the incumbent president.

But, what is the "power of incumbency", anyhow ?  

"One important advantage for Obama is that a president, using his bully pulpit, has the ability to dominate the news and drown out the opposition. This is likely (what happened)... when Obama (spoke) at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. It (was an) international forum (unavailable) to his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, who...after all...was simply a (candidate) ...private citizen. Obama (widened) a 'stature gap', that nearly every president enjoys over his challenger, (because of) the respect that the American presidency generates around the world."

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/Ken-Walshs-Washington/2012/09/24/obama-wields-power-of-incumbency

Although laws protect against the power of incumbency from having an undue advantage over a challenger, often, just the name recognition of an incumbent is enough, in some campaigns, to win an election.  Of course, name recognition isn't typically a factor in Presidential leadership elections.  Nevertheless, the response of the electorate to a name can be very powerful.   

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's mantra about a "one term presidency" didn't carry the weight of negativity, probably, because her personal political negatives outweighed those of the President. 

Obviously, the power of incumbency can be a proverbial albatross. Thankfully, the President's "Health Care Reform" aka "Obamacare" was declared "Constitutional" by the conservative Chief Justice Roberts Supreme Court.  Moreover, voters still hold Republicans accountable for the US economic doldrums.  Otherwise, if either two realities were reversed, the power of incumbency could have reversed, to become the "weight of incumbency".

Yet, Michele Bachmann and minions sincerely believed they could unseat the incumbent President Barack Obama.  They didn't take the mix of voter turnout into consideration.  

Kimberly Strassel writes  "The GOP Turnout Myth: To win future elections, Republicans will need more than better get-out-the-vote software."  http://online.wsj.com/article/potomac_watch.html

"To win the next presidential race, the GOP will have to understand what went wrong in 2012. To do that, they've got to come to grips with what did, and did not, happen with turnout."

"Even as Republicans (agonized) over their candidate and agenda, many have sought comfort in the notion that a big part of the loss came down to simple mechanics. President Obama had a stunning Election Day operation, which turned out his base. Mitt Romney's shop, by contrast, failed to get people to the polls. That explanation is soothing because it suggests that, in the future, all the GOP needs is a slicker piece of get-out-the-vote software."

"It's also broadly wrong....In the end, it was 334,000 votes—in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire—that separated Mr. Romney from the presidency. Then again, had Mr. Romney succeeded in grinding out a narrow victory, it might also have masked the party's bigger problems."

"Because what ought to scare the GOP is this:  (President) Obama (won) by tapping new minority voters in numbers that beat even Mr. Romney's better turnout (that exceeded those who voted in 2008 for Senator John McCain)."

"In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. (This) lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama's margin of victory there was 103,000."

Strassel goes on to write, "...Elections are about the candidate and the message, yes, but also about the ground game. Republicans right now are fretting about Mr. Romney's failures and the party's immigration platform—that's fair enough. But equally important (is) the party's mind-boggling failure to institute a competitive Hispanic ground game. The GOP doesn't campaign in (Hispanic) communities, doesn't register voters there, doesn't knock on doors. So, while pre-election polling showed Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end, the only campaign these voters heard from—by email, at their door, on the phone—was the president's."

And, therein, is the "power of incumbency".  If President Obama had "negative" name recognition, or if he weren't already the US incumbent leader, his chances for re-election could have been, statistically, much less likely.  Pundits, statistics and polls notwithstanding, President Barack Obama expertly used his power of incumbency - and he built on the exponential power of the incumbency of his Democratic predecessor President Bill Clinton.

It was a flashback presidential campaign in 3-D "real time".  

In the face of "Monday morning" analysis, President Barack Obama transcended the myth of the "one term president".  He also  provided the value added benefit of politically discrediting Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's right wing supporters. 

President Barack Obama is an extraordinary incumbent candidate. He proved how to win future American elections.  Yes, it's really all about arithmetic, just like President Bill Clinton told us. "It's about the voters, stupid!"