Politics

Oh the problems that plague the Republicans when it comes to acceptance. While they just recently admitted that their losses in November were in no small part due to the party appearing intolerant to minorities and gays, they have done little to repair that problem. Now we have one high level Republican official in Florida resigning just because of those problems. Not just that, he has even turned over his GOP card for a Democratic one.

Pablo Pantoja, was the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee. Yesterday he sent this email out to his colleagues:

Friend,

Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

Think Progress adds this:

Pantoja goes on to specifically cite last week’s revelation — that an author of Heritage’s false report on the cost of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill wrote a dissertation in which he suggested that Hispanics are at a permanent disadvantage because they have lower IQs — as the final straw in his political evolution.

I'm sue Pantoja didn't come to this decision lightly. The fact that he put his own self ahead of his party shows that Pantoja was a rare kind of Republican. He should be congratulated for his choice.

With news that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, the right has a true scandal on their hands. The IRS is not to be used as a political tool and this kind of activity should give everyone of us reason to worry, despite our ideological beliefs.

Luckily Congress is going to be holding hearings into this scandal, as they should. But, as with any of these scandals, comes time for political posturing. For example, yesterday George Will actually floated impeachment of President Obama over this. Of course we don't know if anybody in the administration was actually involved and the IRS commissioner at the time of the scandal was actually a Bush appointee.

Now if it does turn out that someone in the Obama administration was directly involved, I would support action against that person. If it turns out that Obama himself was involved, then let's start the impeachment process and I will back it 100%. But what we don't need right now is intellectual midgets, like George Will, out there spreading false blame. We also don't need Congress to distort the investigation into a political witch hunt. After all, we are investigating those political witch hunts and justice is not served by engaging in yet another. Instead we need a truly open investigation that examines all the facts and only the facts.

And something else to remember on this. Republicans had every reason to rid themselves of the Tea Party. After all, the Tea Party has proven to be a much bigger asset to the left than the right. They go out and primary Republicans, who have held onto seats for a long time, and end up winning that primary, only to lose the seat to a Democrat in the fall. The Tea Party is the very reason the GOP is dying today, so motivation for a Republican to go after them is much higher than that of a Democrat.

The Senate just voted 68-31 to move forward with debate on expanding background checks, a measure overwhelmingly supported by the public, including 91% of veterans in a new poll.

Of course we still have people out there that think expanded background checks won't help, like John Cornyn:

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the second-ranking Senate Republican, called the bill under consideration “a symbolic gesture” and said Congress should focus more on bolstering federal funding for mental-health programs: “We need to make sure that the mentally ill are getting the help they need, not guns.”

I totally agree with what Cornyn is saying here and have been saying mental health needs to be part of the gun violence debate. After all, only a mad person can go in and take so many innocent lives. But this coming from Cornyn is rather curious.

Here's a pop quiz. Which President worked hardest to destroy mental health in this country?

If you said Ronald Reagan, you would be right. During his tenure as President, Reagan cut funding for mental health treatment and research. He decided to move mental health from the public sector to the private sector and with that we started seeing the closure of our nation's mental health facilities.

When you think about gun violence in our nation, especially these mass shootings, and then consider when our mental health services were cut, you start seeing a trend. These big shootings started becoming more epidemic in the 90's and have continued growing since. On top of that, most of the shooters are ones who have grown up under the system that Reagan built. See the trend?

For all their talk about keeping government out of our lives and pursuing freedom, the Republican Party sure has a funny way of proving it. First up is this story out of Georgia:

The City Council of Nelson has approved an ordinance that requires each head of household to own a gun. The legislation passed unanimously and goes into effect in 10 days. Nelson, population about 1,300, is about 40 miles north of Atlanta.

So the government shouldn't have the right to force citizens to purchase healthcare, but they should be allowed to force citizens to purchase guns? Something seems funny there.

Then we had east to North Carolina, where this is the news of the day:

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

Republicans. They love the Constitution, until it interferes with their true ideals of tyranny. But this is nothing new. We saw the same thing happen a couple of years ago when plans were out to build a mosque in New York City. Apparently "freedom of religion" should only apply to Christians.

And finally:

Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has filed a petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state’s sodomy law.

No this isn't an endorsement of the "wink, wink" half-term Governor from Alaska. Instead it's an attempt to highlight that Sarah Palin is nothing more than a politician that engages in her "do as I say not as I do" form of leadership:

Sarah Palin attempted to relaunch her political career and her political action committee, SarahPAC, on Thursday with a Web video called “Loaded for Bear,” which presented the former Alaska governor as the new kingmaker for conservative populists in the GOP.

The video riffed off her speech at CPAC, in which Palin railed against “the big consultants, the big money men, and the big bad media.” But there’s an irony alert ahead: the current stated purpose of SarahPAC is to raise money ahead of the 2014 election—most of which will be spent on conservative consultants.

Palin is telling conservatives not to pay for consultants. Now that's a good idea in theory, but even Palin knows it is failed logic in our current state of democracy, so she goes out and hires consultants. And how much does she pay for these people?

But the real news comes when you look at how donors’ money was actually doled out: just $298,500 to candidates. The bulk of the rest of it, more than $4.8 million, went to—you guessed it—consultants.

Consultants have become a huge cancer on our political process, driving up the costs of running for office exponentially. The problem with Palin though is that she wants to act like the good guy in all this, but that's just an act. Instead she is still an enabler for the political consultant and those numbers are proof.

After their grueling loses in 2012 the Republican National Committee decided to spend some time and look into what went wrong. This morning, the party released their report, which included marketing research from focus groups. Here's what part of it said:

"Asked to describe Republicans, they said that the Party is “scary,” “narrow minded,” and “out of touch” and that we were a Party of “stuffy old men.” This is consistent with the findings of other post-election surveys," the report states.

There isn't much on issues in the report, but when it comes to gay marriage, the report concedes:

“Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be”

This comes a day after the top elected Republican, Speaker John Boehner said he "can't ever imagine" supporting gay marriage.

So how is the GOP going to fix this problem? Part of it has already been released and here is Josh Marshall's take on it:

So drastically shorter primary phase, much earlier nominating convention, many fewer debates. Aren’t all of Reince Priebus’s structural reforms basically aimed at dramatically reducing the time period in which the actual Republican party base is on display for the public at large?

The Republican Lt. Governor of Florida has tendered her resignation amid a very nasty scandal:

Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll announced her resignation Wednesday, a day after she was questioned by authorities investigating possible illegal gambling at an Internet cafe company that she once represented.

The head of the company, Allied Veterans of the World, has been accused of a using the cafes as an illegal front for veterans' charity and keeping millions of dollars in profits.

Carroll's resignation letter to Gov. Rick Scott, dated Tuesday, offered no details about her reason for leaving. But Scott's chief of staff, Adam Hollingsworth, said she was interviewed by Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers Tuesday regarding her work with Allied Veterans of the World.

So this is how Republicans support our veterans? I'm speechless! And the details shed even more light on this scam:

According to an Internal Revenue Service affidavit filed in federal court, Allied Veterans evolved from a charitable organization that ran bingo games and held bake sales for veterans beginning in 1979 to a group suspected of operating more than 40 illegal for-profit gambling locations around Florida. The veterans charity was a fraud, according to the IRS.

"In an effort to mislead the public into believing that it is not profiting from an illegal gambling enterprise, Allied Veterans and others have engaged in a conspiracy and scheme to defraud," the affidavit said.

And it appears that Carroll has tried to help the company out while she was still serving as a state legislature: