Nut = #14 - Implosion of the campaign?

OK, it's still the week of June 6th and by my own rules this should be a comment on Nut #13, instead of Nut #14. And we may be nearing the end.

But this is bigger than a footnote. So, a separate note.

HuffPost's Shannon McCaffrey says 16 aides and advisers have abandoned the Gingrich campaign. Elsewhere I read that the entire Iowa ground campaign workers had bailed.

The McCaffrey article lays most of the blame on wife #3, Callista, who reportedly exerts iron-fisted control over Nut's schedule, so much so that his staff can't make plans, can't get him to events on time, and could not convince him not to take off on a Mediterranean cruise that Callista wanted them to go on just two weeks after announcing his candidacy.

Callista is not the first political wife, I'm very sure, who has clashed with hubby's staff. But unlike Nancy Reagen, who was always looking out for "Ronnie's" best interests, it sounds like Callista is often making demands out of her own interests. Things like having to cut short a campaign rally so Callista can get back for her choir practice. Apparently she can't leave his side, so he has to cling to her when she has to go somewhere else.

That's not surprising. Callista started out as a campaign staffer for Nut -- and she knows from whence her concerns come. She knows that way young women play up to the candidate, flatter them, manipulate them, seduce them. I'm not excusing Nut -- he obviously did his part, and Callista also must know well his history of philandering. She was not the first. But she was "one of them."

This is not good, and it just won't work -- which makes me very happy. Because -- it may come as no surprise -- I do not want Nut's campaign to be successful. I am overjoyed that 16 of his aides have resigned en masse.

Here's the problem. Callista starts out as "the other woman," and on top of that, she's putting her own interests ahead of Nut's. It seems that he was very willing to go along with her. But . . .

If you're trying to become the "First Lady," and you start out as the "Scarlet Lady," you don't help your chances by being the "Dragon Lady."

It's not just being controlling and selfish and possessive -- it's giving Nut the image of being hen-pecked (I know that's an old-fashioned concept, but a lot of voters are old). And I don't think anyone, particularly right wing Republicans, would nominate a man whose wife has him wrapped around her well-manicured and expensively bejeweled finger, who calls the shots, and so alienates his staff that they all resign in a block.

I couldn't have asked for a better home-coming.

Ralph

Back on board

After a 5 day trip to San Francisco for a professional meeting and to see old friends, I'm back.

Was Nut trying to sneak in his bad news day while I was gone? I'm referring to the mass resignation of his senior advisers and staff. Apparently there have been great differences over how to proceed -- and my guess is that with so many resignations, it's mainly everybody disagreeing with Nut. But I only know what I read in the USA Today paper that I picked up (free) at my hotel on the way to the S.F. airport at 5:30 this morning.

What I just read in the HuffPost headline news was about the Sarah Palin emails from her time as governor, released by the Alaska governor's office.

One that caught my eye: in the days after McCain picked her as his VP, there were exchanges with "prayer partners;" she asked that they "please pray for wisdom and favor and for HIS will only to be done."

I guess we can assume then that it was HIS will that she NOT become Vice President. And can we assume that HE has not changed his mind about that?

Ralph.

Hiatus

I'll be offline for the next few days. Hope to be back on by the weekend.

Please keep the world safe and sane in the meantime.

Ralph

Nut = #13 -- all quiet, but still bad news

Nut-notes for the week of June 6, 2011:

Nut has been absent from the news this week. Reports say he is on vacation. Maybe. Maybe he just decided to get out of town and hope people forget his disastrous two weeks since announcing he's running for president.

Can he make the comeback? No way.

I get the feeling that everything about him is phoney -- including his religious conversion and the sincerity of his religious faith. I'd be fine if he had none. But he's trying to trade on it, and he does such patently obvious moves to court the religious right, that it's hard to believe it's genuine. It's so predictably, obviously what he thinks will help him politically -- and, because it seems so staged and manipulative, it seems false -- even if it may be truly sincere.

Take his "coming back to Georgia" to make his campaign headquarters in Atlanta. Nut has no special place in Georgia. He lived in Carrollton a while and taught history, and he was elected to Congress from there, but no way is Nut a Georgian. And Georgians know it.

Latest InsiderAdvantage/Channel 2 poll, reported in the AJC of Georgia voters:

Herman Cain 26%
Michele Bachmann 13%
Newt Gingrich 12%
Sarah Palin 11%
Mitt Romney 10%
Tim Pawlenty 1%

Man !!! T-Paw just can't seem to catch the gold ring. I wonder how Nut feels about trailing Michele Bachmann in his "home state."

It's not a good sign for Nut, that's for sure. When you poll 12% in the state you chose to be your base and trail behind Michele Bachmann at that -- it's a very very bad sign.

Ralph

Dynamite campaign issue for the Democrats: Retake the moral high ground

It's about time religious voices spoke out against the Republican budget priorities on moral grounds.

The GOP has had a pretty free run with religious conservatives -- blinding them to the moral teachings of Jesus by being against abortion and gay rights and for selfishness and ruthless capitalism. But now a wedge is poised to be driven between that pairing.

And it could be the dynamite political issue for 2012. Which party's positions are the moral ones?

From Time magazine's online "Swampland:"

". . . [A]n interesting thing is happening right now around the GOP budget proposal. A broad coalition of religious voices is criticizing the morality of the choices reflected in budget cuts and tax policy. And they’ve specifically targeted Paul Ryan and his praise for [Ayn] Rand, the philosopher who once said she “promote[d] the ethic of selfishness.”

And from the American Values Network:

The American Values Network (AVN) just released a video exposing [Ayn] Rand’s teachings and the influence she has had on prominent Republican leaders and conservative pundits. Paul Ryan, author of the Republican budget, cites Rand as the reason he got in to politics and has said that hers is the “kind of thinking that is sorely needed right now.” . . . .Here is the problem. . .

[Ayn] Rand advocates a morality of selfishness and a worldview based on individualism that is fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Where Jesus says, “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” Rand says, “love only those who deserve it.” Where Jesus says, “Give to any that asks of you,” Rand says, “I am challenging the moral code of altruism.” Instead of Jesus’ command to “feed my sheep,” in Rand’s world “men [are] perishing by their attempt to be their brothers’ keeper.” Rand herself has stated in no uncertain terms that one cannot follow her and Christ.

In an attempt to hold together the disparate constituencies of social conservative Christians and libertarian Tea Partiers, Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders have attempted to create an unholy trinity of Ayn Rand, Jesus Christ, and the GOP. But . . . . Nothing about the philosophy of Ayn Rand and the teaching of Jesus Christ is like the other. So the GOP must decide – who doesn’t belong? They can’t have both.

http://americanvaluesnetwork.org/aynrandvsjesus/

[This video is well worth watching. Think of it as a campaign ad in Paul Ryan's district.]

Ayn Rand makes the case for the self-interest of individualism and capitalism. I do not find her philosophy compatible with my own values, but it has had a formidable influence, especially on libertarians. It's not my purpose to argue for it or against it here at this time. My point is that this criticism from within religion is a powerful way of waking up conservative religious voters to what they are supporting, to what they have been blinded to.

The liberal religious voice was a powerful force during the civil rights era, but it has been missing in action these last decades and has been completely silent during these economic hard times and the heartless Republican cuts in the social network. Try to imagine Jesus holding aid to Joplin, MO tornado victims hostage to demand their way on cutting federal spending.

Now maybe we're about to see that voice revitalized. It could only help the Democrats.

Ralph