Sunday opinion.
Michael Shear:
President Obama is preparing to wage the final weeks of the midterm campaign with a theme he has been hammering for months — a plea that voters not embrace the Republican policies of the past. But the specifics of his closing argument remain in flux as the White House searches for a way to frame the message that connects with voters.
That's because you didn't blame Republicans for blocking efforts to fix things. Every obstructionist vote should have been connected to "you know who to blame if things aren't better."
WaPo:
[Condoleezza] Rice rolled her eyes at the notion that Obama is a closet Muslim, and she defended him from criticism - led by former vice president Richard B. Cheney - that Obama had weakened the country. "Nothing in this president's methods suggests this president is other than a defender of America's interests," Rice told an audience that included presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett.
Matt Taibbi:
You see, when a nice white lawyer with a GI Joe beard uses state aid to help him through tough times and get over the hump – so that he can go from having three little future Medicare-collecting Republican children to eight little future Medicare-collecting Republican children – that’s a good solid use of government aid, because what we’re doing is helping someone "transition" from dependency to economic independence.
This of course is different from the way other, less GI-Joe-looking people use government aid, i.e. as a permanent crutch that helps genetically lazy and ambitionless parasites mooch off of rich white taxpayers instead of getting real jobs.
I can’t even tell you how many people I interviewed at Tea Party events who came up with one version or another of the Joe Miller defense. Yes, I’m on Medicare, but... I needed it! It’s those other people who don’t need it who are the problem!
Frank Rich:
A week ago New Yorkers were presented with a vivid reminder of how a bat can be used as a weapon. A pack of young thugs was charged with torturing three men in the Bronx for being gay, one of whom, The Times reported, was sodomized with "a small baseball bat."
It’s probably safe to assume that no one in this lynching party has heard of [R-Gov candidate Carl] Paladino. Presumably he has heard of them, but a man of Tea Party principles will not compromise, no matter what may be happening in the real world. Don’t tread on Carl! And so last Sunday, as the city was reeling from both the Bronx bloodbath and the earlier leap of a bullied gay Rutgers freshman off the George Washington Bridge, Paladino visited a fringe Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn to stand his ground. He attacked gays for supposedly plotting to brainwash children into accepting the validity of homosexuality.
Kathleen Parker: Why isn't Ozzie and Harriet running? Anyone else offends KP's sense of what a real American is. And here's the Village sense of false equivalence: Coons and O'Donnell in her mind are running neck and neck in DE and for the same reasons, never mind that O'Donnell brought up both images that offend Parker (witch and bearded Marxist), and Delaware prefers Coons 2:1.
Peter Berkowitz:
Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. Vast numbers of other highly educated people read and hear these dubious pronouncements, smile knowingly, and nod their heads in agreement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.
Yeah, it's those pointy headed intellectuals who insist on following the money trail from American Crossroads and Tea Party Express.