I got quite a kick out of watching this video, first posted by Jed on the front page. In all my years of being subjected to Andrea Mitchell Greenspan, I can honestly say that I've never seen her at a loss for words. Foster Friess (Rick Santorum's SuperPAC sugar daddy) sucked the oxygen right out of her lungs:
What's important are his closing words:
Well, who cares. Why's this going to have anything to do with what happens to our country going forward? [...] Do you honestly think the if Senator Santorum becomes president that we're going to get rid of contraceptives?
Those words should be instructive to any progressive or conservative during the upcoming election season. The ongoing debate on contraception, abortion, and the war on women in general, is so much bullshit. And the big money backers (regardless of the GOP candidate) know it. Friess just made the mistake of articulating it.
Shorter Foster Friess: "We're pandering to the lowest common denominator."
Of course, you're a smart person, and you knew this. To the big money guys backing whoever they're backing, this is no more or less than placing a big bet on a nag waiting to run when the paddock gates open in a late card race at a third tier horse track. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "nag" in horse racing, it's the high odds equine that is one step from the glue factory. If the nag wins, the bet pays off big. If the nag loses, well, there's a lot more where that one came from.
Friess (and Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch brothers) all understand that the culture wars and social issues are no more than an end to their means. None of them could give a flying fig less about contraception, abortion, the unemployed, the underemployed, the working class poor, or any fecking religious issue that could be rolled out. They simply don't care about that shit, above and beyond the prize that their chosen horse can deliver if they win the race.
Very few big money GOPpers are as up front about it as Friess was, though. This is truly a very big GOP "tell" moment. If the GOP field can throw up enough mud on a slow track to give their nag a shot at the finish line, that's all that matters.
And Andrea Mitchell Greenspan, a woman, was blessed with a moment of clarity this afternoon. What I'd pay to be a fly on the wall during the discussion around the Greenspan dinner table tonight