Zombies walking down K Street, Washington DC.
John Boehner twisted himself into a pretzel this week when he told the Washington Post he had "no idea" whether Republicans would once again attempt to privatize Social Security if they retake the House in November. He couldn't just say "no" -- he followed up with the explanation that he couldn't say because he didn't want to prejudge the outcome of the GOP's voter survey.
"We're not going to prejudge what's going to come out of this listening project," he said.
Turns out that the project also includes soliciting recommendations from representatives of the most powerful business and trade groups in the country -- in other words, it's a "House Republican efforts to produce a new policy agenda with a small group of trade association leaders." Call it the Zombie K Street Project.
Roll Call obtained a letter from Boehner's office to leaders and lobbyists for the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and about two dozen other business groups inviting them to a forum on the Hill to discuss "ways the business community can be an important part of the discussion on America Speaking Out as House Republicans listen and then form a governing agenda."
Democrats are, of course, having a field day with the news, calling on Boehner to broadcast the meeting, and tying it to their broad opposition to the Democratic agenda.
But Republicans wouldn't be doing this if they didn't in some way need to. As it is, their party is riddled by internal fights over what policy direction the party should take, and instead of settling those disputes and coalescing around an agenda, the party leadership has decided to coast on a conservative backlash against the Democrats.
This must be the new leadership Republicans are talking about. One very similar to the culture of corruption that typified Republican conservative leadership from 2000 to 2008. They have no answers or policies except to make sure government is not for the people and by the people for the common good. The ultimate in nihilism.
Sharron Angle (R-NV): Rape victims should use their pregnancies as a way to turn lemons into lemonade.
In her campaign to capture the Nevada Senate seat from Harry Reid (D), Tea Party maven Sharron Angle (R) has maintained a hardline view on abortion. Earlier this year, Angle insisted that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would “interfere with God’s ‘plan’ for them.” In a more recent interview obtained by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Angle refused to back down from her “pro-life sensibilities” and offered a more jarring take on rape victims. On the right-wing Alan Stock Show in June, Angle suggested that “a young girl raped by her father” deal with the “horrific situation” by making lemons into lemonade:
STOCK: What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let’s say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?
ANGLE: I think that two wrongs don’t make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I’ll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said ‘I know what you did thank you for saving my life.’ So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life.
Angle is not shy in making glib remarks about Nevadans enduring hardship. In another interview last month, Angle determined that those without jobs are “spoiled” and that she is “not in the business of creating jobs.” Incidentally, June was also the month Nevada became “the new no.1” in the U.S. for unemployment.
A conservative that has a sadistic sense of morality. Angle is not the first. It seems to be part and parcel of the conservative movement.
