Recounting past tales

Where is all the conservative bloviating about election theft in Minnesota this cycle? Oh, right, their guy, Tom Emmer, is behind this time, behind by almost 9,000 votes.

When Al Franken and Norm Coleman were nip and tuck, Minnesota wingnuts screamed that Franken and the DFL were stealing the election. No amount of transparency in the recount - not even posting every single contested ballot on line - could allay their hysteria.

Now, however? The Republican-desired recount is not a mugging at all. In fact, important GOP officials still can't stop fighting the battle of 2008, even as they follow the Democrats' example to keep recounting in 2010:

State GOP chairman Tony Sutton jumped in: "We are not going to get rolled this time."

Sutton is morally stunted. He can't even apply the golden rule, can't see his opponents as justified in the Senatorial recount, all the while having totally signed onto this recount even though it is much less plausible that it might change the Election Day outcome.

Oh, and this time, Tim Pawlenty (R-me, choose me!) expects to remain governor for the duration of any recount. And maybe during any lawsuit filed by Emmer, too. So that he can govern in a term to which he was not elected with the now-Republican state legislature at his side.

"I don't think there's any downside to keeping this recount going on as long as possible," said a high-level Republican operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If we keep the process going, there are opportunities for us in the upcoming legislative session."

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:

• Democrats want to count (and recount, if necessary) the votes and let that determine the winner.
• Republicans want to win and the hell with the will of the people.

Republicans think elections are casino games, they are the house, and they should win all ties. And all races anywhere close to a tie. Maybe even all races that they just imagine they should win.

And the hell with democracy.

Other people's money

In the 2012 version of the Republican Party, merely conservative is a big loser when the baseline is batshit insane. Since Tim Pawlenty looks mild and, whisper, whisper, sane, he has to double down on the teabag insanity:

The possible contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination issued an executive order Tuesday that directs Minnesota state agencies and departments not seek federal grants under the health care measure, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama this spring.

The key to understanding Republicans: They're not looking out for you.

GOP fetishes

Tim Pawlenty sticks with failed Republican fetishized positions. Of course, Republicans think a tax cut can solve any problem.

But that's old news. The funny part is the constant refrain of small business this, small business that. Republicans don't really care about small business. They use it for protection from the true accusation that they are in the pocket of big business - and have been for many decades.

This is a case of a Democratic formula backfiring. Sometime around the 1970s, Dems wanted to reassure voters that they were in fact in favor of a strong economy, but they had been hammering big business so hard since the Great Depression that they had to make a distinction about which businesses deserved their help and advocacy.

Republicans quickly saw the advantages of this market positioning. After all, only a narrow niche of voters would ever find big business to be warm and fuzzy, and they already knew the GOP was buttering their bread.

Elite media loved and love this formula, too. Every economic downturn brings out formulaic stories about how many jobs small business creates. The better studies, though, show that small business does not create net jobs at anything like the scale of big business.

What you'll notice if you look closely at actual policy, as opposed to dishonest GOP marketing, is that Republican goals always help big business and leave a few crumbs for small business, much as their tax cut policies do for the very wealthy vs. the middle class.

At bottom, the Republicans' single most important policy position is tax cuts. The rest is just marketing. They don't really care whether a tax cut will solve a problem, economic or otherwise. They only care to lower their patrons' taxes.

In the end, we're back to the old news. The chant of "small business" is only about helping big business.

Having it both ways

After a week in which he carefully orchestrated calling Barack Obama and real Democrats every name in the book (a week? hell, years!), now John McCain says:

"Americans want us to stop yelling at each other."

Practically every other quote in this story has some element of bullshit, too. Here's one from Tim Pawlenty:

"John McCain connects with Sam's Club voters. He gets it."

How patronizing.

Reaction stories tilt right

McCNN has been running stories all week that were entirely cobbled together out of Republican reactions to events at the DNC. Many of them had URLs that included 'gop' and 'reax'.

Today, McCNN runs a Sarah Palin reaction story. It is emphatically not a Democratic reaction story - it leads with Republican reactions from the McCain campaign (how's that a reaction?), from Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), from Jim DeMint (R-SC), from John Boehner (R-OH), and even from Duhbya (R-disaster).

Then and only then does the story get to reaction from Democrats. This is another reason I call the network McCNN.

Wyatt Earp's here

Tim Pawlenty and Nick Searcy, separated at birth?

Busy day today. This lame "Fugitive" reference may be all there is. Sad, I know, when there's so much bullshit abroad in the world that I can't find time every stinking day to fling it back at its creators.

Get that pig some lipstick!

Tim Pawlenty says the GOP needs to "freshen up." And now the whole world of on-line commentary is yukking it up about porcine cosmetology.

Recent history of CNN's VP fever

The McCain camp has played McCNN like a fiddle with constant signals on their Vice Presidential pick, none of which has meant anything but distraction from Obama's trip overseas. Here's a partial list:

• 7/18: Romney and the veepstakes. No intention of actually picking while the media provides a free conduit for bullshit speculation, which they love more than sex.
• 7/22: Talk of a VP announcement. Bullshit. They never intended to announce, only to talk about it with the drooling press. Well, did it happen?
  
• 7/22: VP!! Only it's Jindal this time. Yum, the press corps loves the taste of that well-ripened bullshit.
• 7/22: Jack Cafferty bites on the VP penis sandwich.
  
• 7/23: A bad day with town halls gone awry and a gaffe on Iraq, but there's still VP speculation, though now it's Pawlenty (and you're welcome for my skipping the lame pun). The media as Charlie Brown keep trying to kick that football.
• 7/23: Pawlenty gets another story. OMFG.
• 7/23: VP speculation coming and going with a no that no one believes from Jindal. If they believed it, they'd miss the Jindal story next week.
• 7/24: Pawlenty again! Announcement any day now. Media insane with the delight of a dog licking its privates.
• 7/25: Bloom off the rose! VP now Portman (Ron). Man, this is an oldie but a goodie.
• 7/25: No VP announcement. No announcement as long as we can keep you in stories.

Then, quick as a wink, no more stories for a week. Oh, there's the occasional token story about a Democratic pick, but no McCain VP in sight. Sigh.

A flack's wet dream

McCain campaign aide gets press release onto A1 of the Washington Post with a substance free story about the timing of the Republican veep nomination. What a worthless story.

Fun (but also worthless) to guess:

• Romney - how many houses between him and McCain? More than ten, so we know they can relate to the mortgage crisis.
  
• Jindal - Mini-He scares everybody a little
  
• Ridge - threat level low
• Portman - who? A Bush budget director? Somebody's pulling wool. Is he the only Ohio guy they've got?
  
• Pawlenty - my guess