First Cuppa Coffee – March 2, 2012 : Grand Olde Party Strategy Edition

A joke going around the water cooler a few months ago had candidate Obama firing his 2012 advertising team… Word was that the Dems didn’t need to waste the money, given all the terrific footage the GOP presidential candidates were coughing up during their TV debates.

“This is a gift from God to comedians the likes of which we have never seen.”, said David Steinberg during a recent CNN appearance, “It’s a ship of fools that is — it’s just unbelievable.”

Not to be outdone by their colleagues in the Presidential sweepstakes, GOP legislators and talking heads have taken to the airwaves, providing daily (sometimes even hourly) reminders of just how far out the Grand Old Party has become.

Locally we have former Mayor and “I-am-not-a-felon-because-my plea-bargain-reduced it-to-a-misdemeanor” Roger Hedgecock leading the pack with his recent SDUT Op-Ed  drawing parallels between President Obama’s energy policies and People’s Temple cult leader Jim Jones’ mass suicide.

A Tax Break for Mustaches… When a Maryland Congressman’s staff passed along a press release to Britain’s Weekly Standard announcing his support for legislation that would grant a $250 tax exemption for men with mustaches, hardly anybody on Capital Hill blinked. The way things have been going lately, any story that could be true probably is. This one wasn’t.

Rush to judgment…  America’s favorite conservative radio talk show host doesn’t get his ratings by being nice. Especially when he’s got the chance to beat up on any non-white-male group. Over the past week he’s managed to offend “feminazis” (Rush-speak for any woman who’s less-than-subservient) by first suggesting that Georgetown University law student was a “slut” for wanting to testify about birth control to a Congressional Committee. Caught up in a firestorm over those comments, he doubled down, suggesting that he’s be willing to support government funded birth control if the recipients would be wiling to share the porno videos that he imagines they are making.

Unmarried parents guilty of child abuse… Wisconsin state Senator Glenn Grothman is seeking to include language in a bill aimed at creating a State Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board: “that shall emphasize non-marital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.”

Quote of the week (duh!)…. “Republicans being against sex is not good,” veteran Republican strategist Alex Castellanos told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “Sex is popular.”

Food Stamps are almost as bad as sex quote…  “Before accepting food stamps, people [should] have to carefully consider whether they want to face the loss of voting privileges, the humiliation of shopping at government stores and using government food, the inability to smoke or do drugs and the added inconvenience of having to make two or three stops for their groceries should they choose to buy snacks with their own money. … There should be humiliation and pain in government assistance. Every time someone accepts food stamps, they are spitting on the principles of independence, and they, not the taxpayers who fund the program, should be reminded of that fact,” – Brion McClanahan, The Daily Caller.

Then there’s the Newtster… Tying all these threads together by blaming teachers for the growing acceptance of same sex marriage, according to Right Wing Watch.  A woman on the conference call told Gingrich that same sex marriage would eventually lead to people to marry dogs. “Remember we have now had a whole two generations of teachers who explained to us ‘you shouldn’t render moral judgment, after all it’s all situation ethics, who are we to decide,’ and that’s been a major problem,” Gingrich responded.

Rats fleeing a sinking ship… So perhaps it’s no wonder that some California Republicans are rushing to make sure that their party affiliations are not listed on the ballot in the upcoming primaries.