Tom Ferguson: The Devil and Rick Santorum – Dilemmas of a Holy Owned Subsidiary. By Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of many books and articles, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. Cross posted from Alternet The father of the Investment Theory of Politics reveals what pundits miss in the GOP’s failure to lead its own electorate and its evangelical problem. Election night in Iowa was a heavenly moment for Rick Santorum. As he marveled over the late breaking tidal wave of support that in just weeks had swept him from nowhere into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney for first place in the state’s Republican caucuses, the former Pennsylvania Senator gushed to supporters about the secret of his campaign’s success: “I’ve survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God. . . .
But it was not God who saved Rick Santorum. A Party Built for the 1 Percent Wedge Issues: the Weapon That Backfired. American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy. One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama's demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel's demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002.
Israel's position was basically that Lebanon's sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. During the debate in New Hampshire, Rick Santorum offered a concise answer as to why a nuclear Iran would not be tolerated and why the United States-the only state in the world that has actually used nuclear weapons, as it did when it dropped them on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- should go to war over this issue. Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies. As I’ve written about before, America’s election season degrades mainstream political discourse even beyond its usual lowly state. The worst attributes of our political culture — obsession with trivialities, the dominance of horserace “reporting,” and mindless partisan loyalties — become more pronounced than ever. Meanwhile, the actually consequential acts of the U.S.
Government and the permanent power factions that control it — covert endless wars, consolidation of unchecked power, the rapid growth of the Surveillance State and the secrecy regime, massive inequalities in the legal system, continuous transfers of wealth from the disappearing middle class to large corporate conglomerates — drone on with even less attention paid than usual. Because most of those policies are fully bipartisan in nature, the election season — in which only issues that bestow partisan advantage receive attention — places them even further outside the realm of mainstream debate and scrutiny. Due Process. Carlson: Trump, Cain Exemplify Era of Debased Debates. The League of Women Voters quit sponsoring presidential debates during the 1988 campaign, saying the events had devolved into “charades devoid of substance.”
That was more than two decades before Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann took the stage, redefining “substance” and “devoid” and “charade.” One remark you never hear this campaign season: “There just aren’t enough debates.” There have been about a dozen so far, with almost a dozen more promised by the time Florida holds its primary on Jan. 31. With news organizations tripping over one another to put on the best show, the charades have evolved into circuses, featuring bells, whistles, buzzers and visual effects to rival “Dancing With the Stars” (minus the rhinestones).
PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer, who over the decades has moderated 11 presidential debates, predicts that if the networks keep ratcheting up the ratings pressure, we’ll be seeing a debate held underwater at 5 a.m. Shooting Star Bankruptcy and Birtherism. Red money, blue money: The making of the 2012 campaign - War Room. The hidden infrastructure of the 2012 campaign has already been built.
A handful of so-called Super PACs, enabled to collect unlimited donations by the continued erosion of campaign finance regulations, are expected to rival the official campaign organizations in importance this election. In many cases, these groups are acting essentially as outside arms of the campaigns. These are America’s best-funded political factions, their war chests filled by some of the richest men (and almost all are men) in the country.
More than 80 percent of giving to Super PACs so far has come from just 58 donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the latest data, which covers the first half of 2011. The Republican groups have raised $17.6 million and the Democratic groups $7.6 million. Those numbers will balloon, with American Crossroads, the main Republican Super PAC, aiming to raise $240 million.) Staffed by former officials from the Republican National Committee and the U.S.