Category: Awards

Yglesias Award Nominee

“[The Obamacare defunders] hurt the conservative movement, they hurt people’s health care, they hurt the country’s economic situation and they hurt the Republican party … These are the people who said, ‘Plan: Step One, Invade Iraq. Step Two, It turns into Kansas,’ Could I ask if there’s anything in between Step One and Step Two? ‘Oh ye of little faith,’” – Grover Norquist.

Update from a reader:

Just wanted to point out that Norquist didn’t have much criticism for the Republicans during the shutdown.  Here are some of his tweets:

Which make his quote today all the more remarkable. (Award glossary here, for new readers.)

Dick Morris Award Nominee

“Oh, nobody believes [Obama’s vows to not negotiate on raising the debt ceiling]. Nobody believes that. He himself negotiated Bowles Simpson on the debt limit with Democrats. That was Kent Conrad’s requirement. He himself negotiated the Budget Control Act with the debt limit. Graham Rudman. Bush Andrews Airforce Base. Clinton Gore ‘97. All of those major budget agreements were debt limit agreements. I see this time as no different and I believe he does too. I think most people believe he’s just posturing for now,” – Paul Ryan, on September 28.

Dick Morris Award Nominee

“Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb, without having to import either the technology or the material. [The nuclear threat] must be uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S.,” – Benjamin Netanyahu, January 1995, speaking at the Knesset. (Award glossary here.)

Yglesias Award Nominee

“It is true that, according to Real Clear Politics, Americans disapprove of ObamaCare, 51 percent to 40 percent. It is unpopular. But it is not wildly, devastatingly unpopular — though given the fact that it is now rolling out and appears to be as incompetently executed as it was badly conceived, it may yet become so.

If ObamaCare had been as unpopular as conservatives believed, their plan for the shutdown — that there would be a public uprising to force Democratic senators in close races in 2014 to defund it — would’ve worked. It didn’t. Not a single senator budged. Their tactic failed, and now what they are left with is House Speaker John Boehner basically begging the president of the United States to negotiate with him,” – JPod.

It’s been interesting to me to see gung-ho New York Republican stalwarts like Pete King and John Podhoretz lead the charge against the Randian Cruzniks. These are not usually faint-hearted types. My sense is that they are motivated mostly by national security issues, crime, Islamism, and similar neoconnish hot-buttons. And they are getting a feeling that the libertarian surge that is now intertwined with the Tea Party and Christianist take-over of the GOP is not their natural ally. But there are precious few Republicans behind them.

Hewitt Award Nominee

“President Obama will negotiate with the Syrian butcher Assad and erase his red line, will capitulate to Vladimir Putin, and he will negotiate with the happy face of the killer regime in Iran, President Rouhani, but not with Republicans over issues all presidents have always negotiated over,” – Hugh Hewitt. (Award glossary here.)

It’s worth noting Hewitt’s constant lies. What president has ever “negotiated” repealing a duly enacted law because one faction in one House has decided that it will shut down the government and destroy the US and global economy if he doesn’t? When has such a thing ever happened before? What are the Republicans offering in return? Nothing but the maintenance of basic government functions. As Ponnuru has noted:

Many [House Republicans] want to force President Barack Obama to make major changes to his health-care law, and in return give him nothing but the debt-limit increase. There is no precedent for the satisfaction of such demands.

In contrast, Hewitt baldly states that all presidents have always done this. Hewitt is not a fool, just one of the most shame-free liars and propagandists in the public arena. And he intends to keep lying, to keep calling this the Democrats‘ shutdown, to keep repeating lies until they can gain some patina of truth among his followers.

Yglesias Award Nominee

“Perhaps because compromise as a concept is so unpopular these days–at least if my recent correspondence and conversations with those on the right is any indication–it is important that those of us who are conservative remind ourselves of its virtues. To point out that compromise is not always synonymous with weakness. That our problems, as significant as they are, pale in comparison to what the founders faced. And that compromise still belongs, in the words of Rauch, in the “constitutional pantheon.” Even the Obama presidency, as frustrating as it might be, cannot undo the marvelous handiwork and enduring insights of James Madison,” – Pete Wehner.

I have to say, though, that I fail to see any way in which this president has refused to compromise on almost anything, except his constitutional right to govern as president. I think that’s what so enrages them. Does this symbolic figurehead not know his place?

Malkin Award Nominee

Video edition:

Cohn recoils:

The ad doesn’t have a lot of hits yet and I’m reluctant to give it more attention. But it comes from Generation Opportunity, which appears to be a well-funded conservative group staffed by young people and based in Virginia. According to Chris Moody, of Yahoo News, the group is about to launch a 20-college tour in which they will try to persuade young people to “opt out” of Obamacare—i.e., to pay the financial penalty for uninsurance rather than take up coverage.

Bernstein suspects that this ad, and the other ad in this campaign, are really about raising money from Obamacare opponents:

These ads could not be better designed to do one thing: to get condemned by liberals. Thus impressing easily scammed conservative marks, who tend to really believe that if liberals hate something, it must be terrific and effective.