Open Mic January 27

If Newt wants to paint Obama with the Alin­sky brush, per­haps Obama would point out that there is far more jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to asso­ciate Gin­grich and the other mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tives (except­ing Ron Paul, to his credit) with Leo Strauss.
Nei­ther of these not-​​particularly-​​sympathetic fig­ures would be a pop­u­lar asso­ciate for a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, but at least Alin­sky was rel­a­tively hon­est and ded­i­cated to sway­ing a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety.  Neo­con­ser­v­a­tives (and, although Newt’s polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy is more of a smörgås­bord of right-​​wing tenets than any­thing coher­ent, it shares a lot with Neo­con­ser­v­a­tive goals and meth­ods), on the other hand, have out­right called for lying and deceiv­ing the pub­lic in order to get their way.
 

Monotreme,
 
I think Gov. Brewer wants to be Mitt’s VP pick.  Or maybe just sell more copies of her (ghost-​​written) book.  As for the brewer-​​ha-​​ha about the whole thing, I agree (in this instance) with Obama:

“What I have dis­cov­ered is that — I think it’s always good pub­lic­ity for a Repub­li­can if they’re in an argu­ment with me.“

DC,
I have no prob­lem with a cit­i­zen express­ing dis­plea­sure, by wag­ging a fin­ger in the face of the Pres­i­dent.  He’s not a king, after all, there’s no “lese majeste” involved.  And I don’t give a rat’s ass about “civil­ity”, pro­vided there’s no sug­ges­tion of vio­lence.
Brewer is run­ning for higher office.  Remem­ber, she’s term-​​limited.  Until she became gov­er­nor, thanks to Obama, BTW, she had lit­tle, if any, future, even in Ari­zona, where Repub­li­cans basi­cally have sinecure posi­tions in the state gov­ern­ment and in most of their national polit­i­cal posi­tions.
 
Now she sees an oppor­tu­nity for upward mobil­ity, thanks to the cred­i­bil­ity vac­uum at the top of the party.  It’s not only the rest of us who mar­vel at the lead­er­ship of the GOP — even the party loy­al­ists can’t agree on the peo­ple at the top of the ticket, and it isn’t just a mild pref­er­ence.  When they are roughly equally divided into three camps who can­not stand the favorites of the other camps, there’s a lot of oppor­tu­nity for some­body to come in, cap­ture the love of all three groups, and walk away with the party lead­er­ship.
 
Not that I think Brewer is capa­ble of this trick.  She’s promi­nently unin­tel­li­gent, which by itself is no bar to climb­ing high in the GOP, espe­cially out west, but she’s also not of the right gen­der and hasn’t been born enough times.
 

rgbact,
I think that poll’s use-​​by-​​date has passed.  Since that poll was taken we saw the cat­a­strophic fail­ure of the Boehner strat­egy on exten­sion of the pay­roll tax cut, and we’ve seen nigh onto two months of the infight­ing among the puta­tive can­di­dates for the GOP nom­i­na­tion.
 
And then, of course, there’s the fact that, when asked if they favor a generic (that is, nonex­is­tent) Repub­li­can over Obama, a lot of peo­ple will say yes.  And then when pre­sented with Gin­grich, (or San­to­rum, or Paul, or Rom­ney) they recoil in hor­ror.
 
But you are, of course, wel­come to believe the sta­tis­tics you like.
 

marc,
I didn’t see it in the fin­ger wag.  But there’s def­i­nitely an under­cur­rent of some­thing in the claim that Obama was “con­de­scend­ing” to Brewer in their pri­vate meet­ing, treat­ing her, I gather, like a teacher would treat a not-​​particularly bril­liant stu­dent.
 
Call me an unre­pen­tant pedant, but I think that treat­ment, in the case of Brewer, would be per­fectly appro­pri­ate.  She’s far from the sharpest pen­cil in the box — even when com­pared with Rick Perry or Scott Walker she comes off below average.

Speak­ing of racism, here’s the lat­est (from TNC at the Atlantic) on Ron Paul’s infa­mous newslet­ters and their racist con­tent.
 
So appar­ently the gen­tle­man from Texas is not a racist, but he’ll pre­tend to be one for money.  Oh Kay.

 
Michael,
 
Sure, you don’t have to be con­de­scend­ing toward some­body you have to work with — but in this case, I sus­pect that it was an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion for Obama.  If he talked to her as he’d talk to another adult, she wouldn’t under­stand.  If he talked to her at a level she’d under­stand, she’d regard it as “con­de­scend­ing”.
 
Been there myself.  Some­times peo­ple don’t want to work at under­stand­ing you, but, when you reduce the con­cepts to a level they can under­stand, they say you are “con­de­scend­ing” (which, of course, you are — unavoidably).

 
rgbact,
You say:

You can make the case that peo­ple in phys­i­cal jobs are actu­ally health­ier than some­one that sits at a desk all day.

You can also make the case that, if pigs had wings, fields would fer­til­ize them­selves.
 
What you say is undoubt­edly true of peo­ple into their early fifties.  How­ever, a point is reached when the results of the day-​​to-​​day risk of phys­i­cal injuries start to pile up faster than they heal.  Back injuries take their toll, and get worse with age, as the discs in your spine shrink with age.  Bone spurs pro­lif­er­ate.  Brain injuries don’t heal as fast (or at all) when you get into your six­ties.
 
But I’m lec­tur­ing an actu­ary, this is prob­a­bly wasted.
 
What’s really arro­gant is some desk-​​jockey like you telling peo­ple who have no option but phys­i­cal labor it’s good for them.