Honestly, I figured it was just a matter of time before violence broke out at one of the health care town hall meetings, but I didn’t realize it would be so stuperb.

The story comes from the Kansas City Star, but to avoid having the AP go apeshit on me for pasting its text here, I’ll paraphrase:

The Scene

A St Louis health care town hall meeting, organized by the Tea Part Coalition.

The Incident

A lot of he says, she says, but the end result is that a fight breaks out and a conservative man, Kenneth Gladney, is injured. He says the Service Employees International Union started the fight; they say he did.

The Aftermath: Hilarity Ensues

The unfortunate Mr Gladney, in addition to being beaten up, is also recently unemployed and has lost his health care coverage. Therefore, he will accept donations from the general public to help cover his medical costs.

(Insert joke here)

Hearing this just made my heart sink. It’s a horrible mischaracterization of what happened to Matthew Shepard, who was selected, tortured, left for dead, and yes, robbed, because he was gay.

Congresswoman Foxx was arguing against a hate crime bill when she went off the deep end. Sure, the bill bears Matthew’s name, so evidently she wanted to clarify her thoughts on the case itself, but what in the hell was she thinking? How does this explanation even help her case? What does it have to do with hate crime legislation? Was she hoping to prove that crimes against gays just don’t happen, thus negating the need for a hate crime law?

I’m not hugely in favor of hate crime laws, but this seems like just about the weakest argument one could make against it - not to mention that it’s horribly ignorant and hurtful.

I read that Matthew Shepard’s mom was present when Congresswoman Foxx made these remarks. I can only imagine how much that hurt her to hear them.

This sort of irks me (emphasis mine):

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

What?!

This is really unfortunate wording. It implies that in order to determine whether Obama is popular, we have to throw out African American opinions to find out what real public opinion is.

In fact, I’m having a hard time finding a way to interpret this that isn’t troubling.

Sure, I’m willing to accept that a large percentage of African Americans support the President (and people can debate the reasons for this on their own time; I don’t care to address this). But how does that make him “seem” more popular than he “actually” is? This boggles me.

Last week I pondered the relevance and influence of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, and puzzled over how (or whether) to discuss them. Would talking about them grant another small (ok, super tiny) degree of legitimacy? If so, did I maybe *want* this to happen?

Turns out that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a funny solution: to announce that Rush Limbuagh is “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.” He also said that since Limbaugh clearly seeks the failure of President Obama, the administration will try to reach out to other folks within the GOP who are more reasonable and who have our country’s best interests at heart.

Crafty one, that Rahmbo. This is a brilliant move for a couple of reasons:

• Rhetorically, it’s a pretty funny straw man argument. Set up the straw man (Rush as the leader) and then knock him down easily, making the party’s leadership look bad. I’m sure he got some chuckles out of that one.
• Second, it’s actually pretty clever in that it might horrify many, many conservatives who don’t want to be presumed to be dittoheads, and repel centrist independents from the party.

I didn’t take Rahm’s comments too seriously, though. They were good for a laugh, but pretty darn transparent and possibly just something he said for his own amusement. (Though the American labor movement seems to have picked up the ball and run with it.)

But Michael Steele, the actual leader of the Republican Party, appears to be frightened of just what Rahm’s referring to. On Saturday, he’d dismissed Rush as an entertainer and remarked that Limbaugh could be “incendiary” and “ugly”.  If I were in Steele’s position, I’d try to do the same thing: distance the party from Limbaugh.

I wouldn’t, however, backpedal a few days later and say this:

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

…

“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. “It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”

“I’m not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh,” Steele added. “No such thing is going to happen. … I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.”

(Limbaugh responded to Steele’s comments here. Doth the Rushbo protest too much?)

What a counterproductive move. Nothing could have better married the concepts of Limbaugh and Leadership like, well, saying the two words in the same sentence - that, and sounding apologetic and frightened about offending Rush.

Seems that the GOP is taking cues from the Democratic party of recent years: try to please everyone and offend no one; give the impression that no one’s at the helm; and by apologizing about your message, have none. I don’t think that’s a winning strategy. One thing people have liked about the GOP since the Reagan years is its unapologetic, firm stance on issues (even if the reality of the policy doesn’t reflect the ideals). Republicans need to figure out what they’re about, and quick, and then recapture the rhetoric if they hope to gain some seats in 2010.

As for me, I’m happy to sit back and enjoy Rush as the de facto leader of the party. He’s in his element right now, and this is where he shines: the opposition party is in power, and he can rail against it all day long. He’s good at being against things; it would just be interesting to see if he could ever be for anything. What would Rush’s policies even look like? (No wonder he’s denying his role as a leader; he doesn’t have vision, just the ability to tear down, and he knows it.)

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Update: and now I’m giggling at Wonkette’s post on the same topic. Her ending sentence? “Anyway, the point is that the rancid megalomaniac Rush Limbaugh now has Michael Steele’s testicles, in a jar.”

…when she could say nothing at all:

Can’t say I blame Rachel for being speechless. Governor Jindal squandered a huge opportunity last night with his “response” to President Obama’s address. I was a bit disappointed, too. I’d heard a lot about this popular governor; he has a reputation for wide support from the right and left, and is often mentioned as a rising star in the Republican Party.

First, let’s discuss style. Jindal sounded, to my ears, almost exactly like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock. It was distracting, as were his strained smiles and awkward facial expressions.  He came across as unpolished and, frankly, when taking into account the content of his speech, almost childish. If he’s going to give President Obama a real challenge in 2012, he has a lot of work to do.

But the important failure here is in what Jindal said - and didn’t say.  There was nothing in his speech to indicate that he listened to the President’s address. This is a huge failure on Jindal’s part, since one wouldn’t have to hear Obama’s speech to predict some of the issues that would be raised. Instead, Jindal discussed, at length, Hurricane Katrina. He talked about his personal role in the unfolding crisis, but mainly focused on the inefficiencies of bureaucracy, following it up with a feel-good bit about Americans risking life and limb to help each other in times of need.

Jindal didn’t respond to the issues at hand. He started to turn the speech into a quasi-campaign speech, which might have been ok except that he didn’t really provide a path or a vision, instead relying on cliched platitudes about government vs people. I think the GOP probably regrets putting Jindal up for the response, and I think he may well have ruined his short-term chances for a GOP nomination nod.

Then again, an interesting tidbit from Politico (emphasis mine):

“Obama gave a polished performance, as usual. Jindal’s act needs a lot of work,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a political science professor at California’s Claremont McKenna College. “His basic message was sound but his language was hackneyed and his performance was wooden. Fortunately he has a lot of time to improve his delivery. In the year 2040 he will still be younger than McCain was in 2008.”

What was your reaction to Jindal’s speech?