Short-Cuts: Commies, Perpetual Etch-A-Sketching, Bad Dinner Conversation And Junk Statistics

Tail-Gunner Allen Is At It Again

A couple of weeks ago, the intrepid Rep. Allen West (R-Fla) announced that he has a list of 78 to 81 members of Congress that are also members of the Communist Party.

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West now charges that the FBI’s removal of Islamophobic material from the its training facility is part of a greater world-wide Muslim conspiracy to undermine America. “We should not allow the Muslim Brotherhood or associated groups to be influencing our national security strategy,” West told Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends.

Commies and radical Muslims apparently are everywhere. Watch out, America, the pod people obviously are on their way to replace us all. “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!”

More Etch-A-Sketching In The Romney Campaign

The Romney campaign thinks it can simply wipe away the past inconvenient statements the candidate blurted out trying to capture the GOP nomination.

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Did Mitt make a jerk out of himself with women by saying that he wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood? No problem, just wipe it away.

Did Mitt alienate Latinos by saying he supported Arizona’s “papers please” and “e-verify” laws? No problem, erase it.

Last week, the Romney campaign named Richard Grenell as its new foreign policy spokesperson. It turns out that Grenell has a long history of tweeting really stupid things about women, who don’t like Mitt to begin with.

For example, Grenell once tweeted that “Hillary is starting to look liek Madeline [sic] Albright.”

Grenell remarked that Rachel Maddow looks like Justin Bierber.

Grenell tweeted that First Lady Michelle Obama had been working out and “sweating on the East Room carpet.”

Inconvenient statements, indeed, especially for a candidate trying to improve his station with women. How best to deal with such statements? Try to erase ‘em, of course:

On Friday afternoon, Grenell still featured a link to his personal site (http://www.richardgrenell.com) on his Twitter profile, which then showed that he had tweeted 7,577 times, according to a screenshot taken Friday by The Huffington Post. By Sunday morning, Grenell’s Twitter feed only listed 6,759 tweets and his personal site is no longer available.

Unfortunately for Mitt, the internet has its own permanence. You can scrub it all you want, but it will just keep coming back.

Would You Want To “Grab A Bite” With Mitt?

The Obama campaign is organizing a “Dinner with Barack” sweepstakes. Four winners will win round-trip airfare, a hotel stay and dinner with the President. Sounds pretty cool.

Did the Romney campaign try to match this? Not quite. It seems that a $5 donation can win you round-trip airfare, a hotel stay and dinner with Ann Romney, not Mitt.

This actually makes abundant sense. Who would actually want to “grab a bite” with Mitt?

He’d spend the meal telling you that the coffee tastes like it was bought at McDonalds and that the cookies taste like they came from a homeless shelter. He would remind you that “corporations are people, my friend.” He would regale you with stories of riding “dressage,” and you would look dumbfounded because you wouldn’t have a clue as to what “dressage” is. Mitt would then name-check all of the professional sports owners who are his friends.

You would stare at your watch non-stop. You would hope to receive e-mails, texts and other notifications to steal yourself away from Mitt’s sparkling personality. You would scream. You would scram.

The Junk Man Cometh

When I hear Mitt Romney drone on and on about how the President did not work miracles by immediately reversing the course of the Great Recession upon taking the oath of office, I am reminded of the power of the old adage about there being three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

Got nothing really to say, Mitt? Just make it up. Don’t worry about whether its true. The more outlandish it sounds, the better it is. The more aggressive it is in its falsity, the more likely it is to be believed. Throw in some really good sounding statistics and maybe enough low information, short memory voters will fall for the hokum.

Steve Kornacki summed it up quite well last week in Salon:

This speaks to the power of Romney’s basic message. He and his campaign are notorious for using highly misleading and outright junk statistics to blame Obama for economic conditions that are the direct result of the economic collapse that occurred just before he took office, on his Republican predecessor’s watch.

But we all know the recession started in 2007. Or at least we though we all knew that. If, however, enough American voters are willing to say “lie to me, Mitt, lie to me,” Mitt’s revisionist history could very well work.

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Short Cuts, March 31, 2012: Imitation, Porn, Apoplexy, And Tea Party Bomb Throwing

The Virtues of Studying Really, Really Hard

Video surfaced of Mitt Romney in 2004 making fun of John Kerry for being a flip-flopper:

“I heard the other day the junior Senator of Massachusetts is thinking about putting together a balanced ticket. And he wondered whether he could pick someone with views different than his own — and he selected himself to do that.”

This just proves couple of old adages.

First, with a lot of hard work, focus, drive, unyielding ambition — and with a little venality sprinkled in — Mitt was able successfully to channel his inner-John Kerry on his way to the likely GOP nomination.

And, second, imitation is, of course, the sincerest form of flattery. “I was pro choice before I was anti-choice.” “I believed in climate change before I denied it.” “I was for health care reform before I was against it.” Etc. Etc. Etc.

Santorum Sweeping The Big Porn Consuming States

With his resounding triumph in the GOP’s Louisiana primary, Rick Santorum notched his fifth victory in the nation’s biggest porn consuming states.

That’s right. The anti-porn crusader has now won five of the nation’s top six states for the consumption of pornography: Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota and Louisiana. Those conservatives really know how to party.

Rick won’t, however, win the nation’s top porn consuming state. Mitt Romney is an obvious shoe-in to win Utah. Yes, it’s true: Utah leads the nation in porn.

Apoplexy Gone Wild

The President’s remark last week that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin was personal, understated and effective.

Of course, this sent his haters into rage.

Via Andrew Sullivan, here’s a little of bit of fear and loathing from Glenn Reynolds, the “Instapundit”, on the President’s remarks on Trayvon:

“In other words, he’s a racist hatemonger. Just to be clear. So much for hope and change.

Hope is what he promised. Hate is what he is delivering.”

Upon what planet is Reynolds currently residing?

“Instaputz” is a far better moniker for Reynolds.

Scalia As Tea Party Bomb Thrower

The three-days of argument on the “Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act” (aka “ObamaCare”) devolved into a political debate about insurance and the broad concept of “freedom.” The discussion should have been about whether Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause of the constitution to regulate the interstate health care system.

Seems pretty obvious to me, but you never know from the Court that issued the Citizens United decision and is still stocked with several Justices that issued Bush v. Gore back in 2000.

Its really not surprising that Antonin Scalia, the supposed acolyte of the Supreme Court’s limited role and its deference to the political branches of government, assumed the role of lead Tea Party bomb thrower at the hearing:

“Scalia mocked the so-called ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ without seeming to know that provision was stripped out of the law two years ago,” noted The Hill. The specter of a Supreme Court Justice imagining that something is in a statute that so that he can parrot a meme featured prominently on conservative web sites is as depressing as it is frightening.

This caused conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of the Cornhusker state — whose vote in support of health care reform the ultimately jettisoned Cornhusker Kickback supposedly was designed to attract — to remark: “I am concerned that Justice Scalia’s comments call into question his impartiality and instead suggest judicial activism.”

Really? Scalia is a judicial activist? I’ll be darned.

See you soon.

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The “War On Women” Is About Policy, Not Comedians

The “war on women” is costing the GOP with women. Recent polls show President Obama opening twenty point leads over both Mitt Romney and Rick Santoum among women voters. A McCain supported from 2008 quoted in a New York Times article is fairly typical. She said she had recently become “fed up” with the GOP, and may vote Democratic in November: “I’m looking to hear how the candidates propose to put people back to work, not what they think about contraception. I hope to God they stop talking about this,” she said.

The Right’s response to this is to claim that it is “the left” that is waging a war on women. Bill Maher is at the center of the Right’s counter-attack.

The Daily Caller claimed that President Obama had employed a double-standard by refusing to repudiate Maher for calling Sarah Palin the “c” word, while criticizing Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a “slut.”

Michelle Malkin devoted her March 7 blog post to describing the entire litany of bad names that Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Matt Taibbi, Ed Schultz, etc. have called conservative women over the years.

Sean Hannity did a six minute segment the other night, with the words “The Left’s War On Women” plastered to the bottom of the screen, where he Dana Perino and Kimberly Guilfoyle ranted about all of the bad names Bill Maher et al. have called women over the years. The words “disgusting,” “typical,” “double-standard” and “misogynistic” were bandied about freely:

And then there is ShePAC, a political action committee pledging to “fight” for conservative women.  The splash page on its website says:

Tell President Obama to lead by example. President Obama, who’s calling for civility while failing to offer it, needs to tell Bill Maher he doesn’t want money from someone who treats women this way.

Its slick two-minute video takes President Obama to task not only for taking Bill Maher’s money, but also for appearing on David Letterman’s show after Letterman called Sarah Palin bad names:

Bill Maher and David Letterman are comedians.  They earn their living being outrageous. That’s what they do. They are not leaders of “the left.” They are not the ideological heart and soul of the Democratic Party.

The “war on women” is not about calling women bad names. It is about policy. It is about efforts to enact “personhood” measures designed to limit access to abortion. It is about forced ultrasound legislation. It is about efforts to de-fund Planned Parenthood. It is about imposing unnecessary state requirements for operating abortion clinics. It is about legislation seeking to brand un-wed mothers child abusers.

The name-calling on the Right by the likes of Rush Limbaugh is an incident of the broader attack on women’s health issues. It is supportive of that attack.  It is not itself the attack.

The attack is far worse than name-calling. When successful, it affects the real lives of real women. Sarah Palin will survive any bad names Bill Maher or David Letterman ever call her.

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The Right’s Week Of Obsession With “Sluts” And “Strippers”

The world’s worst radio comedian issued a faux apology for calling Sanda Fluke a “slut” because she had the audacity to say that health plans should cover contraceptives, just like they do other medicines whose effectiveness has been proven:

I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

“Insulting word choices”? Limbaugh apologized merely for using bad words. He did not apologize for the basic lie of his three-day rant: Fluke was asking the government itself to fund contraception. He actually reiterated it in his “apology”:

I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability?

To veer onto the honest path would, however, upset the narrative on the Right that has been building around the issue. Bill O’Reilly claimed that Fluke wants taxpayers to give women their “hard earned money so you can have sex.” Michelle Malkin called Fluke a “moocher” and “tool of the Nanny State.” Eric Bolling said his opposition research revealed that Fluke was a “plant” who was attending Georgetown with the intent to “expose” her ideology, apparently in support of government-funded sex.

These statements are not isolated in our enlightened times. David Atkins, writing on Hullabaloo, noted the following on March 2:

The new Communications Director for the California Republican Party,Jennifer Kerns, took to twitter tonight under her username@CAPartyGirl with the following:

Stripper, or strategist? Democrat strategist on MSNBC raging against Limbaugh, her name is supposedly ‘Krystal Ball.’ Speaking of #sluts…

As Atkins noted, Ball is indeed a Democratic strategist. “It’s her real name. She ran for Congress under that name.” Ball is a frequent guest commentator on MSNBC. She also knows a little bit about how the anti-woman noise machine on the Right works in these supposedly enlightened times.

When Ball was running for Congress from Virginia in 2010, six-year old photographs emerged of her simulating a sex act while wearing a Santa suit at a Christmas party. Ball responded by publishing an impassioned piece in the Huffington Post. It could have been written this week by Sandra Fluke:

I don’t believe these pictures were posted with a desire to just embarrass me; they wanted me to feel like a whore. They wanted me to collapse in a ball of embarrassment and to hang my head in shame. After all, when you are a woman named Krystal Ball, 28 years old, running for Congress, well, you get the picture. Stripper. Porn star.

Ball continued by noting that “[t]he tactic of making female politicians into whores is nothing new.” She noted that the sexuality of female candidates created a new glass ceiling:

Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.

Or, as Sandra Fluke learned this week, being able to speak your mind on an issue of women’s health.

All of this comes from the same dark place on the Right. It is out of ideas. It is reminded daily that the quaint, white male Christian world of its fantasies does not exist. The African-American socialist at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is likely to be returned by the American people for another four years in office. So it lashes out by calling women sluts, whores and strippers who want taxpayers to pay for their sexual activity because they dared to speak out, because they dared to be political strategists and because they dared to run for office.

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Of Sluts And Skanks

Just when you think life in Today’s GOP could not possibly get any crazier, along comes the Great Contraception Debate of 2012. That’s right, we are debating contraception in 2012.

The United States Supreme Court settled the contraception debate in Griswold v. Connecticut, holding that a state law banning the use of contraceptives violated the constitutional right to privacy. That happened 47 years ago, in 1965.

Contraceptives are now pretty much an accepted fact of life in this country. Their general use has been accepted, even by Catholics, for quite some time:

there has long been data showing that Catholic women are avid users of artificial contraception. The first NSFG survey, which in 1973 was administered only to married women, shows that 66.4 percent of all married Catholic women of child-bearing age at the time used contraception. Among those using birth control, only 8.3 percent relied on rhythm; 2.9 percent relied on withdrawal.

Those numbers are from 39 years ago. Current contraception use among Catholics is undoubtedly higher today, even if the 98% number mentioned recently is questionable.

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Despite four-to-five decades of settled law, settled policy and settled cultural attitudes, we are suddenly debating contraception under the guise of a religious objection to a proposal that health insurance plans be required to cover prescription contraceptives for those that want them. The so-called “Blunt Amendment” would have permitted employers to refuse to include any medical service or any prescription medicine in their health insurance plans on moral grounds.

Morally opposed to AIDS drugs? Morally opposed to treatment for depression? Morally opposed to vasectomies? The Blunt Amendment would have permitted you to refuse to provide health care coverage for those things, all forms of artificial contraception, and hosts of others, based entirely on grounds of conscience.

Three Democrats — Sens. Bob Casey (Pa.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.), voted with Republicans in favor of the amendment, which failed. But 48 members of the United States Senate nevertheless thought that it was a good idea that employers be able to exercise moral opposition to including any medical service they do not like in an employee health plan. They did that on March 1, 2012, in our supposed enlightened era.

The absurdity surrounding the debate has become surreal.

Highly-paid radio comedian Rush Limbaugh has now tripled-down calling Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for wanting to testify in Washington that contraceptives should be included in health plans.

Poorly-drawn cartoon character, Michelle Malkin, called Fluke a “femme-agogue tool,” while disagreeing with Limbaugh that Fluke was really a “slut”:

I’ll tell you why Rush was wrong. Young Sandra Fluke of Georgetown Law is not a “slut.” She’s a moocher and a tool of the Nanny State. She’s a poster girl for the rabid Planned Parenthood lobby and its eugenics-inspired foremothers.

Malkin thinks Fluke is merely a “skank,” as opposed to a “slut.” Malkin says that a Georgetown student named Angela Morabito said it best, and quotes Morabito as writing:

If [Fluke] wants a more liberal sex life, she can go to Syracuse. (Syracuse, I must apologize – but we are in March and basketball matters – sorry you got caught up in this.)

Sandra doesn’t even speak for all skanks! She only speaks for the skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their choices. That’s a tiny group of people. Hey Sandra! How about next Saturday night, you come hang out with me and my gay boyfriends! Your hair will look fabulous and you’ll get to see great musical theatre! Oh, and odds of you getting pregnant? Zero percent.

As if that is not enough, Malkin, through Morabito, likens Fluke to a “bedroom sex-tape” starring Kim Kardashian and calls her a “Welfare Condom Queen.”

So there you have it. Do you want all prescription medicine covered by health insurance? If so, you are a “moocher.” You are a “tool of the Nanny State.” You are a descendent of “eugenics-inspired foremothers.” You are a “femme-agogue.” You are a “skank.” You are a “Kardashian.” And, of course, you are a “Welfare Condom Queen.”

Given that 56% women, including 70% of unmarried women, voted for President Obama in 2008, calling women “sluts” and “skanks” seems to be quite the winning strategy for November!

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Romney Says It Again: Detroit Should Have Gone Bankrupt

Mitt Romney was born in Michigan. His father ran American Motors. He should be breezing his way through the Michigan primary.

Polling released today, however, shows Rick Santorum with a six-point lead over Romney in Mitt’s home state. The Boston Globe blamed Romney’s problems on his 2008 op-ed piece, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”:

Perhaps Romney’s biggest Achilles heel in Michigan, home of the auto industry, is an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times in 2008 entitled ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’ ‘If General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,’ Romney wrote.

Romney argued that the automakers will not make necessary changes to their businesses – such as reducing workers’ pay and benefits and recruiting new management – if they are bailed out. Rather, he said, they should go through a managed bankruptcy.

A careful and calculating person like Romney would want to avoid discussing whether Detroit should have gone bankrupt in 2009 if that issue is indeed his “Achilles heel in Michigan.”

Guess again.

A Romney-penned op-ed piece appeared in the Detroit News today under the title “U.S. autos bailout ‘was crony capitalism on a grand scale.’” In the piece, Romney says the restructuring of the auto industry — the “bailout” — was not so great:

This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.

Really? ThinkProgress begs to differ:

Meanwhile, [Romney] continues to ignore the success of the rescue plan he criticizes. Chrysler posted its first profit more than a decade in last year and expects those profits to continue growing in 2012. It has added 9,400 jobs since its rescue and plans to add 1,600 more at a plant in Illinois this year, and the success of Chrysler and General Motors has helped American automakers control more than half of the industry’s market share. The industry has hired enough workers to make up for all those laid off during the recession, and American and foreign automakers plan to add 167,000 jobs at American plants this year.

Those are lofty numbers. We obviously did not “kiss” the auto industry goodbye, as Romney predicted would happen if the bailout passed.

Instead of congratulating the industry for its success, Romney offers sour grapes to Michigan and a narrative that is contrary to what Americans know is true about the state of the auto industry. Its like Karl Rove saying that he was “offended” by Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler ad that played during halftime at the Super Bowl.

Attacking success because it happened on your opponent’s watch is not a successful political strategy in America. Mitt Romney is acting like a person that does not think he is going to win.

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Romney Wins CPAC Straw Poll: “You Like Me, Right Now, You Like Me”

So Mitt Romney just had his Sally Field moment. He won the CPAC straw poll with 38% of the vote, besting Rick Santorum by 7 points.

Yesterday, Romney told the crowd of red meat CPAC conservatives that: “we conservatives aren’t just proud to cling to our guns and to our religion. We are also proud to cling to our Constitution.”

Willard Mitt Romney, of course, attended prep school.

Willard Romney’s father was the president of an automobile company, the Governor of Michigan and the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Willard Romney attended Stanford for a year.

Willard Romney lived in France.

Willard Romney speaks French.

Willard Romney has an MBA from Harvard.

Willard Romney has a law degree from Harvard.

Willard Romney clings to his guns and his religion?

Sure he does. He’s now the ultimate self-made man. With the CPAC triumph under his belt, his new self can declare finally “you like me, right now, you like me!”

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Who Is Really “Pro” Life?

Several news organizations reported yesterday that the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to yank funding from Planned Parenthood might not have been motivated by the ongoing congressional “investigation” of the organization. Suspicion fell on Komen’s vice-president, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel:

Handel had the backing of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a failed 2010 bid to become the first female governor of Georgia, one that was spiced up by debates and negative advertising over Handel’s position on abortion rights.

Handel has complained about the attacks on her position and said she was ‘staunchly and unequivocally pro-life’ in a blog post at the time . . .

She also attacked Planned Parenthood. ‘First, let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood, Handel wrote.

Karen Handel

That got me thinking. Just what is the “mission” of Planned Parenthood?

I went to the Planned Parenthood website to find out. And there it is, a “mission” statement spelled out in four bullet points:

  • “to provide comprehensive reproductive and complementary health care services in settings which preserve and protect the essential privacy and rights of each individual”
  • “to advocate public policies which guarantee these rights and ensure access to such services”
  • “to provide educational programs which enhance understanding of individual and societal implications of human sexuality”
  • “to promote research and the advancement of technology in reproductive health care and encourage understanding of their inherent bioethical, behavioral, and social implications”

So, is Handel against “comprehensive and complementary health care services?” Is she against the preservation of privacy in health care matters? Is she against access to health care services? Is she against educational programs on human sexuality? Is she against the advancement of technology in reproductive health care?

Three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services involve abortion. Thirty-four percent of those services concern contraception. The organization estimates that its contraception services alone avert 277,000 abortions annually.

All of this sounds pretty life-affirming. Who is really “pro” life?

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They Still Can’t Believe He Got Bin Laden

You gotta love the continuing fits the killing of Osama bin Laden is giving the Right.

They can’t believe this President achieved a national security success that eluded his predecessor for more than seven years.

They can’t believe that the Democrats have the upper-hand on foreign policy.

They can’t fathom the President’s audacity in touting the success as a signature achievement of his administration. He did that at Tuesday’s State of the Union address by invoking the courage, selflessness and esprit de corps of the Navy SEALs.

His words were aspirational:

All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves… More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America.

Judged by the reaction from the Right, you would think that the President is now on his way to suspending democracy and instituting a dictatorship.

Writing in the American Spectator, John Tabin said the President’s words were “chilling” because they envisioned an “undemocratic” society where people “worked together”:

To envision a society that runs like a SEAL team, simply working together, eschewing politics, serving the goals prescribed from the Commander-in-Chief, is to envision a society where the constituents have been taken out of the equation — an undemocratic society that would be unworthy of the SEALs’ protection.

Not to be undone, Jonah Goldberg wrote in the National Review that the State of the Union address was “disgusting.” After calling the President’s tribute to the SEALs “moving,” Goldberg drew dark clouds above the address. The President invoked the SEALs, Goldberg says, “to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep.” This President is “tired” of democracy:

I don’t blame the president for being exhausted with the mess and bother of democracy and politics, since he has proved so inadequate at coping with the demands of both. Nor do I think he truly seeks to impose martial virtues on America. But he does desperately want his opponents to shut up and march in place. And he seems to think this bilge will convince them to do so.

Yes, Obama got bin Laden. He helped to get rid of Gaddafi. He got America out of Iraq. He is unassailable on national security. He has every right to tout his success.

The Right still can’t believe this happened.

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Santorum Doubles Down On Ignorance

Earlier this month, Rick Santorum said the President was an “elitist” for suggesting that Americans should go to college.

Down in the polls in Florida, Santorum claimed yesterday that the President wants Americans to go to college so that they can be “indoctrinated” as liberals:

It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid go to go college . . .  The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?

So, there you have it from the source. Americans naturally are narrow-minded traditionalists who would gladly vote Republican if left to their own devices.

Close down the universities and guarantee GOP rule for centuries.

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