Are Republican convention and platform too long? John Boehner thinks so.
House Speaker John Boehner, chairman of the Republican National Convention, says both conventions and party platforms would be better if they were shorter. Mr. Boehner, the top-ranking Republican in Washington, was dismissive of the party platform that was completed last week under the direction…
What does it take to be a gay Republican? For one thing, a long view
For gay Republicans – a distinct minority whose numbers and visibility are nonetheless growing steadily – their party’s position on issues personally close to home has not prevented them from supporting the Romney-Ryan ticket. For now, it seems, the definition of marriage held to by Mitt Romney…
It was barely a week ago that Rep. Todd Akin's comments about "legitimate rape" and a woman's supposed inability to conceive during one surfaced. Since then, he's been pressured by his party to drop out of his Senate race, called out by almost everyone in the conservative movement (including Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling, whose whole activism is dedicated to convincing rape victims to keep any children conceived). But at the Republican National Committee's welcome party on Saturday night, Raw Story spotted a number of women delegates sporting flashing pro-life buttons and Todd Akin stickers. Three of them -- Zina Hackworth (of This Race Will Self-Destruct, an African-American anti-abortion and HIV awareness organization), Connie Eller (of Missouri Blacks for Life) and Debi Demien, agreed to speak to us.
Raw Story: In the wake of Todd Akin's comments, it seems like everyone was asking him to get out of the race, so why you guys are here supporting him?
Demien: A few people were against him.
Eller: Why aren't Democrats running Biden out of office for his "chains" remark? That was just blatantly racist, but you don't see Democratic leadership telling him to quit the race. But Todd Akin says the right thing and uses the wrong word and apologizes for it, and suddenly people want him out of the race? Out of the party? He's one of the best representatives in this country, especially on pro-life issues, and he has more integrity than most of the rest of them combined.
Raw Story: Your thoughts?
Hackworth: Todd Akin stands for integrity. We've been watching his career for years, in Missouri, back to when he was in the statehouse. He just made a misquote, said one thing that wasn't quite right, and we throw him under the bus for one mistake? When he stands for all the right things?
We're going to throw him under the bus, but the vice president can say those things that are so insulting, demeaning to black people and no one tries to throw him out. Which is worse?
Raw Story: So you aren't personally upset by his comments at all?
Eller: Todd Akin was using the kind of language we use in our living room, amongst family. Movement language. We all know what he was talking about, because it's how we talk about it. But once you take it outside the family, people don't understand, they're like, "Whoa, what did he say, what is he talking about?" And he apologized for the way that he did say it.
He is a compassionate man, he has sons and daughters, come on.
Raw Story: Do you feel the same way?
Hackworth: There was... a situation in our family, and my husband and I, there were only three people we talked to about it. My friend Connie here, our pastor, and Todd Akin, through his wife. And no one could have been more supportive, he really reached out and helped us.
Raw Story: Is there anything else you want to say?
Hackworth: All this stuff that they're saying in the media, they're just plain lies.
[Ed. note: Raw Story asked Hackworth a second time if she was comfortable sharing the above story, and she confirmed that she was if we used her wording.]
Poll: Obama vulnerable on economy, Romney weak on voter approval (via The Christian Science Monitor)
President Obama faces an electorate with a bleak assessment of the American economy and the nation’s standing overall, according to polling released Monday by the conservative group Resurgent Republic, yet voters are evenly divided on their approval of Mr. Obama, who still leads his GOP rival, Mitt…
A gift bag being handed out to delegates at this year's Republican National Convention in Tampa contains a little something the party thought it had sent down the memory hole a long time ago: Mitt Romney's argument that Obama-style health care mandates would work "for everyone in the country."
It's a passage that Romney had edited out of his book "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," which RNC-goers are being given this year. Problem is, the RNC is handing out Romney's original text, from back when he actually wasn't apologizing for what he once considered to be his greatest accomplishment as Massachusetts governor.
The slip-up was first spotted by Washington Examiner writer Philip Klein, who noted that page 177 of the candidate's book says, "We can accomplish the same thing [universal health care] for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care." The edited version claims Romney's health care mandate "was done without government taking over health care."
Romney has since backed away from his prior stance on health care, saying that "certain aspects" of the Massachusetts system may work for America at large but insisting that most matters pertaining to health care should be up to individual states. He's also described the Affordable Care Act as "a government takeover" of the health care industry, even though the revised version of "No Apology" insists that Romney's mandate was not.
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Photo: Shutterstock.com / Maria Dryfhout
The religious lifestyle show hosted by televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday suggested that Christians in Florida had convinced God to move soon-to-be Hurricane Isaac away from Tampa, Florida to protect Republicans.
During a segment about how Isaac forced the first day of Republican National Convention to be cancelled, Christian Broadcasting Network's Paul Strand noted that Current TV host Jennifer Granholm sent out a "snarky tweet" saying that "God has ways to shut that whole thing down."
"For anybody who's a liberal who's part of a party that would like to whitewash God out of America, it's amazing that she's acknowledging that God has any part in the storm," conservative radio host Bill Bunkley told CBN.
"But gratitude's been a predominant attitude in Tampa's Christian circles as it looks like the city will escape much of Isaac's wrath," Strand reported, pointing out that the group "Pray Tampa Bay" was leading an effort to "cover the party conventions in prayer."
"We have had lots and lots of people praying around the clock that it would move," Rev. Jesten Peters explained. "And if you watch from the very beginning where they were saying it was coming up and now where they're saying it's going, then it's really moved a lot for us, and we appreciate God doing that and moving it for us."
Tropical Storm Isaac is project to strengthen into a hurricane within a day, sparing Tampa, but making landfall south of New Orleans almost exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.
At the time, Robertson suggested that then-Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' unwillingness to overturn abortion rights caused the storm.
Watch this video from CBN's 700 Club via Right Wing Watch, broadcast Aug. 27, 2012.
Despite their presumptive presidential candidate being endorsed by a porn star, a conservative media watchdog group says the Republican party platform will look to get tough on what it calls "the scourge of hardcore pornography."
"A change in the Republican Party Platform to target illegal adult pornography is an exceedingly positive development that will protect children, as well as families from the scourge of hardcore pornography," Morality In Media (MIM) president Patrick A. Trueman said in a statement Monday.
Trueman credited Family Research Council head Tony Perkins for introducing what it called tougher new language into the platform; whereas before only child pornography was considered illegal, he says, it will now read "Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced." Trueman says, erroneously, that it is currently illegal to distribute "hardcore pornography" on the Internet, on hotel and motel televisions, on cable and satellite television and in retail shops.
The announcement also comes on the (spiked) heels of the strip clubs near their national convention are bracing for an upswing in business, with many dancers expecting to make at least $1,000 a night during next week's event.
“Take a look in here," one club manager told Agence France-Presse last week. "This is what we call our presidential suite. This one rents out for like $500 an hour. As a Republican, we figured that's really not a problem with them because they're normally known to have a big cash flow."
Earlier this month, party front-runner Mitt Romney got some unsolicited praise from Jenna Jameson, a former adult movie star, despite past promises to install anti-pornography filters on every new computer sold in the country.
"I'm very looking forward to a Republican being back in office," Jameson said at the time. "When you're rich, you want a Republican in office."
Though Romney had vowed as recently as 2007 to implement his porn filter policy, but he drew criticism from not only progressive commentators like Lawrence O'Donnell, but fellow conservatives, who ripped him for not doing such a thing when he was chairman of the board audit committee for the Marriott hotel chain.
"Even though Romney has profited from pornography through his investments — including through his hotel investments where pay-per-view porn is a big profit center — Mitt says he wants to limit your freedom," O'Donnell said on MSNBC last month. "He wants to limit some Americans' freedom to search for porn."
[Adult film photo via Agence France-Presse]
Journalist Bill Moyers expressed concern in a video essay published Friday over President Barack Obama, a former community organizer, and his lack of devotion to poverty since he's entered the Oval Office.
"It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people," Moyers said. "Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision -- 'out of sight, out of mind.'"
He said this critique is not just of fat-cat Republicans and their disproportionate attention to millionaires and billionaires. Obama himself is just as guilty, even though he of all people, "should know better."
"Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it 'the best education I ever had.'"
Moyers cites a speech candidate Obama made in one of Washington D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods in 2007, in which he pledged to devote billions to a comprehensive poverty-fighting program nationwide modeled after Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone in New York City.
"Oddly, though, for all his rhetorical skills, Obama hasn’t made a single speech devoted to poverty since he moved into the White House," Moyers pointed out. "In the last three years, only $40 million have been spent with another $60 million scheduled for local community grants."
To say Moyers is disappointed in Obama's actions as president would be an understatement. "Obama’s White House team insisted their intentions were good, but the depth of the economic meltdown passed along by their predecessors has kept them from doing more," he said.
"We know, we know: It is written that, 'The poor will always be with us.' But when it comes to our 'out of sight, out of mind' population of the poor, you have to think we can help reduce their number, ease the suffering, and speak out, with whatever means at hand, on their behalf and against those who would prefer they remain invisible," Moyers goes on to challenge the president. "Speak out: that means you and me, and yes, Mr. President, you, too. You once told the big bankers on Wall Street that you were all that stood between them and the pitchforks of an angry public. How about telling the poor you will make sure our government stands between them and the cliff?"
Watch the video, posted on BillMoyers.com on Aug. 24.
The conservative morning show Fox & Friends on Monday used one of the world's most popular gay anthems as they introduced all of GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's five sons.
Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade teased an upcoming segment with the Republican presidential candidate's offspring as the music began to play and the camera panned over to the guests: "For the first time in history / It's gonna start raining men!"
"It's Raining Men! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Men! Amen! / I'm gonna go out to run and let myself get / Absolutely soaking wet!"
The song "It's Raining Men" was written in 1979 by David Letterman sidekick Paul Schaffer and gay songwriter Paul Jabara, who died of complications from AIDS in 1992. After being turned down by Donna Summer, Grace Jones and Diana Ross, the song was eventually recorded by one-hit-wonder The Weather Girls. The LGBT community adopted the song as a gay anthem, catapulting it to the number one song in 1982 and then again in 2001, when it was covered by British pop singer-songwriter Geri Halliwell.
RuPaul and Martha Wash also recorded "It's Raining Men... The Sequel" in 1998.
During the 2008 campaign, Republican presidential candidate John Mccain was duped by a parody titled "It's Raining McCain."
"I think they’re wonderful," McCain told Fox News at the time. "I have watched that video several times."
Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Aug. 27, 2012.
President Barack Obama and the man who wants his job, Republican Mitt Romney, are locked in a neck-and-neck battle for the White House, with the challenger one point ahead in a new poll out Monday.
As the two head into their parties' conventions, beginning this week with the Republicans, the state of the US economy remains the dominant election theme, more than the issues including abortion that have roiled the political debate in recent weeks.
A Washington Post/ABC News survey of registered voters found Romney has crept ahead of the incumbent, 47 percent to 46 percent, a figure barely changed from early July.
More than eight in 10 voters give the economy poor marks, according to the Post, while 50 percent say they trust Romney more to handle the economy, compared with 43 percent for Obama.
A majority of respondents say they don't believe either candidate has what it takes to turn the struggling economy around. A full 58 percent say they are "not confident" that the economy will improve if Obama wins a second term, while 52 percent expressed a similar lack of confidence in Romney.
Romney has made only slight gains in the weeks since he chose Paul Ryan, the powerful House Budget Committee chairman, as his running mate.
And while Ryan's plans to overhaul entitlement programs like Medicare, the government health care program for retirees, are viewed negatively by about two to one, according to the survey, a full two thirds of respondents said Romney's VP pick would make no difference in their vote, with the remainder evenly split on whether it makes them more or less likely to vote for Romney.
Obama's re-election campaign has battered Romney, a multimillionaire investor and former governor of Massachusetts, for his refusal to release more than two years of tax returns, but just 20 percent of respondents see Romney's handling of his taxes as a major issue.
Obama holds some longstanding advantages, including double-digit leads on social issues, women's issues and likability.
A majority of voters also said he would be a better guardian of the middle class, although most also said they see Obama as favoring a bigger government than Romney wants.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
A separate agency published a survey Monday highlighting Obama's pronounced advantage in a key demographic: Hispanics.
Latino Decisions reported that Obama maintained a 65-26 percent advantage over Romney among Hispanic voters.
Peeling such voters away from Obama is vital for Romney if he is to win Florida, the largest battleground state of all in the November election.
The Republican convention begins in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, after Tropical Storm Isaac delayed the event by a day.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus may have canceled the first day of the party's convention due to weather, but he couldn't evacuate in time to escape the wrath of Hurricane Chris.
The party chairman found himself on Monday weathering a blistering rant from MSNBC host Chris Matthews about how Republicans were playing the "race card" with birther jokes and falsehoods about ending work requirements for welfare.
"That cheap shot about 'I don't have a problem with my birth certificate' was awful," Matthews said of GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's Friday embrace of the birther notion that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. "It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card."
"This stuff about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest, everyone has pointed out that it's dishonest," he continued. "And you are playing that little ethnic card there. You can play your games and giggle about it, but the fact is, your side is playing that card. You start talking about work requirements, you know what game you're playing, everybody knows what game you're playing. It's a race card."
"And this thing about birthers -- yeah, if your name's Romney, you were well born, you went to prep school, you can brag about it. And this [Barack Obama] guy, he's got an African name, he's got to live with it. ... This is absurdity! Making fun of this guy's birth certificate issue when it was never a real issue, except on the right wing."
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough tried to give Priebus some cover, defending Romney as simply "misfiring badly" with the so-called birther joke. But the RNC chairman decided to take Matthews on.
"You got your monologue in, so congratulations," Priebus quipped to Matthews. "You're loaded up, you got it out. So, good for you. The fact of the matter is, is he's from Michigan, he was born in Michigan, he was making the point that I was born in Michigan. And you know what? We've gotten to a place in politics that any moment of levity totally frowned upon by guys like you just so that you can push your brand."
"It just seems funny that the first joke that he's ever told in his life is about Obama's birth certificate," Matthews pointed out.
"I think Obama's policies have created a sense that, for whatever reason, he's looking for guidance, as far as health care is concerned, as far as our spending is concerned, as far as these stimulus packages are concerned -- he's looking to Europe for guidance," Priebus explained.
"What?" Matthews exclaimed. "Where do you get this from? This is insane! ... What's this got to do with Europe and the foreignization of the guy. You're doing it again now! You think he's influenced by foreign influences? You're playing that card again."
"I'm not going to get into a shouting match with Chris," the RNC chairman said, dismissing the MSNBC host with a wave of his hand.
"Because you're losing, that's why," Matthews shot back.
"No, I'm not losing," Priebus insisted. "I'm not going to sit here and take shots."
"Cheap shots about how Obama being a foreigner is the thing your party's been pushing," Matthews noted. "[Romney surrogate John] Sununu pushes it. Everybody pushes it in your party."
"It's garbage," Priebus replied. "Garbage."
"It's your garbage," Matthews concluded.
Watch this video from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast Aug. 27, 2012.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Will tweets make the difference in the 2012 US presidential election? Twitter and other social media are being used by candidates to energize supporters, raise funds and shift the focus of the public debate for what some call the nation's first "social election" in November.
Twitter has the potential "to sway the national narrative," said Zach Green, head of the media consultancy 140Elect, which advises candidates on how to use Twitter.
Because Twitter democratizes the delivery of information, tweets can help a candidate by getting out a message that might not be seen on traditional media like newspapers and television.
"Twitter is a way of injecting a message into the national conversation... before anyone writes the story you can get your side out there," Green told AFP.
"You can also go around the national discussion because Twitter allows candidates to reach their constituencies without a gatekeeper."
Tony Fratto, a former White House and US Treasury spokesman in the George W. Bush administration who is now a partner in the consulting firm Hamilton Place Strategies, said Twitter can be a game-changer.
"It has made it possible for campaigns to immediately communicate with large numbers of potential voters in about the cheapest way you can imagine," Fratto said.
"Not only can you impress a message on millions of people, but you can respond to charges quickly. In the old days, you would have someone put a television ad, and it would take time to write a press release or produce an ad" to counter that, he said.
"With Twitter, the moment the charge or a critical ad or news report hits you are in a position to respond in your own voice immediately and to generate responses from your supporters."
President Barack Obama has a huge head start on Republican rival Mitt Romney on Twitter. The incumbent has some 18.7 million Twitter followers to fewer than 900,000 for Romney.
Green's analysis shows Obama tweets 10 times more often as Romney, and gets additional support on Twitter from his campaign. But Romney's tweets are more often shared and retweeted, suggesting his supporters are more "engaged," said Green.
Jeanette Castillo, a Florida State University professor specializing in digital media, said Romney has more money and support from political action committees, "so I'm watching to see how much the social media capital is worth."
"The extent to which it mobilizes people and gets them out will be interesting to watch," Castillo said.
In the 2008 election, Twitter was just getting started and had a limited impact, Castillo noted, because it had fewer users -- mainly younger people -- and was not as important for news media.
Now, Twitter is a major driver of news and the so-called "national conversation."
This was highlighted, Castillo said, by the furor created by US Senate candidate Todd Akin's comments on "legitimate rape" and earlier this year by the shooting death of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin.
"Twitter is a very democratic platform," she said.
"I think it's becoming part of a bigger landscape and to the extent that it influences the mainstream media, it will have power."
Fratto said Obama had a "huge advantage" in the 2008 campaign over Republican John McCain but that in 2012, the Romney campaign has "a very sophisticated digital communication strategy."
He noted that while Obama tweets more often, some tweets from @BarackObama are not directly from him, but written in the third person.
"You should tweet more often but do it in your own voice," Fratto said.
A study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism said the Obama campaign "holds a distinct advantage" in its use of digital technology to communicate with voters, particularly Twitter.
More crucially, the Obama campaign is using digital means to target key groups such as Hispanics and women voters.
PEJ director Tom Rosenstiel said an effective online strategy is now essential for a candidate.
"While more digital activity does not necessarily translate into more votes, historically, candidates who are first to exploit changing technology have an advantage," said Rosenstiel.
The Pew report said that candidates who use these technologies demonstrate they are keeping up with the times.
"From Franklin Roosevelt's use of radio, to John F. Kennedy's embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan's recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and video tape, candidates quicker to grasp the power of new technology have used that to convey a sense that they represented a new generation of leadership more in touch with where the country was heading," the report said.
The Republican National Convention will be shortened one day by bad weather, but activists from the conservative Tea Party movement heralded advancing Tropical Storm Isaac as a timely symbol of big changes ahead after November's election.
"We are looking at a hurricane here in Florida," said Michele Bachmann, a Tea Party founder and conservative member of the House of Representatives, late Sunday to a rally Christian conservatives and Tea Party faithful on the margins of the convention.
"We're looking at a political hurricane," she said in a speech electrifying her supporters. "We're looking at a spiritual hurricane," she said, further whipping up the crowd.
The Tea Party -- a powerful Republican faction responsible in large part for the return of the House of Representatives to Republican control in 2010 -- is to play a relatively small role at this week's convention, which has been curtailed from a four-day gathering to just three here in the Gulf Coast city of Tampa.
But they made a show of force at the afternoon and evening of rallies and prayer meetings Sunday at a local mega-church -- an event meant to rouse the support of this most conservative of the Republican party's faithful.
"It's time for each of us to show up and suit up and stand up," Bachmann exhorted the crowd, to thunderous applause.
The meeting here, several miles away from the official Republican convention events downtown, provided a needed outlet for conservatives who have always been lukewarm toward former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who this week will formally named the party's presidential nominee.
The pre-convention gathering at The River at Tampa Bay Church, which was billed as a "unity rally," gave conservatives a chance to celebrate their considerable clout in the Republican party after scarcely three years' existence.
At a different forum earlier Sunday however, another Tea Party favorite was in a far less conciliatory mood.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a perennial presidential contender, including his failed bid earlier this year, led a rally of devoted followers Sunday, in sounding almost defiant as he exhorted his followers to continue to press for greater change from within the party.
Paul, 77, who is leaving Congress at the end of this year, was not given a speaking role at this year's convention, despite being one of the Republicans' most prominent figures -- although he is to be celebrated with a video tribute on Tuesday.
"Believe me, we will get in the tent because we will become the tent eventually," he said.
"With the energy that we have, it seems to me they would be begging and pleading for us to come into the party," he said at a rally in a separate venue that preceded Tea Party rally.
Bachmann presidential ambitions fizzled out earlier this year, as did those of another speaker at Sunday's event -- former pizza business executive Herman Cain.
Bachmann faltered over a series of of gaffes and missteps, while Cain's candidacy unraveled largely because of a sex scandal and the perception that his campaign was driven by little more than his "9-9-9" tax reform program that he recited so often it became a subject of parody.
Both however remain beloved figures among conservative Republicans.
Of the roughly 2,000 people in attendance was Steve Haller, who said he drove all the way from Louisiana to be attend the Tea Party event, who said he hoped it would bring the various disparate factions of the party together.
"I expect unity from this night's event this is about bringing everyone together," he said, adding that the party's various factions needed to come coalesce around Romney's candidacy to ensure Democratic President Barack Obama's defeat this fall.
His aim is to bring the US down to its knees. I don't want that," he said.
"I'm not against Obama, I'm for America. Obama's the one who's against America," said Haller.
Under a red, white and blue umbrella, Maryann Kempf also said the Tea Party's message lined up with her own beliefs and said it played an essential role in Republican politics.
"Conservatism needs to rule the day to get this country back on track," she said.
The Tea Party is a constant reminder of conservatism and the need to stop spending," she said.
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