We’re approaching the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings–next Tuesday April 15–so it’s not surprising that more stories related to last year’s attacks are appearing in the media.
In a surprising and revealing story, the LA Times yesterday broke the news that shortly before last years’ marathon, alleged Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev tried to change his first name to “Muaz” in tribute to Emir Muaz, a militant anti-Russian fighter who was killed in Dagestan in 2009. From the LA Times:
Less than three months before the Boston Marathon bombings, a bitter, frustrated Tamerlan Tsarnaev visited a federal immigration office in the Boston area and signed forms seeking to legally change his first name.
Eager to recast himself in the model of a well-known rebel figure killed by Russian forces in 2009, Tsarnaev chose as his new name “Muaz,” according to a previously undisclosed Homeland Security Department petition form, which was obtained by The Times. It was not only a tribute to Emir Muaz, a celebrated fighter in Russia’s Dagestan republic, it was also the nickname rebels had given Tsarnaev during his six-month visit to the region in 2012, law enforcement officials say.
Asked as part of the Jan. 23, 2013, application to explain his name change request, Tsarnaev described the decision in political terms, according to a federal law enforcement official close to the Boston bombing case. “He said, ‘The Russian people have been terrorizing my home country for all these years.’ This is why he needed to come back to America and help,” the official said.
Emir Abu Muaz
The name change request was an update to a citizenship application filed in 2012 that was held up by Homeland Security because of a domestic violence conviction against Tsarnaev and because officials learned that the FBI had investigated Tamerlan in 2011. The younger Tsarnaev brother, Dzhokhar had been granted citizenship at a ceremony on September 11, 2012. From the NYT, April 20 2013:
The record of the F.B.I. interview was enough to cause Homeland Security to hold up Mr. Tsarnaev’s application. He presented those papers several weeks after he returned from a six-month trip overseas, primarily to Russia, and only six days after his brother, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, had his own citizenship application approved. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody and is in serious condition in a hospital.
Late last year, Homeland Security officials contacted the F.B.I. to learn more about its interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, federal law enforcement officials said. The F.B.I. reported its conclusion that he did not present a threat.
At that point, Homeland Security officials did not move to approve the application nor did they deny it, but they left it open for “additional review.”
Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have argued that the FBI most likely tried to enlist Tamerlan as an informer and his resentment of the pressure they put on him may have contributed to his radicalization. The FBI claims they only met with Tamerlan one time, but his mother Zubeidat Tsarneva said last year that FBI agents “followed them for years.” Lawyers for younger brother Dzhokhar also say there were multiple contacts between Tamerlan and the FBI. From the LA Times:
…according to his brother’s lawyers, the FBI’s involvement went further. They said in court papers that there was “more than one” FBI visit to talk with Tsarnaev and his parents, that he was questioned about his Internet searches, and that the bureau “asked him to be an informant.”
“Tamerlan misinterpreted the visits and discussions with the FBI as pressure, and they amounted to a stressor that increased his paranoia and distress,” defense attorneys argued in the filings.
Federal prosecutors, however, told defense attorneys in a March 14 letter that they had “no evidence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was solicited by the government to be an informant.” They did not comment on whether there were multiple FBI visits….
The new revelations about Tsarnaev have prompted defense lawyers for his brother to characterize him as the key player who “supplied the motivation, planning and ideology behind the Boston Marathon attack,” according to recent filings.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
A couple more tidbits: Massachusetts Rep. William R. Keating revealed yesterday that Russian warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev after his trip to Russia in 2012 included a suggestion that he might try to change his name.
Keating said in an interview that Russian intelligence letters sent to both the FBI and CIA in 2011 about Tsarnaev predicted he would seek to change his name. The letter did not say what name Tsarnaev would take, according to Keating. Keating said Russian intelligence agencies read him a copy of the letter they sent to the FBI and the CIA. He took notes from the conversation, but was not given a copy of the letter.
“It’s amazing how much information they did know, the Russians,” Keating said. “Look at everything that’s there. The change of the name, that’s corroborated. That he wanted to travel back to Russia, that’s been corroborated. That he wanted to enlist with extremists, that’s corroborated. I mean, everything that was in that [warning] has been corroborated.”
However the Globe uncovered a different explanation for the desired name change:
During six months in Dagestan in 2012, Tsarnaev fell in with members of an Islamic advocacy group that believes in the establishment of an Islamic caliphate governed by sharia religious law that would span the Caucasus. They are sharply critical of US interventions in Muslim countries, but they do not openly espouse violence, and they are not outlaws.
His associates in Dagestan told the Globe that when Tsarnaev learned that he was named after a medieval Mongol warlord who conquered much of Central Asia, he wanted a new name. They said they chose the name Muaz, after an early Islamic scholar, and Tsarnaev adopted it. All of his friends in Dagestan know him as Muaz.
Russian officials had told the F.B.I. in 2011 that the suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, “was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer” and that Mr. Tsarnaev “had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”
But after an initial investigation by the F.B.I., the Russians declined several requests for additional information about Mr. Tsarnaev, according to the report, a review of how intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have thwarted the bombing.
At the time, American law enforcement officials believed that Mr. Tsarnaev posed a far greater threat to Russia.
The new inspector general’s report found that it was only after the bombing occurred last April that the Russians shared with the F.B.I. the additional intelligence, including information from a telephone conversation the Russian authorities had intercepted between Mr. Tsarnaev and his mother in which they discussed Islamic jihad.
Phew! Lots of Boston bombing news all of a sudden. I wonder what else will come out in the run-up to this year’s Marathon, which will be held on Monday, April 21.
In fact yesterday Cryptome.org published a supposedly private e-mail from Jesselyn Radack, who claims to be Snowden’s “legal adviser” and Glenn Greenwald. Radack had been tricked into responding to a fake Greenwald key created by an unknown hacker. The bug has been out there for two years, so tell me again how Snowden and Greenwald are so sure the stolen NSA data is safe from Russia and China?
This encryption stuff is all Greek to me, but here are a few more links to explore:
Mike Huckabee played up gender stereotypes in a speech delivered Tuesday night in Iowa.
As she live-tweeted the former Arkansas governor’s speech at a fundraiser for Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Coalition on Tuesday in Waukee, Iowa, Des Moines Register columnist Kathee Obradovich passed along this line on Twitter,”.@GovMikeHuckabee says men like to go hunt/fish with other men. “Women like to go to the restroom with other women.”
“Yes, he really said that,” Obradovich said in an email to TPM on Wednesday, adding that she ultimately did not write a column about the event….
His joke about women going to the restroom together came after he challenged those in attendance to stand for their convictions, even if they have to do it alone.
You see, I have a concern that one of the reasons we lose battles we should win is because we wait to see whether or not the crowd is going to be with us. My question to you tonight — it’s nice to see a nice, full crowd of folks here in this wonderful Point of Grace Church — but I just wonder if you were the only one who showed up tonight, would you still be ready to take on the cause? Because the fact is we don’t like to do things by ourselves. We really don’t. Guys like to go fishing with other men. They like to go hunting with other men. Women like to go to the restroom with other women. I don’t get that. I can tell you this much: if I ever say, ‘I have to go to the restroom’ and some guy says, ‘I’ll go with you,’ he ain’t goin’ with me. That much I know.
A faded fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.
Skepticism about the tiny scrap of papyrus has been fierce because it contained a phrase never before seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’ ” Too convenient for some, it also contained the words “she will be able to be my disciple,” a clause that inflamed the debate in some churches over whether women should be allowed to be priests.
The papyrus fragment has now been analyzed by professors of electrical engineering, chemistry and biology at Columbia University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who reported that it resembles other ancient papyri from the fourth to the eighth centuries. (Scientists at the University of Arizona, who dated the fragment to centuries before the birth of Jesus, concluded that their results were unreliable.)
The Times hastens to add that
The test results do not prove that Jesus had a wife or disciples who were women, only that the fragment is more likely a snippet from an ancient manuscript than a fake, the scholars agree.
My response: There’s no proof he didn’t have a wife either, and the manuscript seems to suggest he might have.
I’ll end with this wonderful cartoon on reading over a lifetime by Lynda Barry, The 20 stages of reading. Check it out at the WaPo. I loved it and I think you will too!
Now it’s your turn. What stories are you following today? Please post your links in the comment thread.
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I continue to watch the ever-growing Republican pander to the rapture believers and the voodoo economics crowd. Pandering is disgusting no matter which side of the aisle does it. However, the Republicans have a special form of it because it involves reality denial not empty promises. It’s obvious that Republican primary voters have views clearly based in an alternate reality. Republican candidates develop two alter egos to deal with the disconnect. So my question is can any Republican Presidential Wannabe make it through the primary without sounding so many Republican Dogwhistles that they are sure to turn off independent voters? This is especially germane given those dog whistles are anathema to Democratic and Independent voters alike. Let me demonstrate.
Several political analysts have noticed the widening gap between Republican politicians, their primary base, and polls on issues from the public at large. First, there’s Mitch Daniels who said earlier that the Republican Party had to call a truce on social issues only to turn around as governor in Indiana and do a wildly unpopular thing. He just signed a law in Indiana to defund Planned Parenthood (h/t to Beata). He may have the party elite in his pointy little head, but he’s probably lost women. Rick Ungar at Forbes called this a “cynical move [that] will likely prove useful in the coming primaries”.
However, there is a world of difference between the nomination process and the general election that follows – something Governor Daniels will discover should he become the Republican standard bearer.
Among women overall, 56% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”
Among women 18–49, 60% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”
That means that are at least 56% of women out there who are going to understand that Governor Daniels is directly responsible for denying critical care to women who have nowhere else to go to get it.
Add to this the fact that approximately 25% of all American women have, at some time or another, utilized the services of Planned Parenthood and one quickly understands that Daniel’s support for this legislation is not going to play well with female voters.
Then there’s Romney who is trying hard to prove his credentials to that same rapture set. I was not surprised to read the numbers on how powerful the evangelical set has become in Republican politics. They asked for them, after all, with the Nixon Southern Strategy and moves to capture “Reagan Democrats”. The problem is that none of the pro-business Republicans want anything to do with the great unwashed that those strategies brought to the party. They wanted their votes but that was basically it. They had hoped that pandering to evangelicals with empty promises would work for them. It does work for Democratic politicians. It was obvious there was going to be ongoing problems when most evangelicals sat out an election rather than vote for John McCain whom they consider apostate. Mormon and former typical NE Rockefeller Republican Romney gives them the creeps. Ron Brownstein writing for National Journal says Romney has an evangelical problem.
The reason is that with Huckabee off the field, the former Baptist minister’s core constituency—the evangelical Christians who represent nearly half of the GOP’s primary electorate—are now back in play for all competitors. If Romney can’t defang the resistance he encountered from those voters in 2008, he faces the threat that they will eventually consolidate behind another contender, such as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, with potentially wider support than Huckabee demonstrated last time. “The risk for Romney is that some other candidate with broader appeal may attract them, someone who could stitch together a majority coalition in a way that Huckabee was not going to do,” says veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who is working for potential presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman.
Even many Republicans underestimate the centrality of evangelical voters in the GOP’s nominating process. In 2008, self-identified evangelical Christians constituted 44 percent of all Republican presidential primary voters, according to a cumulative analysis of state exit polls by former ABC polling director Gary Langer. Candidates who rely almost entirely on evangelicals—such as Huckabee, Gary Bauer in 2000, and televangelist Pat Robertson in 1988—have never come close to winning the GOP nomination. But evangelicals are plentiful enough that any candidate whom they deem completely unacceptable faces a formidable obstacle—and not only in the Deep South, where they are most heavily concentrated.
Evangelical Christians represented a majority of 2008 GOP primary voters in 11 of the 29 states in which exit polls were conducted. In Iowa and South Carolina, two states that along with more-secular New Hampshire have proved decisive in Republican nomination contests since 1980, evangelicals provided exactly 60 percent of the vote. In 10 other states, including many outside the Deep South, evangelicals represented between one-third and 46 percent of the vote.
Assuming this problem doesn’t go away with the May 21st rapture, Romney and others will still have to woo the Krewe of Iron Age Myth. Here’s the portion of the article detailing their precise issues which basically have to do with defining life at fertilization, defining all GLBTs as damnable, and ensuring no “foreign” people ever reach US soil. Also, they hate preppies. This explains why Dubya’s fake NASCAR persona went over well.
Romney has encountered two levels of resistance from evangelicals: doubts that he is truly committed to conservative positions on social issues such as abortion, and theological tension over his Mormon religion. That latter problem was especially pronounced in the South, where Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, two groups particularly leery of Mormonism, make up at least two-thirds of Republican evangelicals, notes John C. Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who is an expert on religion and politics. Class issues compound Romney’s challenge. Polls suggest that his smooth, boardroom manner plays better among college-educated than noncollege Republicans, and in many places evangelicals tilt toward the latter.
PBS’s Glen Ifill has noticed the return to dogwhistle politics. This quote pertains to Newt Gingrich who rightly labelled most of these extreme Republican policies as “right-wing social engineering”. Republicans spent the next week making Newt come to jayzus. Newt’s rhetoric let the dogs out and definitely showed that today’s Republicans sold the big tent a long time ago.
It’s unclear who the former House Speaker thought he was speaking to, but the dog whistle was heard by conservatives who immediately chastised him for undercutting a fellow Republican. “You’re an embarrassment,” one Iowa Republican scolded him in a widely-circulated YouTube video.
Gingrich said this was not what he meant, but in dog-whistle politics, what is heard often matters more than what is said. Days later, he apologized to Ryan.
During the same television appearance, Gingrich also said he did not mean to send a coded message on race when he told a Georgia Republican Party dinner days earlier that President Obama is “the most successful food stamp president in American history.”
Outrage ensued. Many African Americans saw racial code directed at the nation’s first black president. Gingrich called that suggestion “bizarre.”
Leave aside for a moment that in order for this to be code, the listener would have to automatically assume that most if not all food stamp recipients are black. This, as it happens, is not true, and Gingrich insisted he was making an argument about the state of the economy, not the skin color of food assistance recipients.
There may be some merit to his explanation, but it got lost in the din of the whistle, which sparked debate mostly among liberals and African Americans — who seemed least likely to be the remark’s intended targets.
For the first time in Gallup’s tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans (53%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The increase since last year came exclusively among political independents and Democrats. Republicans’ views did not change.
No Republican primary candidate will pass the evangelical litmus test with a position running contrary to their narrow interpretation of an obscure reference in Deuteronomy. There are only two presidential contenders that support gay marriage. That would be Fred Karger and Gary Johnson. What!?!? Never heard of them? You probably never will either. They will be eviscerated by the jayzus lovers. At best, you’ll hear that neo-confederate argument of State’s Rights from Ron Paul that represents a variation of the theme of legal slavery. State’s Rights is basically code for ‘southern states get to ignore the civil rights of others unless the Supreme Court–now stacked with theocrats–disallows it’. It’s a grand compromise ala slavery.
It’s possible that most Americans won’t notice the fall out from the Huckabee bow out. Huckabee clearly had the evangelical market cornered. Now these folks are scattering. That means there’s a grab for them and the rhetoric will become appalling. Evangelicals may go for the fembots, if either of them enters the race. Both potential Republican women candidates have that classic know-nothing bravada that allows them to say outrageous untruths convincingly. However, no serious Republican money will ever reach Quiterella or Michelle the Mouth. Ask me if I care a fig about Quiterella having fire in her belly?
The McClatchy-Marist poll, conducted as Democrats and Republicans were touting their own long-term budget visions, also found the country largely pessimistic about America’s direction.
On taxes, the poll reported that roughly two out of three registered voters — 64 percent — would be in favor of increasing taxes on annual income over $250,000. President Obama reiterated in his deficit-reduction speech last week that he favored allowing taxes to rise on families in that income level.
Independents favored that plan of action at roughly the same percentage as the country at large, with more than eight in 10 Democrats also behind the idea. A majority of Republicans, 54 percent, opposed it.
The poll was conducted both before and after Obama’s Wednesday speech, with support for higher taxes on wealthier Americans picking up afterward.
Meanwhile, fully four in five registered voters oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid. The House GOP’s fiscal 2012 budget, largely crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), makes fundamental long-term changes to both health entitlement programs, converting Medicaid into a block grant and turning Medicare into a type of voucher system.
Democrats (92 percent), Republicans (73 percent) and independents (75 percent) all opposed cuts to the two programs, the McClatchy-Marist poll found.
How long can Republicans push plans that go against poll numbers like that? Rachel Maddow points out that a solidly Republican New York Congressional District may put a Democrat in the House on the issue. Maddow also pointed out that Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown is running quickly away from saying that he’d vote for the Ryan plan if it hit the senate floor which it will do sometime this week or next. It is also rumored that Mitch McConnell will not whip his members when the vote occurs. Some of these old dudes remember the third rail.
Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC is about to spend $650,000 on the Medicare referendum that is the special election for New York’s 26th Congressional District, Roll Call reports. The idea is to save what should have been a safe seat anyway for Republican Jane Corwin, who came out in favor of the Paul Ryan Medicare plan and has been having a barrel of fun ever since.
So, whose likely to really win this Republican Presidential Primary Extremist Extravaganza? Two Guesses.
No wonder the President is on the road with speeches made to burn political capital. None of the above appears the best choice for any one that doesn’t want the right’s agenda.
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So, we all know that Former Governor Mike Huckabee is part of Fox’s Newsertainment Industry. Tonight, he announced that his heart wasn’t into running for president. It’s more likely he’s been enjoying the money in his pocket. Let’s just remind ourselves that Mike Huckabee is a complete kook.
First, he made his announcement sitting next to Ted Nugent just one week after Fox News spent the week tut-tutting the Obamas for inviting Poet and Rapper Common to the White House. I’ll just let you see one of Ted Nugent’s finer moments. Remember he not only is the one hit wonder dude of “Cat Scratch Fever”. He’s a gun fanatic and right-to-lifer only in this concert moment, he seems to be more gun crazed than pro-life. Yes, he’s telling then Senator Obama to suck on a machine gun and then Senator Clinton to ride it into the sunset and he calls her a worthless “bitch” and “whore”. I guess suggesting suicide for Senators is a Republican Family Value. And this language and gun worship would be different from gangsta rap lyric hows?
Yup, he’s certainly an uplifting addition to a show hosted by a baptist preacher! Which gun would Jayzuz choose?
This week, Huckabee launched a new educational company called Learn Our History. As the Fox News personality sees it, mean liberals have destroyed history lessons, and he intends to put things right. “America’s youth aren’t excited about our past because they’re being taught history in a way that minimizes what has made America a beacon of hope around the world for over 200 years,” Huckabee said in a press release.
As part of the Learn Our History approach, kids will follow the wacky adventures of the Time Travel Academy, an animated group of kids who offer lessons by riding their bikes to the past. Those who buy Learn Our History’s shameless, nationalistic propaganda lessons will finally get “historically accurate and unbiased education.”
You may either want to drink something or sit down before you watch this. Steve Benen rightly called it Beyond Parody. I don’t remember any black disco dancers going on shooting sprees back in the late 70s. Do you? Was that some problem I missed because I lived in Nebraska? Oh, and is there some reason why the know it all girl looks like Eva Braun?
I’d say we dodged a bullet here but I don’t want to incite Ted Nugent any more. However, if any of your schools consider Huckabee’s version of American History, I think I’d pull your kids out pronto!
Which brings me to another question. If they’ve decided the rapture is later this month, why do any of them even bother?
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When I heard this story on the evening news I had to admit that I was shocked but not the least bit surprised. After all, Faux News experts and Republican politicians prefer what they want to believe over the history, the science, and the data. This guy also polls high in Republican Presidential Straw Polls and Mike Huckabee thinks President Obama grew up in Keyna. He said so on the radio yesterday. It’s yet another Republican birther conspiracy show.
During a radio appearance yesterday, Mike Huckabee repeatedly falsely claimed that President Obama grew up in Kenya. After questioning Obama’s purported secrecy about the birth certificate, radio host Steve Malzberg asked Huckabee if “we deserve to know more about this man.” Huckabee responded, “I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough.”
Speaking on WOR’s The Steve Malzberg Show, Huckabee — a Fox News host and potential presidential candidate — said that “one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American … his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British are a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”
Frankly, this is embarrassing in so many ways that it’s hard to pick just one. The guy’s on Fox News all the time as some kind of expert. He’s held political office and is thought to have presidential aspirations. Would you want to support any one that hasn’t even done his opposition home work enough to know something as simple as the major stump speech of a coulda been and could be political opponent?
Well, that’s just sad.
You can treat this as an open thread because I don’t know how many ways we can call this guy a dim bulb.
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Just a few items came to light today on future presidential contenders from the Republican Party. (Be afraid. Be very afraid.) Three of them are in the news today for something other than discussion concerning ramped up rhetoric.
First up, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty makes a pledge to repeal DADT. In this video, Pawlenty self identified as a ‘social conservative’ to right wing talk show host and spokesjerk for the American Family Association Bryan Fischer. Bryan Fischer is a well known for his hate speech and “openly hostile bigotry against gays, Muslims, and all those who do not share his radical worldview”. The video and article come via People For The American Way.
Pay attention closely or read the transcript because you’ll hear Pawlenty use all the code words like “strict constructionist” for a discussion of Roe v. Wade. If you are not familiar with the winks and nods that extreme right wing candidates use to signal how extreme they really are to their key constituencies, you really should take the time to learn.
The Grand Forks Herald announces the governor is undecided but is just touring around promoting his book. Does any one else see a theme here? Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin have also been touring around the country fund raising and getting some face time using book tours. I am definitely sensing a theme here. Pawlenty says his book highlight his ‘faith’. He has a blue collar upbringing and has republican populists roots like Palin and would have to fight Huckabee and Palin for the religious right/’Reagan Democrat’ crowd.
Little known compared to rivals Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and others, Pawlenty uses the book to trace a path from a boyhood handling rotten meat in a stockyards town to a political career that made him a vice presidential contender in 2008.
And Pawlenty, who was raised Catholic and later converted to an evangelical church with Baptist roots, heavily emphasizes religion. It’s befitting a book from Christian publisher Tyndale House Publishers and a possible political calculation for someone sizing up a White House bid since ruling out a third term as governor.
Social conservatives have an outsized voice in the GOP nominating process, especially in Iowa, where Pawlenty has focused much of his campaign-building work.
An entrance poll done during the 2008 Iowa caucuses found that more than half of the Republicans who turned out described themselves as evangelical Christians, and more than eight in 10 of caucus winner Mike Huckabee‘s supporters described themselves as born again or evangelical.
I’m sensing we’re going to get heavily doused with that old time religion as we get closer to the Iowa primaries. Can some one hand these people a copy of the constitution and tell them to stop skipping number 1 in favor of number 2?
Another possible Republican candidate is the corporate ex-CEO of the pizza chain Godfather’s. I used to hang out on Fridays afternoons with the University of Nebraska’s University Women’s Action Group at Godfather’s when it was the second location of two pizza parlors run by one man. Herman Caine now lives in Georgia and is a popular talk show host. (Do all of these right wingers eventually do a stint as talk show hosts?)
“The American Dream is under attack. In fact, a recent survey found 67% of the American People believe America is headed in the wrong direction. Sadly, this comes as no surprise to those of us who have watched an out-of-control federal government that spends recklessly, taxes too much and oversteps its Constitutional limits far too often.”
Cain, an African-American Republican, holds a master’s degree in computer science from Purdue University and was a corporate vice president for Burger King before running Godfather’s Pizza. Previously, he served as chairman of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City — and was chairman of the board for the National Restaurant Association.
Caine has been omnipresent in Republican Fund raising. Does he have an appeal outside the business base? That will be a big question. He’s got far more gravitas than most of the other Republicans that are running since he’s always held a job outside of politics. Folk are implying that he may have a solid base in the conservative blogosphere. Frankly, I think he’d be a formidable candidate. I’ve heard him talk back when he took over Godfather’s and back in his Fed Days too. Those were business talks but he knows his stuff.
But though Cain has himself admitted that he would be a “dark horse” candidate, he will be greatly aided by the fact that he is a full-spectrum conservative with solid fiscal and social credentials. Christian conservatives love him, and The Club for Growth endorsed him for Senate in 2004. Cain is also close with fiscal conservative and two-time presidential candidate Steve Forbes. Depending on the field, there is great potential for him to rally conservative activists and bloggers to his cause.
For months now, Cain has been rumored to be seriously considering a presidential run. Perhaps not coincidentally, RedState’s Erick Erickson recently announced the launch of a new radio show, “The Erick Erickson Show” on Atlanta’s WBS radio — a station which also broadcasts Cain’s popular radio show.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has secured both a pollster and a political director for his near-certain presidential bid this coming cycle, according to sources connected to Romney’s 2008 presidential effort.
Rich Beeson, a Republican operative who has worked as a political director at the Republican National Committee and was most recently a partner at the voter contact firm FLS Connect, will be Romney’s political director. Beeson has already moved his family to Massachusetts for his new role.
A GOP source who worked against Romney in the last campaign said Beeson was a savvy hire for Romney’s team, as he brings an outsider perspective to Romney’s Boston inner circle.
Romney’s political director for his last bid was Carl Forti, who now has a high-profile job at the Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie GOP group, American Crossroads.
There’s no news up today on Gingrich but you can be assured that ol’ Georgia Bull Dog is up to something. It’s going to be an interesting few years.
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