In a GOP strategy meeting last week, Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell warned an unsupportive GOP that “I’ve got Sean Hannity in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys.” Yesterday, O’Donnell followed through on Hannity’s radio show when she “acidly criticized” the National Republican Senatorial Committee “for not funneling any serious cash into her race.”
The U.S. has increased airstrikes on Taliban insurgents by 50 percent over the same period last year — “the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.” At the same time, top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus has increased Special Forces raids to clear territory of Taliban militants.
The Obama administration has “asked the federal judge who issued” a ruling striking down Don’t Ask Don’t Tell “for an emergency stay of her decision.” “The stakes here are so high, and the potential harm so great, that caution is in order,” said Clifford Stanley, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
In her debate with Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) last night, Republican candidate Sharron Angle argued that health insurers shouldn’t be mandated to cover individuals. But, as the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky notes, Angle co-sponsored mandatory coverage provisions during her time as a state legislator.
Rick Scott, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Florida, was once sued by the state for insider trading, the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times revealed. In 1997, Scott’s hospital chain was the target of a massive FBI investigation, and Scott and several directors sold their stock 23 days before the FBI began raiding the company’s offices.
Florida’s U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled yesterday that the lawsuit challenging health care reform can go to trial over “whether it’s constitutional to force citizens to buy health insurance,” to tax people who don’t buy insurance, and to require states to expand Medicaid programs. In his 65-page ruling, Vinson agreed with the 20 states that say “Congress was intentionally unclear when it created penalties” in the law.
President Obama told a televised youth town hall that he favors raising more money for Social Security, instead of cutting benefits or extending the retirement age. Obama said the best approach would be raising the amount of income subject to Social Security taxes above the current cap, but also noted that “all options are on the table.”
White House Senior Adviser and Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett “apologized Thursday morning for referring to a gay teen who committed suicide as having made a ‘lifestyle choice.’” Jarrett said she “meant no disrespect to the LGBT community, and I apologize to any who have taken offense at my poor choice of words.”
And finally: Green Party gubernatorial candidate in Illinois Rich Whitney recently discovered that electronic voting machines in 23 wards — “about half in predominantly African-American areas” — misspelled his name “Rich Whitey.” Whitney, who is polling at around 2 percent, wondered “if this is machine politics at play or why this happened.”
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ThinkProgress filed this report from Sacramento, CA.
On Election Day, California voters will be asked to consider a ballot measure that would essentially scrap the state’s landmark clean energy legislation, passed with broad bipartisan support in 2006, which has helped the state create thousands of green jobs and become a global leader in green technology. The campaign behind the measure, known as Prop. 23, has been funded almost entirely by Texas-based oil companies Valero and Tesoro, Ohio-based Marathon energy, and Kansas-based Koch Industries, owned by right-wing megafunders Charles and David Koch.
Last month, the state’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger blasted these out-of-state companies for meddling in California’s election, saying their involvement is motivated purely by “self-serving greed.” “Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect our jobs?” Schwarzenegger said, noting that proponents of the proposition say it will help create jobs.
Today, ThinkProgress attended a tea party rally in support of Prop. 23 outside the California Environmental Protection Agency in downtown Sacramento. The event was organized by the conservative anti-tax Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a key player in the Yes on 23 campaign, along with the Northern California Tea Party Patriots, and the California Dump Truck Owners Association. When asked by ThinkProgress about the out-of-state oil funding, representatives from each organizations didn’t deny it — in fact they were very grateful for the help:
– President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association Jon Coupal, who spoke at the press conference: “Yes, do some people in the petroleum industry support us? You bet! … And we’re very thankful for their support”
–California Dump Truck Owners Association’s Betty Plowman, who also spoke at the event: “We’re broke” and need financial support, she said, so “thank God they came in.”
–NorCal Tea Party Patriots Campaign Coordinator Steve Cavolt: “Sure” he’s grateful, he said. “What difference does it make whether its coming from wherever if they do business in this state? Of course.” He also said that it’s “already been proven that that global warming is a hoax. It’s a scam.”
Watch a compilation of the protestors marching, Coupal, and Cavolt (Plowman asked not to be filmed):
Everyone ThinkProgress spoke with at the event noted that the Yes on 23 campaign is backed by a “broad coalition” of businesses, manufacturers, and taxpayer groups beyond the oil companies. While several dozen California organizations and individuals have indeed signed onto the campaign, their financial contributions are dwarfed by that of the out-of-state oil companies.
As the Los Angeles Times noted yesterday, “Valero is by far the largest contributor — giving more than three times as much as the next biggest funder, San Antonio-based Tesoro Inc. The third biggest contributor is Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of the Kansas-based Koch Industries.” As of last month, 97 percent of the Yes campaign’s funding came from oil, while 89 percent came from out of state. Valero, Tesoro and Koch alone accounted for 80 percent of total contributions.
Last week, ThinkProgress published an exclusive story about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s foreign fundraising operation. We noted the Chamber raises money from foreign-owned businesses for its 501(c)(6) entity, the same account that finances its unprecedented $75 million dollar partisan attack ad campaign. While the Chamber is notoriously secretive, the thrust of our story involved the disclosure of fundraising documents U.S. Chamber staffers had been distributing to solicit foreign (even state-owned) companies to donate directly to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6). We updated our investigation with a chart showing over 80 foreign companies giving at least $885,000 to the Chamber.
We documented three different ways the Chamber fundraises from foreign corporations: (1) An internal fundraising program called “Business Councils” used to solicit direct, largely foreign contributions to the Chamber, (2) Direct contributions from foreign multinationals like BP, Siemens, and Shell Oil, and (3) From the Chamber’s network of AmCham affiliates, which are foreign chambers of the Chamber composed of American and foreign companies. The Chamber quickly acknowledged that it receives direct, foreign money, but simply replied, “We are not obligated to discuss our internal procedures.” Instead of providing any documentation or proof to demonstrate foreign money is not being used for electioneering purposes, the Chamber launched an aggressive media strategy to first, attack ThinkProgress with petty name-calling and second, to confuse the media by highlighting the Chamber’s relatively minor AmCham fundraising, which the Chamber says (also without documentation) totals “approximately $100,000” from all 115 international AmCham chapters. The media largely ignored ThinkProgress’ revelation about the Chamber’s large, direct foreign fundraising to its 501(c)(6) used for attack ads, and helped the Chamber bury our scoop with misinformation.
Now, the Chamber is peddling a new spin. Yesterday, the Chamber’s Tom Collamore alleged that the Chamber’s foreign Business Councils are run as “independent organizations.” Repeating that myth today on hate-talker Glenn Beck’s program, Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten claimed that the Chamber’s foreign Business Council fundraising programs are “completely unaffiliated with us.” However, the Chamber’s own website refutes Josten’s claim:
– The Chamber’s U.S.-Bahrain Business Council states that it is “under the administrative aegis of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is intended to operate as a tax exempt business pursuant to Section 501(c)(6).” Similar language applies to the other Business Councils.
– The Business Councils are hosted on the U.S. Chamber’s website domain, and the Chamber Business Councils highlighted by ThinkProgress are all staffed by U.S. Chamber of Commerce employees.
– All of the Chamber Business Council fundraising applications highlighted by ThinkProgress direct applicants, including foreign corporations, to make their checks out to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with related documents specifying its general 501(c)(6).
– Promotions to join the Chamber have included promises that foreign firms obtain “access to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and everything that it does” as well as pledges to help the foreign firms promote free trade policies in America. Chamber staffers from the Chamber’s Business Councils have claimed they help their foreign (and domestic) members wage a “two-front battle to knock down trade barriers abroad and keep our markets open at home.” Currently, the Chamber has attacked Democratic lawmakers for resisting a free trade deal with Korea.
The Chamber could have asked its foreign members and other foreign businesses to deposit their contributions in the Chamber’s Center for International Private Enterprise, an international Chamber-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit that does not run ads or any other type of political expenditure. Instead, ThinkProgress revealed that the Chamber had asked foreign businesses to donate to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6), a tax identity allowed to run unlimited political attack ads.
On top of the Chamber’s latest deception about its foreign fundraising program, the Chamber has little credibility. The Chamber illegally moved money from AIG’s tax exempt foundation to fund its attack ads in 2004. The Chamber also claims its current attack ad campaign is about “issues.” But the Chamber begged President Obama to pass the stimulus (as long as he stripped out tough “buy-American” provisions), and is now running attack ads against Democrats for voting for the stimulus. Many of the ads the Chamber is currently running are filled with misinformation and flat out lies. In fact, some responsible local television stations have even refused to run some of the Chamber’s partisan attack ads. On Tuesday, appearing on Fox News, Josten claimed that only 60 multinational companies are members of the Chamber, and it receives only $100,000 from its foreign affiliations. However, ThinkProgress blew this claim out of the water with proof that the Chamber is accepting at least $885,000 in direct donations from over 80 other foreign firms (in addition to the multinational members of the Chamber like BP, Siemens, and Shell Oil).
Last month, a whole host of new health care protections for Americans kicked in as a result of the health care reform bill the President signed earlier this year. These protections included mandating that insurance companies end exclusions based on pre-existing conditions for children, ending unfair recissions, and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans until age 26.
Most Republicans, while openly campaigning to repeal this health care law, have said that they support these portions of the law that have already been enacted and will include them in their “replace” health care proposals. For example, the GOP’s Pledge To America promises that the party will “ensure access for patients with pre-existing conditions.”
Yet during a debate with Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA), GOP congressional candidate Austin Scott staked out a position far to the right of the Pledge To America. At one point, the moderator asked Scott if there were “any provisions of the health care bill passed that” he supports, and that he’d “like to keep.” Scott gave a short reply: “No, ma’am, there are not. There just aren’t“:
MODERATOR: Are they any provisions of the health care bill passed that you support, that you’d like to keep?
SCOTT: No, ma’am, there are not. There just aren’t.
Watch it:
In opposing provisions that would end the practice of denying insurance to those with pre-existing conditions, Scott is essentially denying hundreds of thousands of Americans the ability to get any sort of decent health care coverage. A congressional investigation recently found that “the nation’s four largest for-profit health insurers denied coverage to more than 651,000 people over a three-year period, citing pre-existing conditions.” That means one out of seven American who applied for insurance was denied.
While it tells the American public it cares about American jobs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually works to send jobs overseas on behalf of its corporate members, which include some of Asia’s top offshoring companies. Its secretly-funded $75 million political ad campaign attacks the “anti-jobs record” of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jerry Brown (D-CA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL), Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), and others.
As ThinkProgress previously noted, the Chamber has repeatedly sent out issue alerts attacking Democratic efforts to encourage businesses to hire locally rather than outsource to foreign counties. The Chamber has also bitterly fought Democrats for opposing unfettered free trade deals. The Chamber’s anti-American jobs agenda serves not only the profit-seeking of right-wing corporate executives in the United States, but also works to send jobs overseas to the following outsourcing companies, who are some of the dozens of foreign corporations that pay member dues to the Chamber of Commerce’s 501c(6) account, which is used to fund its political ads:
– InfoSys, Bangalore, India (at least $15,000 in annual member dues): “Infosys is the ‘Best Outsourcing Partner’ according to the Waters Rankings for the third consecutive year.”
– KPIT Cummins, Pune, India ($7,500): “Strategic global networking, together with industry-proven practices & processes, give KPIT Cummins a cutting edge in the realm of outsourcing.”
– Patni Americas, Mumbai, India ($15,000): “Patni, the world leader in IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing provides offshore software development, global sourcing, custom software development, and a vast array of product engineering and IT services to companies worldwide.”
– NIIT Technologies, Delhi, India ($15,000): “[L]eadership in the area of outsourcing.”
– QuEST Global, Singapore ($7,500): “QuEST is a leader in the engineering services outsourcing (ESO) space.”
– Rolta, Mumbai, India ($7,500): “Rolta’s global footprint and track record along with its capable off-shoring model gives it a unique positioning in this large market.”
– SKP Crossborder Consulting, Mumbai, India ($7,500): “SKP’s core outsourcing practice is managed out of a fully equipped, spacious premises based in Pune with access to facilities in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bangalore.”
– Tata Group, Mumbai, India ($15,000): “[W]orld-class solutions in outsourcing – business process outsourcing, application outsourcing, infrastructure outsourcing.”
– Wipro, Bangalore, India ($15,000): “India’s biggest destination for U.S. offshoring.”
In its “American Free Enterprise” campaign, the Chamber says that there is no “greater or more important” policy challenge “than creating the 20 million jobs needed in the next decade to replace the jobs lost in the current recession and to meet the needs of America’s growing workforce.” Perhaps the Chamber should actually start working toward that goal of creating jobs in America, instead of promoting the offshoring agenda of its foreign sponsors.
In the absence of any tangible or new policy solutions, Republicans are promising one concrete action should they win a majority in Congress: government shutdown. Picking up on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s two-tiered strategy, many Republicans are supporting Gingrich’s call to defund “every radical bill passed by the [Democratic] machine,” particularly the health care reform law.
Government shutdown would seriously jeopardize aid to vulnerable populations like veterans, Social Security and Medicare recipients, and 33 million Americans in need of health insurance. To defend such a disastrous strategy, Republicans are now shifting the blame on to President Obama.
In April, Gingrich insisted that is a shutdown occurred this year, it’d be because “President Obama wants to force a crisis.” Yesterday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) picked up the blame Obama mantra. In an interview with King, national radio host Thom Hartmann pushed King to clarify his shutdown position, citing ThinkProgress’s report on the “blood oath” King demanded House Minority Leader John Boehner take to ensure the House would include defunding the health care law in every appropriations bill next year. While reiterating his plan to “shut off all funding” for the health care law, King insisted that President Obama’s actions, not his, that would cause the shutdown:
HARTMANN: Well apparently, is this true that you asked John Boehner for a blood oath that he would shut down government if you guys were not successful in killing off healthcare?
KING: Well no…And but the way I recall phrasing that, and I’m not going back and review the tape, is that if, I mean I stand on this side, I want to shut off all funding that would go to implement Obamacare. It’s entirely constitutional to do that, that’s how the Vietnam war was ended.
HARTMANN: Well Congress has the power of the purse, they can fund or shut off anything they damn well please.[...]
KING:…Did I call for Boehner to shut down the government, and no. In fact, Boehner can’t shut down, well I guess he could shut down the government if we agreed with him. But the first step would be we would put the rider on the appropriate bills that would prohibit the funding from being used to implement Obamacare but we would fund the government. And then under those scenarios, it’d be the president that would shut down the government, if he vetoed a bill because it didn’t include in it funding to implement Obamacare. That would be the president…
HARTMANN: Well if you guys don’t get the senate, that bill won’t get through the senate.
KING: If the house says its not going to be funded, it’s not going to be funded. That’s how it would be. But it wouldn’t be Boehner shutting down the government…
While Gingrich and King would like to shift blame to President Obama, the GOP’s own history marks that move as a “disastrous miscalculation.” In the winter of 1995, Gingrich devised a three-week shutdown of the entire federal government by refusing to pass a budget or a continuing resolution to fund government operations. From the “instant the shutdown began that November, the public sided overwhelmingly with the president” with 49% of voters blaming Republicans for the shutdown an only 26% blaming President Clinton. Gingrich’s disapproval rating, however, skyrocketed to 65%, forcing him to recognize that the GOP “strategy failed.”
And “there really is good reason to believe that a 2011 shutdown would backfire against Republicans just like the ’95 one did,” Salon’s Steve Korancki points out. “Sure, voters hate the idea of deficits and love the notion of a balanced budget. But they also like Medicare, which Gingrich’s GOP targeted for cuts in its plan, and are made uncomfortable by anything that seems radical — like a government shutdown.”
Former Bush national security adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been on a tour of the media lately, eager to promote her recently released memoir.
On Tuesday, she appeared on Fox New’s The O’Reilly Factor. While most of Rice’s media tour has been focused on her childhood and upbringing, O’Reilly took the opportunity to ask her about her views on contemporary events. He asked Rice if the if the world is a “more dangerous place two years after” she left office. Rice replied that she thinks in the Bush administration made the world a safer place:
O’REILLY: Before we get to your book, Madam Secretary, is the world a more dangerous place two years after you left office?
RICE: The world was most dangerous in 2001, when we didn’t have a net to deal with terrorism. I think in that sense we made it a safer place from the time that we were in office. But Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon. That’s more dangerous. North Korea seems somewhat unstable with nuclear capability. That makes the world more dangerous. But, in fact, you’re always dealing with circumstances that are very difficult for a United States that has to lead.
Watch it:
While Rice may claim that Bush administration policies made the world a “safer place” from terrorism, the facts tell a different story. In 2007, terrorism experts and research fellows at Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank conducted a survey of terrorism incidents worldwide since the Bush administration-led U.S. war in Iraq. Their study found that terrorism incidents worldwide increased by seven times, or six hundred percent, since the Bush administration invaded Iraq.
More recently, researchers Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and James Feldman of Air Force Institute of Technology found that, “from 1980-2003, there were 350 suicide attacks in the world, only 15% of which were anti-American.” Yet after the Bush-led war in Iraq, “there have been 1,833 suicide attacks, 92% of which were anti-American.”
It should be noted that the Bush administration was well aware that its war against Iraq could lead to greater terrorism. A recently declassified State Department memo shows that the administration was privately worried that the war would “bring radicalization of British Muslims, the great majority whom opposed the September 11 attacks but are increasingly restive about what they see as an anti-Islamic campaign.” In July 2005, British Muslim extremists apparently radicalized by the war in Iraq detonated bombs throughout London, confirming the administration’s fears.
Last week, a ThinkProgress investigation revealed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been using foreign money to fund its partisan attack ads this election. The very same day, the Chamber endorsed Bob Gibbs (R) in his campaign against Rep. Zack Space (D) in Ohio’s 18th congressional district. Gibbs said it was “an honor” to have the group’s support. In the nine days since, the Chamber has already pumped nearly $30,000 into the race.
Last night, the topic of anonymous donors to outside groups came up in a debate between Gibbs and Space. ThinkProgress caught up with Gibbs afterward to get his thoughts. He noted that organizations are required by law to segregate their foreign and domestic money and said the Chamber “absolutely” has a firewall in place. We pressed him on whether he just trusts them to enforce their own secret system. Gibbs conceded that he “wouldn’t have a problem with the Federal Election Commission having the ability…to go in and audit them and make sure that they had the firewall.” However, he stopped short of calling for groups like the Chamber to disclose their donors to the public:
TP: One of the interesting things that was discussed in the debate was third-party spending, particularly with the Chamber of Commerce. They’ve been putting up tens of thousands of advertising dollars in the district on your behalf. Are you comfortable with the fact that they refuse to disclose their donors and that many of those are foreign companies and state-backed foreign companies?
GIBBS: Let’s be clear. It’s illegal for them to take donations from foreign nationals, just like it’s illegal in my campaign to do that. There’s absolutely a firewall. They segregate any funds…
TP: So you trust them? Because they’re system, they say they just have a system and just to trust them and their system because they won’t disclose it. You’re willing to trust them?
GIBBS: I wouldn’t have a problem with the Federal Election Commission having the ability – I don’t know if they do or not – to go in and audit them and make sure that they had the firewall.
TP: Do you think the average American citizen should be able to see that as well?
GIBBS: If they’re breaking the law, then we have to have a process in place to make sure that if they’re breaking the law we take care of that situation. [...]
TP: The one thing I would be curious though is, for instance, something like the DISCLOSE Act, which the Chamber fought vigorously against, which would have required them to disclose their donors for their political advertising. Is that something you would be in favor of, having them disclose their donors one way or another through legislation?
GIBBS: I haven’t delved into the issue or the arguments because I’ve been busy doing other things.
Watch it:
This morning, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly appeared on The View and chatted with the hosts about a variety of the day’s issues. At one point, the discussion turned to the topic of Park 51, the Islamic community center that is being planned to be built two blocks from ground zero in New York City.
O’Reilly proclaimed his strong opposition to building the community center, and the hosts began to press him on his position. Goldberg asked him why he and other Park 51 opponents are so against building the institution. O’Reilly responded by saying it was “inappropriate.” Goldberg then asked the Fox News host why he thought it was inappropriate, and he responded, “Muslims killed us on 9/11!” Goldberg responded by saying, “Oh my God!” and then used expletives censored by the station. O’Reilly continued to repeat his phrase, and co-host Joy Behar proclaimed, “I don’t want to sit here,” and got up and left. She was soon joined by Goldberg, who walked off the stage as the crowd cheered:
O’REILLY: Muslims killed us on 9/11!
GOLDBERG: Oh my God! That is so (expletive)
O’REILLY: Muslims didn’t kill us on 9/11? (crosstalk)
GOLDBERG: What religion was Mr. McVeigh?
O’REILLY: Muslims killed us on 9/11!
BEHAR: I don’t want to sit here.
Watch it:
O’Reilly has previously said that Park 51 shouldn’t be built because there are already “more than 100 mosques in New York City.” One has to wonder how far away they have to be from Ground Zero for him to not wrongly place responsibility on them for the acts of a handful of extremists.
One of the right’s defining traits is its belief that whatever policy it dislikes is not allowed by the Constitution. This is why GOP candidates make the absurd claims that everything from Medicare to Social Security to unemployment insurance to belonging to the United Nations is unconstitutional. The logic appears to be that, since they do not approve of comfortable retirements for seniors or international treaty organizations, the Constitution must forbid them. During last night’s debate with opponent Chris Coons, Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell added the First Amendment to the list of constitutional provisions that only means what the right wants it to mean:
However, where the question has come between what is protected free speech and what is not protected free speech, the Supreme Court has always ruled that the communities, the local community, has the right to decide. The issue with the 9/11 mosque — that’s exactly where the battle is being fought, by the community members who are impacted by that, and I support that.
Yet, in another exchange in the same debate, O’Donnell exposed her Palin-like ignorance of the Court’s actual decisions:
QUESTION: A United States Senator has the opportunity to determine, in a way, the make up of [the Supreme Court.] So what opinions, of late, that have come from our high Court do you most object to?
O’DONNELL: Oh, gosh. Give me a specific one, I’m sorry.
QUESTION: Actually, I can’t, because I need you to tell me which ones you object to.
O’DONNELL: I’m very sorry. Right off the top of my head I know that there are a lot but I’ll put it up on my website, I promise you.
Watch it:
O’Donnell’s claim that the First Amendment doesn’t protect people who dissent from their local community’s views would come as a huge shock to residents of Skokie, Illinois (who lost an effort to stop a neo-Nazi march) or just about anyone familiar with the Civil Rights Movement. But, it is also part of a much larger pattern among GOP candidates who profess to be experts on the Constitution even though they lack the most basic familiarity with the document.
When Joe Miller (R-AK) claims that Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits are unconstitutional, he clearly hasn’t read the parts of the Constitution, which enable Congress “to lay and collect taxes” and to “provide for the…general welfare of the United States.” When Sharron Angle (R-NV) claims that it is unconstitutional to belong to the UN, she must be unaware that the Constitution empowers the president “to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” When Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) lips drip with the words of interposition and nullification, they ignore the Constitution’s proclamation that federal law “shall be the supreme law of the land.”
Christine O’Donnell is obviously an unusually ignorant candidate — it’s not every day that a major party selects an anti-masturbation activist who wants to “stop the whole country from having sex” — but the sad reality is that she is hardly an outlier in today’s GOP. In state after state, the Republicans have selected candidates who don’t know the first thing about the Constitution they would swear an oath to defend.
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