The State of the GOP Nation

Newly anointed as a leading candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination, Rick Perry has gotten off to an interesting start. Yesterday he claimed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will be engaging in treason if he calls for the expected third round of quantitative easing, meant to lower borrowing costs: Think Progress Article. The actual quote: “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous—or treasonous in my opinion.” The argument is absurdly ignorant of economic policy and seems like further proof that Republicans would rather prolong the economic crisis and win elections then actually help solve the problems plaguing us. When Karl Rove criticizes you, you know something is wrong (Slate), but given the slate of candidates for 2012 and the way Republicans have been winning for 30 years -- one really expects this to just be the start of the lies, half-truths, fear-mongering, hate-mongering and ad hominem after ad hominem that they will use to try to unseat Obama.

Perry has also rewritten history in his first campaign video (TPM) blaming Obama for the S&P downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. Sounds like the sort of revisionist history that also blamed Obama for the financial crisis Bush wrought. While we're at it, let's blame Obama for 911, the Iraq War and, hell, Stalin and Mao (since he's clearly a socialist and we have no idea where he was born). With the future of the country in the balance, this nod to the relative ignorance of the American public is truly disheartening -- and with a media that has become endeared to the he said-she said form of reporting, few will realize the ridiculousness of the claim.

Finally, it has come out that Perry tends to carry a gun around with him (even when he jobs): Slate. Taking the gunslinger persona of Bush to the next level, we could look forward to a President that has an extra form of persuasion with foreign leaders in his holster -- literally.  The current state of the GOP defies logic ...