By Artur Davis, on Thu Oct 18, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
In a recent speech to the Accuracy in Media conference, “ObamaNation: A Day of Truth,” contributing RP Artur Davis had high praise for former President Ronald Reagan, saying that “Reagan took liberty and freedom, which are very imaginative concepts, and he gave them a power they had never had before.”
Speaking of the media, Davis said, “They don’t matter as much as they used to matter. That’s just the reality. Think about it: The New York Times—their own ombudsman says that their liberalism permeates their newsroom. Their own ombudsman says that they treat the liberal agenda as a cause to be nurtured instead of something to be inspected or analyzed. Their own ombudsman said that.”
You can watch his full speech below, or read the transcript here:
Good morning from Las Vegas, and welcome to another edition of Prix Fixe Politics! I’m on my way out of town, but spent last night with 23 undecided voters, 18 of whom voted for Obama in 2008. After the debate, only five of the 23 committed to voting for the President again on November 6th. Still, I’m skeptical to believe there will be any significant movement in the polls after the town hall. For a quick look at why, here is today’s menu:
Appetizer: First, neither Obama nor Romney have that “Bubba Touch.” I’m not talking about some dish at the shrimp restaurant — I’m talking about Bill Clinton. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that the man could connect emotionally no matter the situation, and no matter the American. Obama’s a gifted rhetorician, but he isn’t the people person like the Democratic president that came before him. And Romney…well, there’s a litany of socioeconomic and demographic jokes that have been made about Romney’s potential interactions with the undecided “typical American” voters at the town hall. Regardless, neither candidate was going to score the bonus points that come not in the words of the answer, but in the empathy of the answering. And, sure enough, neither did. They spent more time trying to talk over each other than to listen to the concerns of the audience. Yes, Obama showed more life than he did in the Denver debate, but Romney matched him closely. I wish one of them had actually taken the time to ask one of the questioners a follow-up. After all, we’re the ones pulling the levers the first week of November.
Main Course: It’s a tried and true analogy now — sports and politics. Think about a sporting event you may have attended or watched between two teams to which you had no particular allegiance. Sure, we all love a good underdog; but, most of us in that situation (and in all other win/lose horse race scenarios) like to be connected to the winner. I think most of us, Democrat or Republican, can agree Romney won the first debate. The polls confirm as much, with the undecideds breaking toward the Governor in the last 10 days. But because this second debate was, and will be covered as, a draw (or a margin of error victory for Obama at the most), I expect the remaining undecideds to stay on the sideline and wait for the third and final debate next week. This one will be squeezed largely into irrelevance. As U2 and Linda Ronstadt sing, “everybody loves a winner”…and tonight’s debate left us lacking.
Read the rest of… Zac Byer: Prix Fixe Politics — The Second Presidential Debate
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Oct 16, 2012 at 9:00 PM ET
As Barack Obama and Mitt Romney duke it out, several of our contributing RPs — including Krystal Ball, Michael Steele, Jeff Smith, and Rod Jetton — will be providing their live commentary of the debate. Read below.
And you too can join the fun. Simply go to your normal Twitter account and use the hashtag #RecoveringPol. Your tweets will appear below LIVE!
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Oct 16, 2012 at 12:15 PM ET
As many political commenters have noted, the first Obama/Romney debate a few weeks ago was our nation’s first Twitter debate. Twitter commentary during the debate was as potent, if not more, than the traditional post-debate spin from the talking heads.
Tonight, the RP Nation is being empowered to join in the fun. During tonight’s second debate (which begins at 9:00 PM EDY), we will be running a live feed on our home page that will include up-to-the-second tweeting of our bipartisan group contributing recovering politicians, including Michael Steele, Krystal Ball, Jeff Smith, and Rod Jetton.
And you too can join in. Just use the hashtag #RecoveringPol, and your tweets about tonight’s debate will be broadcast live at The Recovering Politician.
So bring on your spin, commentary, observations, and jokes. We look forward to opening the civil discussion to a whole new audience.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Oct 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Can you relate?
You know the feeling you get when you oversleep because you were sure you would wake up early enough on your own without a wake-up call to make your flight home from a business trip in a city you’ve never been in before?
And then rush frantically getting ready only to realize you didn’t pack a fresh change of clothes for today and have to wear the same shirt you wore on Monday because it’s somehow less wrinkled than the shirts you wore Tuesday or Wednesday and you packed your Dopp kit before shaving but pull out the razor and try to shave enough so it doesn’t look like you didn’t shave?
And then you rush through the lobby hoping to find a cup of coffee but they are out and you see a guy from your conference who wants to talk and exchange business cards and you are too flustered to tell him you overslept and are rushing to the airport so you just pretend like you were getting a call just at that moment and had to take it outside and couldn’t talk to him?
And then can’t find your car for 6 minutes in the hotel parking lot because you wanted to save money by parking yourself instead of using the valet service and can’t recall where you parked last night after you had a flat tire and it took you an hour to drive 5 miles back to your hotel because you couldn’t use your GPS since your iPhone had died—again?
And then you get to the rental car drop off and are told you didn’t buy coverage for the tire and will have to pay for it and will also be charged for running about 5 tolls that you didn’t have change for because you refused to use the EZPass pre-paid service Budget offered you on Monday?
And as you watch 3 employees not be able to answer—or even try very hard to answer—a few simple question about how to deal with the toll violations you’ll be receiving you think to yourself how much time they are wasting and how they aren’t working very hard very hard at all and seem to be wasting a lot of time.. And you start to feel mad because your tax dollars are being wasted on slackers like these even though Budget Rental Car isn’t part of the federal government?
But you start to sympathize with the Tea Party movement and can see yourself being one on days like today but then think to yourself, “Wow. I guess Tea Party types feel this upset all of the time” and realize you might be able to also if things don’t improve soon.
And then you are a little rude to the driver of the rental car shuttle because you are about to miss your plane and are embarrassed when you realize you don’t know which airline you are on but “think” it’s United.
But it’s not and United takes 20 minutes to figure that out since they have no idea what you are talking about before United’s ticket agent tells you that you are actually on USAir and you rush down to the USAir ticket counter and an attractive young lady is talking on the phone to another customer while you impatiently wait to tell her your flight departs at 9:19 and it is already 9:02….and when she does get off the phone she decides to try out some new boundary techniques for talking to rude customers like you.
And refuses to check if your flight is running late or offering you any ticket credit since it is “You fault” that you are late—and says this several times with a smirk on her face until you snap and tell her loudly in front of another customer and a co-worker that “You are not going to put up with this anymore and that people should not treat other people like this” and you try to run down a list of things she’s done wrong but can’t think of anything, really, except that smirk, and so you finish your unintelligible mini-tirade by adding, “And doing it all with that insulting smirk on your face!” and you realize that now both the other customer and her colleague are watching you and smirking along with her and you realize that they know that even you know how ridiculous you sound and aren’t intimidating anyone and, frankly, are too old and too short for this kind of rant but that it’s too late to stop and so you just hope the “Smirk” comment at the end sounds impressive.
And then you try to buy a new ticket from United but they have no flights out but are at least nice about it since they saw the episode several counters over with USAir but you do find a ticket available on Southwest that leaves in an hour later and buy the ticket and then wait endlessly in airport security and are tempted to ask the TSA guard how many finger nail clippers and 5 oz bottles of body lotion they’ve confiscated this week from would-be terrorist but don’t because you had just made a jerk of yourself just a few minutes earlier and want to apologize to the US Air ticket agent but are already though security and really, really, really want a cup of coffee and see a Starbucks sign and walk faster until you realize there is another sign below it saying, “Coming soon?”
And then you go into a gift shop that sells coffee and are trying to write about all this to post on Facebook to relieve some of the stress you are feeling but inadvertently delete the first two paragraphs and put down your phone as an older, chipper Chinese Barista is waving funnily at you saying in her broken English “Hello, Hello, Hello, sir.”
And you smile a little because she doesn’t understand the social cues of your culture for “Do not be nice to me; I am brooding now” and then a young Indian fellow Barista is embarrassed she can’t understand your order and looks down in shame while laughing to herself—but not smirking.
And you start to feel a little lighter as you put the condiments in your coffee and walk out but notice a new book cover sporting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mug with a contrite and humbled expression on his face but the book is titled something like, “My unbelievable real life story.” And you can hear his thick Austrian accent as you read the title to yourself and think to yourself he really does have a pretty amazing life story. And you realize that no matter how bad your morning was, your year won’t be as bad as Arnold’s was last year.
And that we are all really doing about the best we can with what we have— and that s**t does happen and sometimes happens in streams—but even then it’s really no big deal. Not really.
And you sit down at your gate and recharge your electronics and think about how nice the person at AAA was last night and how helpful the person was at Southwest and that the people at Budget Rental Car were probably on break and weren’t trying to be difficult.
And as you are board your flight you notice a prominent sign on the side of the plan saying, “Wireless Available” and that wireless service wasn’t available on the flight you booked on the original flight on USAir or United or whatever because you asked when you booked and were told no. And you think to yourself, “Maybe my luck is changing today….and despite my tumultuous morning, maybe, just maybe, today is going to be another lucky day for me after all.”
If you answered “Yes, you can relate” then all that there is left for me to do is chuckle along with you, pat you on the back (virtually) and say, “Really? Oh my gosh, me too! Just this morning!” And hope that the airborne wireless service is working.
Note: The wireless service is working. I am posting this at 10,000 feet. And am feeling like a pretty lucky guy.
By Jason Grill, on Thu Oct 11, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
As the country — and particularly Danville, Kentucky — gets ready for tonight’s Vice-Presidential debate, contributing RP Jason Grill shares his insights on where we stand in this debate season:
Q: I recently lost a primary race, largely because a bunch of elected officials I had helped for years ended up screwing me. What’s the best way to get back at them? —Name and location withheld
By not spending another minute thinking about getting back at them.
One day in prison, a veteran convict pulled me aside and told me that his brother-in-law had told the feds where his (cocaine) bricks were. “Wow,” I said. “What did you do to him?”
“Thought about the motherf—– for my first three years straight,” he said. “Laid awake every night. Worst three years of my life. But then one day I let it go. Just like that. ’Cause you can’t do time like that. Your boy with the wire…you can’t even think about [the] dude. It’ll make you crazy.” It was the best advice I got in prison; after that, I rarely thought about my ex–best friend.
Your resentment is weighing you down and will reduce the odds of you succeeding in your next endeavor, which would be the best revenge.
By the way, in the future, don’t help others in the hope that they’ll reciprocate. Help people you truly want to see succeed, and then be pleasantly surprised if they reciprocate.
Q: In your last column, some would-be candidate told you he hated asking for money. Instead of providing constructive advice on how to do it, you gave him glib advice about marrying a rich person and other long-shot strategies. How about a better answer? —J.J., New York City
Asking for money can be soul-crushing. But unless we enshrine the public financing of campaigns, it will be a necessary evil. That said, here’s some practical advice about how to make it feel less seamy—and how to succeed at it:
When you first meet a prospective donor, ask for general advice. A few weeks later when an issue arises on which she has expertise, call her and ask for specific advice, but do not ask for money. Then two weeks after that, ask her if she’d be willing to serve in an advisory role on your campaign, a member of “Businesswomen for J.J.” or something. If she agrees, ask for money two weeks later.
Why will this work? First, because now she’s much more invested in you than she would have been had you asked initially. Second, it’s like dating: An attractive woman at a bar gets hit on 10 times a night. A guy can distinguish himself by approaching her without asking her out. When he leaves, she often thinks about the guy who didn’t hit on her more than about the dozen who did.
In other words, after the first few conversations, your prospective donor may be intrigued by the fact that you haven’t asked for money. It’s a fine line to walk, but you can be persistent without being desperate.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: Do As I Say — A Political Advice Column
Biden will most likely be on the attack from the start.
I think his first attacks will sound good and score points, but his problem will be Ryan knows the facts better than Biden and his counterpunches will land and Joe won’t know what to do. That is when we will get the gaffe or crazy sound bite we are all expecting.
The only thing Biden has going for him is everyone thinks he will mess it up and the expectations for him are very low. This is Ryan’s first big debate so nobody knows what to expect from him but I bet we will get a heavy dose of gas prices, personal income and deficit talk. If Biden hits to hard it will be easy for Ryan to use some of his own comments against him.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Oct 8, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
We’re in trouble. And the people we sent to Congress to solve America’s biggest problems are completely stuck.
On January 1, unless our leaders stop the partisan brawling and focus on solutions, we’ll face massive budget cuts and tax increases that could send the U.S. economy back into a tailspin.
We all remember what economic meltdown is like. None of us — in any party — want to go through it again. We can head this crisis off at the pass, but not unless we fix the Senate filibuster. If we don’t, then we can assume that any policy solution will be sabotaged through the filibuster process.
The filibuster is used in the Senate now more than ever before — in part, because it’s easier to do than it used to be. A senator doesn’t even have to hold the floor to force a filibuster anymore. Often, all a senator has to do is signal that he or she intends to filibuster a bill to bring the whole process to a dead stop.
Just one senator can take the whole body hostage — and he or she can do it in secret without ever having to make his or her case.
It’s outrageous. And because elected officials are using it to block legislation introduced by their opposing parties, it’s preventing potential solutions from receiving due consideration in Washington.
Our Senate leaders can help stop the gridlock by putting limits on how and when the filibuster can be used when legislators return to Washington in January. But they won’t — not unless they feel the heat from all of us.
