Tag: Gingrich

Attorney General Cuccinelli's efforts to get more Republican presidential candidates back on the Virginia primary ballot (discussed below) are notable mainly for how perfectly they fit the  Cuccinelli pattern -- never missing an opportunity to help elites in need.

In this case, he is acting out of sympathy for poor Newt Gingrich, who became a millionaire by trading on his connections to get megabucks from the likes of healthcare corporations and Freddie Mac; and poor Rick Perry, whose key to success in Texas has been "pay to play" politics benefitting oil companies and others who fill his coffers in return for policies that favor them.  

Yes, the civil rights of these suffering, unfortunate souls have been violated by a system that forces them to get off their well-fed arses and pull together enough volunteers to gather 10,000 legitimate signatures.  Indeed, it's hard to think of anyone in the state of Virginia quite as disadvantaged as these folks.  Certainly our AG can't think of anyone, or undoubtedly he would be doing his job as public advocate for the state to help individuals more in need -- say, working class families ripped off by payday lenders, or coal miners suffering from black lung disease or poor women seeking safe and proper gynecological care.  

The Republican Party is busily promoting its brand by running public media events, often billed as "debates," like the affair recently sponsored on Labor Day (don't overlook that irony) by hard-right Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina. Since most of us, even Republican political junkies, were otherwise employed, er, occupied, on Labor Day, and missed it, Virginia's Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has kindly provided us with his take on the event, as published on his web site the "Cuccinelli Compass: a grassroots update" (a masthead moniker I personally think brilliant, as I will subsequently explain).

The five participants were Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Paul, and Romney; Governor Perry was missing because he was attending to the wildfires presently consuming Texas. They were taken on stage separately for 22 minutes in alphabetical order, and were each asked the same questions by Senator DeMint, Congressman Steve King, and Professor Robbie George from Princeton (a conservative professor, no less); no media "personalities" were involved, which prevented the usual grandstanding, crossfire, and what Cuccinelli referred to as "gotcha" questions. Personally, I think maybe DeMint is on to something here, especially in the early, get-to-know-you phase of a campaign. The set-up allowed listeners an in-depth view of each candidate, and that is how the Attorney General analyzed them, with a surgical precision laced with, if not humor, a certain disarming frankness, which affords us a view of his internal compass as well