Election 2012 Quotes

A lot of particularly fun and interesting things are being said in the run up to the 2012 election, and the staff of Religion, Politics, and Sex decided that we should post one of these each day! We hope you will enjoy and find them thought provoking. Feel free to make a comment with your own suggestions.

"My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people — not all of them, but most of them — who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable." — Former Colin Powell chief-of-staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

"This well may be a generation-defining moment. What will America's future be? Will this still be a land of opportunity and freedom for all people or just for the favored few? Because we still hope, we endorse for president Barack Obama, whose heart — unlike his challenger — has not wavered nor his principles changed." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 28

“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” — Indiana Senate Republican candidate Richard Mourdock

“Slavery was cruel, but as a result of slavery, we have African-Americans living in this country today who are living here in situations that are probably much better to endure than if they were living in Sub-Saharan Africa. If you had the choice knowing the lifestyle of people living in Africa and knowing the lifestyle of people living in the United States, which would you choose? Pure and simple.” — Jon Hubbard, (R) Arkansas State Senate

"All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. ... I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says." — Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.)

"I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS — I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it." — Mitt Romney to Jim Lehrer, on the importance of the cutting the 1/100th of 1% of the federal budget devoted to public broadcasting.

"I thought the format accomplished its purpose, which was to facilitate direct, extended exchanges between the candidates about issues of substance. Part of my moderator mission was to stay out of the way of the flow and I had no problems with doing so. My only real personal frustration was discovering that ninety minutes was not enough time in that more open format to cover every issue that deserved attention." — Jim Lehrer

"I believe in free enterprise. I don't think the government should be telling people what you pay and what you don't pay. I think it's about freedom." — Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), on why it is OK for employers to pay women less than men

"I pick up Mitt Romney's trash. We're kind of like the invisible people. He doesn't realize ... the service we provide ... Picking up 15, 16 tons by hand, that takes a toll on your body. When I'm 55, 60 years old, I know my body's gonna ... break down. Mitt Romney doesn't care about that." — Richard Hayes

"I don't have the time. It would take me too long to go through all the math." — Paul Ryan, in response to a request he explain his tax plan

"I think my biggest concern obviously would just be for [Mitt's] mental well-being. I have all the confidence in the world in his ability, in his decisiveness, in his leadership skills, in his understanding of the economy. ... So for me I think it would just be the emotional part of it." — Ann Romney

"Only in America can you be pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-unmanned drone bombs, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-guns, pro-torture, pro-land mines, and still call yourself 'pro-life.'" — John Fugelsang

"As the election approaches, many Americans, I am certain, are still struggling with the question of who they will vote for. Is Obama like Carter, a micro-managing school teacher who doesn't even carry a one wood, let alone hit the long drive? Is Romney like George Bush Sr., a white-glove, Wall Street handmaiden who wouldn't know a subway token from the buttons on a doorman's uniform?" — Alec Baldwin, Huffington Post

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no - and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous." — Mitt Romney

"Here at this site, Solyndra expects to make enough solar panels each year to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. And over the lifetime of this expanded facility, that could be like replacing as many as eight coal-fired power plants." — President Barack Obama

“Guess what, the cheerleaders in college are the best athletes in college. You think, I’m joking, they’re almost all gymnasts, the stuff they do on hard wood, it blows my mind.” — Vice President Joe Biden, Newport, N.H., September 21

"The thing about not having much money is you have to take much more responsibility for your life. You can’t pay people to watch your kids or clean your house or fix your meals. You can’t necessarily afford a car or a washing machine or a home in a good school district. That’s what money buys you: goods and services that make your life easier. That’s what money has bought Romney, too. He’s a guy who sold his dad’s stock to pay for college, who built an elevator to ensure easier access to his multiple cars and who was able to support his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s great! That’s the dream. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car, or the agonizing choices faced by families in which both parents work and a child falls ill. The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it." — Ezra Klein, Bloomberg

"Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare? ... The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees." — Conservative columnist David Brooks, New York Times

Food Stamps, Christianity, and the Meaning of Irony

By Michael O. Varhola

Recent comments by Newt Gingrich characterizing President Obama as the food stamp king may be at the root of an item currently making its rounds across the Internet and being posted to people's social networking pages as if it was something they came up with on their own. Whoever did actually generate the following quip, however, is not taking credit for it:

"Isn't It Ironic?" this unattributed item asks. "The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever. Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to 'please do not feed the animals' because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves."

This self-consciously cute but subtly vicious item -- which is similar to and may have its genesis in comments made by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in January 2010, for which he subsequently apologized -- struck me in a number of ways.

First is the way it implicitly equates food stamp recipients with animals. I will not go as far as saying this is racist on the face of it, although I suspect that the image that comes to mind of food stamp recipients for many of the people who re-post this item would, in fact, brand them as racists. Perhaps worse, however, is that it is simply misanthropic and reflects a general despisal of other people.

Second is the suggestion that U.S. Department of Agriculture personnel should actually be ashamed that they are accomplishing the things they have been tasked with. These civil servants are simply carrying out policies they have been assigned with fulfilling and if they successfully do so then there is no reason they should not be pleased with it. Are the people who re-post the item being discussed here ashamed of what they do on a day-to-day basis? (Although if some of them actually took a full minute to think through the implications of the things they repost without consideration then the best of them probably would be a little bit ashamed.)

Finally, it struck me that this item is itself ironic in two key ways.

One is that, in one of the most prosperous nations on earth, people who have enough to eat would object to a program that helps provide food for the impoverished. This really is the epitome of smug cruelty and I would be willing to bet that none of the people who have re-posted this item have actually gone hungry because their taxpayer dollars have helped feed those who are neediest.

What is even more ironic, however, is how many of the people who repost items like this and embrace the ideas behind them characterize themselves as Christians! I absolutely support the right of everyone to believe what they want and to express those beliefs, the ones described here included. But the hard, cruel, nasty sentiments expressed in the item being discussed here are assuredly not Christ-like and is makes my skin crawl to think of Jesus saying something like this. If people with such ideas were simply to admit that they were Satanists, pagans, pragmatic atheists, nihilists, or just about anything but Christians there would be no disconnect between their attitudes and their ostensible ethos. It is perfectly legitimate to believe that other people are animals or that impoverished children in wealthy nations should go hungry — it just isn't compatible with the tenets of Christianity.

What is truly ironic is the idea that these two diametrically opposed sets of ideas are in any way compatible with each other.

Endorsing a Republican Candidate

In November, millions of Americans will cast their votes for the person they most want to see become the next president of the United States. It is already shaping up to be a heated campaign and will pit one of the most controversial administrations of modern times against whoever ends up being the Republican nominee and any number of third-party candidates.

The rump hopefuls don’t have any hope to speak of, of course, and the contest is ultimately going to come to a toe-to-toe slugfest between incumbent Barrack Obama and the as-yet-unknown Republican candidate. Who that should be — perhaps more so even that who it ultimately will be — is thus a matter of great interest for Americans in general and the editors of this site in particular.

A good first step in getting to who should be the Republican nominee is to figure out who it should not be and to many of us there are some easy answers to that.

It seems obvious that the next chief executive of our country should not be someone who is stupid. Right there that rules out Rick Perry for anyone who values intelligence, and his weird antics, rambling monologues, funny faces and gestures, and memory lapses clearly mark him as someone who is mentally defective. Unfortunately, ever since that most brilliant of Democrat presidents, Jimmy Carter, was unable to resolve the Iran Hostage Crisis in the late 1970s, Republicans have responded by trying to place simpletons in the White House (just try to follow the painful thought process behind that … ). Sarah Palin has confined her involvement in this election to inane commentary and Michelle Bachmann has dropped out, and Perry is tanking in the state caucuses, so we may actually be clearing out the lower end of the intellect pool fairly early on.

To me, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the next president of the United States should not be verifiably corrupt. That pretty much rules out Washington insider Newt Gingrich, who has by all accounts been too cagey about his personal finances and accepted an awful lot of money from Freddie Mac and Fannie May — by his own admission for doing nothing! A willingness to take taxpayer money in exchange for doing admittedly nothing — and in actuality for influence peddling — should make Gingrich completely unacceptable. (Recently, there was a message making its rounds on Facebook in which the author suggested that because Gingrich was more articulate and better able to give a good speech that we should set aside his faults and elect him on that basis alone. Have we really slipped that far? That is reminiscent to me of the students who campaigned for Bill Clinton back in the ‘90s with the line “Character is not an issue!”).

In that most Americans are not wealthy and have felt the impact of the recent recession, the next leader of the American people should definitely not be party to making them the vassals of one-percenter business interests. That, by all accounts, rules out Mitt Romney, who would have business interests directly peddle their goods and services to children via commercial advertising on Sesame Street and would prevent workers from forming labor unions. It never ceases to amaze me that people of relatively modest means would get behind people without their economic interests at heart, and yet it seems to happen increasingly.

Finally, our next president should not be a bigot. Whether anyone likes it or not, America is a nation of many peoples, and intolerance for the ones that are not like oneself divides and weakens us as a country. So, even though the “young people” are rallying behind unapologetic demonstrated racist Ron Paul, that pretty much rules him out (and most of those young people are those smug little creeps who have not yet had the chance to experience much adversity in their lives and their numbers will wane as they come to the grim realization that most of us do).

Those exclusions don’t leave too many candidates on the Republican slate! There is one that remains, however, someone who cannot just be excluded by the above criteria and who beyond that is in palatable in his own right, and that is John Huntsman. He is educated and articulate. As the former U.S. ambassador to China he is experienced in foreign affairs — something that xenophobic amongst us, as well as those that think wars are a substitute for diplomacy, don’t get at all, but which is absolutely critical in the globalized real world. And, as a Republican who has served in a Democrat administration, he has demonstrated that he can work with leaders on both sides of the aisle and is not inclined to be a polarizing influence.

In light of the above, the editors of Religion, Politics, and Sex, have decided to endorse Huntsman as the Republican candidate for president. His attitudes, frankly, are so undeniably more progressive and intelligent than those of any of his other GOP colleagues — and his portfolio and experience so clearly superior — that it is somewhat inexplicable and dispiriting that, far from being a frontrunner, he is trailing behind all of the other surviving candidates mentioned above. If there is one characteristic many of this election’s extreme and weird slate of Republican candidates have shown, however, it is a tendency to self-destruct. As there is nothing to suggest that Huntsman has this particular trait, we can hope that he might be the last man standing while his opponents implode and drop out amidst shame and scandal. And, if that happens, Americans who feel the need to vote a GOP party line or want an alternative to the current administration may actually be able to make a viable choice.

Breaking News: Perry Enters Presidential Race

Speaking from a flag-packed stage in Charleston, S.C., Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced his long anticipated entrance into the 2012 presidential race.

"I declare to you today as a candidate for president of the United States!" Perry announced during a speech that resonated with conservative imagery, support for industry, and references to Ronald Reagan, and which spoke to rightwing Republican and Tea Party concerns.

In keeping with the other current GOP candidates, Perry made vague criticisms of the Obama administration and observations on the economy core elements of his platform.

"We reject this president's unbridled fixation on taking more money out of wallets and pocketbooks of American families -- and employers -- and giving it to a central government," Perry said. "Spreading the wealth punishes success."

Perry also held Obama accountable for everything from the recent downgrade in the U.S. credit rating to the country's increasingly perilous place in the world, noting that "Our president has insulted our friends and encouraged our enemies."

Following his speech, Perry's wife and children joined him on stage while a crowd chanted their support for him.