I Love National Politics

 

It’s normally called the silly season and so far the politicians are not letting us down. This is a presidential election or a lame duck session where nothing will get done until after the election. The politicians may come out of their partisan cubicles to fight the "raising of the debt ceiling" but then they will go home to pat themselves on the back and then try to convince their constituents to give them another term.

Events like the Cory Booker gaffe will dominate the news cycle even though it means little in the scheme of things. For those of you who don't know about the gaffe, I will try to explain it. Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey, was a guest on "Meet the Press” this past Sunday. The panel was talking about the dirty politics in campaign ads. Cory Booker, Obama's surrogate, said he was sick of the GOP trying to inject Jeremiah Wright into the campaign and was equally agitated with the bashing of Bain Capital. That's when things started going south for Mr. Booker. The Republicans instantly launched an ad in support of Cory Booker right to speak his mind saying that he shouldn't held hostage by the Obama campaign. A couple of things happened; Cory Booker was a trusted ally, so he was not prepped and Mr. Booker was unaware of Obama's strategy. Corey Booker and Harold Ford JR. and many New York/ New Jersey politicians get a lot of their funding from Wall Street. The largest private-equity fund, Black Rock, contributes heavily to the Obama campaign. President Obama is not going after Bain Capital; he is just saying that being the owner of a private-equity fund does not qualify Romney to be the president of United States. He went on to explain that as president, you must represent the little guy and as well as the private-equity firm. A private-equity firm is just about the profits and not about the general welfare of the public. To be fair, Romney wasn’t the owner of Bain Capital when some of those companies went down in the ads because he was out saving the Olympics. Mitt Romney is not talking about his record as governor, and that's where the Obama wants him to go. If they get him to go there, they will expose his 47th in the nation, job creation record and of course Romney Care.

The Obama team is still seething because President Obama, first question coming from the G8 International Convention was about Cory Booker's statement. I suspect Corey Booker will be sent down to the minor leagues to work on another off speed pitch because the GOP just hit a 400-foot homer off his best fast ball. Mr. Booker is a rising star in the Democratic Party, and we will be hearing a lot from him in 2014.

Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity and a few others are foaming at the mouth, trying to convince the Mitt Romney camp to go after Obama and his ties with Jeremiah Wright. That would be a mistake of enormous proportions because voters have already vetted President Obama, and that leaves the door open for a left- wing Super Pak to question Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. I don't doubt Mitt Romney will get down and dirty, if he is down by 10 points in October. Mitt Romney doing pretty good in the polls right now and he's closing the gender gap to below the double digits, so I expect him to ignore them for now.

It seems like everything is getting politicized; even the NAACP is supporting marriage equality and they went a step further than the president, by calling it civil rights. A civil rights violation is covered under the 14th amendment and is enforced by the Federal government.

A total of 43 Catholic groups, including the archdiocese in DC and New York and Catholic institutions like Notre dame are suing the administration over provisions of the healthcare law that requires a cover birth-control in most of their health plans. I think the law suits are premature because the Supreme Court will rule in June, and besides those provisions won't take place until August of 2013, and they are still being negotiated. I believe it's more a power play by the Bishops and who are often at odds with the nuns. It's really strange because I'm pretty sure that the Bishops don't want the Supreme Court to define what a religious right is because they want that privilege. It's all politics and another reason I think religions should "render under Caesar; what is Caesars" I seriously doubt the administration will be able to satisfy the bishops because they are taking a stand for religious freedom.