Gingrich Campaign Jumps Shark With New TV Spot

"Last Conservative Standing" campaign ad is video equivalent of gory highway accident that you can't help slowing down to take a look at



Honestly, we really really couldn't take our eyes off this. We had misgivings and hesitated to play it at first, but once it started rolling, we were spellbound with a perverse awe. If we could establish a George Hutchins Award for wretched, smarmy campaign advertising, we'd give the inaugural award to this ad. It's got everything and then some, and the music -- oh, that beat-to-death treacly piano music -- really ties it all together.

It's stuff like this that made us abandon all hope for this country, and to dedicate ourselves to doing whatever small things we could do, ourselves, to speed its collapse. C'mon, just look at this motley trash: you've got your frat bro making little flourishing gestures he learned from watching pundits on TV; you've got your pasty fat soccer mom; you've got your grumbly-voiced Teabagger posing in front of the flag on his lawn; you've got your College Republican groupie chick; you've got your doughy teenaged brat camped in his bedroom, slouched in the glow of a monitor; basically, you've got the Real America -- not the loving, diverse, rainbow-hued I Too Sing America of addled Liberal fantasies, but the real, honest-to-Dog, SUV-driving, KFC-fattened, Our Troops-supporting, torture-loving, yellow ribbon-encrusted, rock-stupid Real Goddamn' America. Tough shit, Liberals; this is the way it is.

Florida: The Final Frontier

These are the voyages of the Starship Teabag...

"When they found me they had no model to put me back together..."

More of this zaniness courtesy of our friends at Mock, Paper, Scissors...

Last Surviving Tea Party Candidate Meets Dumbest SNL Cast Member Ever

Via Winning At Everything:

Chuck Norris Endorses Gingrich for President

Newt didn't go looking for Chuck Norris' endorsement -- it came looking for him.

Hollywood roundhouse-kicker Chuck Norris writes at WeirdNet Daily:

Our republic as America’s founders created it is under assault from extremists outside our country and anti-constitutionalists inside our country. Combined with the flailing American economy and global markets, Western civilization remains on the brink, as experts and all the GOP presidential candidates agree.

President Obama has tried and failed miserably to fix our economy, deepening us and our posterity into more than $6 trillion in additional national debt – something he criticized former President Bush for as “unpatriotic” and “irresponsible.” Yet unemployment rates remain at higher levels than when Obama was elected, and the dollar is as unstable as the Middle East.

As important as it is, now is not the time to be mincing through minutiae and infighting via typical partisan battles. Rome is burning, and we need to appoint the best firemen possible to rush in and put out her fury. What’s critical at this point is to appoint a commander in chief who can clearly lead America to a more solvent and secure future. ...>more, if you dare

GOP Candidates Prepare for "Tea Party Debate" on Twitter

...but GOP officials unsure if most Teabaggers know how to use Twitter: "It's like a fax machine, right?"

Alex Pappas reports on The Daily Caller:

This isn’t your typical Jim Lehrer-moderated debate on PBS.

Next week, seven Republican presidential candidates will take the virtual stage on Twitter in what’s being billed as the first “Tea Party presidential debate.”

The website "TheTeaParty.Net" says seven candidates for president have agreed to participate in its July 20 Twitter debate. The group will pose questions to the candidates on the social networking platform. The candidates are expected to respond in real-time.

Radio host S.E. Cupp will moderate the event, which viewers can watch live at www.140townhall.com.

“It’s about time the candidates started acknowledging the relevance of social networking,” Cupp said in an email. “Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are democratizing the media and changing the way we consume news. It was only a matter of time before someone thought to put the traditional debate format online.”

The group says Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will participate.... >more

A Tea Party Fairy Tale

Fearful Old White Men

Don Monkerud writes at CounterPunch:

Current attempts to revive that Boston Tea Party of 1773 are marketing gimmicks to masquerade conservative forces bent on defeating Obama and destroying any attempt to reform the present gridlock political system. Examining the history of this faux-movement reveals the actors behind the curtain.

One of the earliest revivals of the Tea Party involved 100 people meeting in Seattle to protest the stimulus bill passed by Congress to keep the U.S. from descending into another Great Depression. After bloggers and libertarians spread a call for protest on the Internet, the media blew it into a major event.

Right-wing groups poured funding into the nascent movement. These groups included: Americans for Prosperity, a pro-tobacco, anti-healthcare and anti-tax lobbying organization; and FreedomWorks, a lobbying firm devoted to opposing taxes, immigration, healthcare reform and solutions to global warming. Koch Industries, an oil, mineral, ranching and securities conglomerate, funds both of these groups, while the Sarah Mellon Scaife foundation, with interests in oil, industry and banking, funds FreedomWorks.

After Fox News began promoting the Tea Party as a social movement, their crowds grew. Fox News entertainer, Glenn Beck, invited viewers to "celebrate with Fox News," by attending tax protests in Washington on April 15, the date federal tax returns are due.

A mere 3,000 Tea Party supporters attended the rally and grabbed the headlines. More people rallied across the country in support of Single Payer Healthcare Reform but they received few headlines. After much smaller groups of Tea Partiers protested in several cities, right-wing entertainers such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly giddily talked about "a growing movement" for weeks. Soon Republicans Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Ron Paul, Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich jumped on board, hoping to revive their failed political careers.

Seldom has so much been made about so little... >more