Republicans Unanimously Approve Anti-Marriage Equality Resolution Without Debate

By Zack Ford/Think Progress

At a retreat in Hollywood, California on Thursday, the Republican National Committee caved to pressure from social conservatives and unanimously approved a number of resolutions without any debate, including one opposing same-sex marriage.

As ThinkProgress reported Wednesday, this resolution is based entirely on debunked junk science and assumptions that heterosexual relationships are objectively superior to same-sex couples. Here is some of the text:

WHEREAS, the institution of marriage is the solid foundation upon which our society is built and in which children thrive; it is based in the conjugal relationship that only a man and a woman can form; [...]

WHEREAS, no Act of human government can change the reality that marriage is a natural and most desirable union; especially when procreation is a goal; [...] therefore be it

RESOLVED, the Republican national Committee affirms its support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and as the optimum environment in which to raise healthy children for the future of America.

A second resolution reaffirming the party’s 2012 platform included a similar provision opposing same-sex marriage:

WHEREAS, the 2012 Republican Platform states, “We believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard, a goal to stand for, encourage, and promote through laws governing marriage.”

Last month, as part of its autopsy of the 2012 election, Republicans announced their intention to tone down — though not alter — their opposition to LGBT equality by sugarcoating how they discuss those positions. Adoption of these resolutions followed threats this week from social conservative groups that they would no longer support the GOP if the party didn’t stand strong, and even take guidance, from them on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. In particular, the Family Research Council urged supporters not to give money to the GOP if it didn’t “grow a backbone.”

Stuck between this rock (trying to recruit young people) and hard place (depending on social conservatives), the Republicans seem to have reverted to their same old positions. This is in spite of the fact there are now two Republican Senators and two Republican House memberswho support marriage equality, with others evolving. Some have also acknowledged that it’s “inevitable” that a Republican presidential candidate will someday support same-sex marriage. For now, the GOP is dismissing this destiny and doubling down on baseless bigotry.

Dick Morris Says He Is Working On An RNC Ad Aimed At Latinos

JOE STRUPP/Media Matters For America

Dick Morris is working with Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus on a new television advertisement that will include Preibus seeking to attract Latino voters, Morris revealed during an appearance in New York City Thursday.

Speaking at the Poli Conference, a political consulting event for Latin American campaign professionals, Morris said the ad will feature Priebus reaching out to "those Latin Americans who've come to the United States to help us build our country, to help harvest our food, to help make our economy work and [Priebus'] message is 'welcome, we need you, you're making our country younger, more prosperous, harder working and we need you for the future.'"

According to Morris, the ad will make use of "that concept of reflecting back to people their own value and their own worth. In the advertisement he [Priebus] says, 'we honor our ancestors who took covered wagons to settle the west and brave the Indians, but you are the new pioneers, you are the new people in America doing that.' And I think that is a very, very interesting thing to do in a campaign."

Republican Party Spokesman Ryan Mahoney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ad. Asked about when it might run or where, Morris declined to offer more details.

Morris' work with the Republican National Committee is noteworthy given the implosion of Morris' stature and credibility following the 2012 election and his now infamous prediction of a "landslide" victory for Republican Mitt Romney. After the election Morris was effectively banned from appearing on Fox News, where he worked as an on-air contributor until the network declined to renew his contract in early February. Morris also brings with him a host of ethics problems -- Morris' group Super PAC for America reportedly spent significant amounts of money renting Morris' own email list in the months before the election, allowing him to simply pocket money raised by the group.

In response to another question, from Media Matters, about the negative impact on Latino voters from conservative media who oppose immigration reform, Morris agreed it hurts the party.

"I think that many of them do and they do hurt, but I think that they are increasingly having to backtrack because they see the changes in their own constituency," Morris said of conservative media voices. "So what they're saying now is, not 'I'm against immigration reform,' they're saying 'I'm for it. I just want a higher wall.' You know, at the border. And Latinos in the U.S. don't really care how high the wall is, they just want the people who are here not to be deported."

He also noted that he sees a major Republican shift on the issue that is affecting the conservative media.

"There has been a total transformation in the Republican Party in the United States since the Obama re-election," he said. "The Republicans, including me, were confident that Romney would win and then we did not win, we looked at the demographics of the electorate with new eyes."

He said many Republicans wrongly assumed voter turnout among Latinos and other minorities would not be as high as it was.

"In the last three months, I've never seen a change in any political party in the United States as dramatic as the change in the Republican Party away from immigration toward immigration reform," Morris said. "And even among the conservative right-wing base, they believe in immigration reform. I believe immigration reform is going to pass in the United States."

Morris made the comments after an hour-long talk about political consulting and campaigns in foreign countries, during which he stressed the overriding importance of polling in elections: "You have got to make sure through your polling that the message is going to work."

He also told the audience that negative campaigning may be on the way out: "It is working less and less because people have seen more and more of it. You have to be very careful in the way that you use it. There is always a dynamic in the election that negative advertising relates to."

Fox Hypes RNC's Doctored Audio Of Supreme Court Arguments

by Todd Gregory/Media Matters

Bloomberg News is reporting that a Republican National Committee Web ad uses "altered audio from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments to attack President Barack Obama's health-care law." The Bloomberg article details the problems with the ad:

In a spot circulated yesterday [March 28], the Republican National Committee excerpts the opening seconds of the March 27 presentation of Obama's top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, in which he is heard struggling for words and twice stopping to drink water.

"Obamacare," the ad concludes, in words shown against a photograph of the high court. "It's a tough sell."

A review of a transcript and recordings of those moments shows that Verrilli took a sip of water just once, paused for a much briefer period, and completed his thought, rather than stuttering and trailing off as heard in the doctored version.

On his March 28 Fox News show, Sean Hannity aired an audio clip of Justice Antonin Scalia speaking during the arguments, and another of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Hannity then aired the RNC ad:

This left the impression that the RNC ad simply uses a clip of Verrilli to show that he had fared poorly during the arguments. In reality, as Bloomberg noted, Verrilli's speech was doctored to exaggerate the effect.

The time of publication on Bloomberg's article is 5:05 p.m. Eastern on March 29.

Hannity's show airs at 9 p.m. Eastern, and graphics throughout his March 29 show indicated it was airing live. But Hannity didn't apologize for airing the misleading ad. He didn't even mention it.

Even worse, during the show that follows Hannity, On the Record, host Greta Van Susteren aired the RNC ad and discussed it with The Washington Examiner's Byron York -- without ever mentioning that it was doctored.

Watch:

As Supreme Court expert Tom Goldstein noted on SCOTUSblog, distortions such as these likely hurt efforts to make the court more transparent:

[T]he Justices now have before them a perfect illustration of the gross distortion that can instantly be made of recordings of their proceedings.  What is to stop the same misleading stunt being pulled with the Justices' own oral argument questions and comments?  Nothing at all.  The Court made a special exception in releasing the oral argument tape for the health care arguments so promptly, and it probably will hesitate before doing so again.  If there were any chance that the Justices would permit cameras in the Court, I do not see happening now.

RNC's desperate spin on Obama recovery: The weather is conspiring against Republicans!

by Deaniac83/The People's view Great blog BTW


The GOP has a new enemy in their fight to stop jobs from being created: the weather! After news that the economy is escaping GOP's death grip with momentum on the side of jobs thanks to the leadership of President Obama, the RNC held a conference call for reporters. They spun the good news every which way possible to make it look like bad news, but this has to take the cake:

 In a conference call with reporters hosted by the RNC, economist Douglas Holtz Eakin said the current rate of growth was not strong enough to provide work for previously discouraged job seekers now returning to the labor force more optimistic about finding employment. He also expressed concern that the jobs numbers were being inflated by an unusually warm winter, which allows more construction work and encourages more shopping.

Oh noes! The weather is helping Obama!!!! I say we need to legislate the weather right away. In fact, I say mother nature - conveniently a woman - must submit to a vaginal probe before she can decide to be the wrong temperature.

Never mind that cold winters have their own seasonal jobs - like extra ski trainers and ski resort employees and more snow plow drivers, for example, and their own spending generators - like people who go skiing, or people who travel to warmer places during the winter. But hey, don't try and tell that to these RNC "economists." Also, just because the four warmest winters on record all occurred within roughly the last two decades (out of 117 years on record), doesn't mean there's global warming or anything.

Also, never mind that people don't just "go shopping" and eat out because it's nice outside. They have to first have the money to spend. Which more and more people do, thanks to the Obama recovery. There is also no construction without, you know, money for the construction, which more and more businesses have, thanks to the Obama recovery.

Of course Douglas Holtz Eakin - of the "John McCain created the blackberry" fame - is not the only Republi-nomist picking up on this dangerous conspiracy by Mother Nature with the Obama campaign.Wall Street's mouthpieces are at it too, wanting to create a damper on the economy.

I can't stop laughing. They have lost every other argument to drag down the economy and to put a negative spin on the Obama recovery, and they have now ended up at the weather! But who knows, maybe in order for Republicans to start helping on climate change, they need to first be convinced that climate change is helping Democrats!

RNC attack on Obama’s bus tour ignores Bush’s political travel costs

By Kase Wickman/Raw story: MCL note I'm not including the RNC video if you want to see it click on the link

The Republican National Committee released a tailored, satirical attack ad Monday as President Barack Obama began a three-day bus tour of the Midwest, focusing on jobs and the economy.

The 11-page pdf masquerades as a press guide for what the RNC has dubbed "A Totally Non-Political, Taxpayer-Funded Administration Event That Just Happens to Criss-Cross Several Battleground States Critical to the President's Reelection" — or, for short: the Debt-End Bus Tour (DEBT).

The "release" is labeled as being from the "Office of the Teleprompter" and gives "guidance" to reporters, sampled below:

During this totally non-political, taxpayer-funded excursion, the President will not be offering any specific details or anything resembling a plan to tackle the looming debt crisis facing America. If that was what you were expecting, feel free to nod off during the President’s open press events. You won’t hear anything that you haven’t heard before.

The president's trip is earmarked as a non-political tour — i.e. taxpayer-funded and not for campaign purposes. Conservatives have targeted the trip, which precedes a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, with criticism. GOP 2012 presidential contender and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has released his own attack video, dubbing it the "Magical Misery Tour."

It's not unusual for the line between official and campaign travel to blur somewhat leading up to an election, Center for Responsive Politics spokesman Michael Beckel told Raw Story in an email. In fact, it may be impossible to draw a line, as the president is judged not only on his campaign events, as other candidates are, but also by his actions as the sitting Commander-in-Chief.

"President Obama is hardly alone among presidents who have taken their official business to places where the political benefits are maximized," Beckel said. "And opponents of a sitting president, be that president a Democrat or a Republican, have long criticized the president for mixing re-election business with the business of governing."

"On trips when official business is mixed with campaign business, it can be harder to discern how to best apply [the FEC's] policy," Beckel said.

The White House, however, insisted that the trip isn't a campaign outing.

"The president views it as one of the chief responsibilities in office to spend some time outside Washington, D.C., talking to people all across the country about the economy and about how they’re impacted by the policy decisions that he’s making here in Washington, D.C.," deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday. "That isn’t just an appropriate thing for a president to do, it’s something that a president should do."

Presidential trips in swing states in the year preceding an election are an established norm. A 2004 Brookings Institute paper compared the pre-reelection travel of presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and found that they both upped their travel, focusing on swing states, leading up to the election. If anything, an analytical look at Obama's predecessors shows that Bush is more guilty of "targeted" travel in his office leading up to election.

Between January 1 and May 31, 2004, Bush took 75 trips to 29 states, 56 percent of which were swing states. In the same time period in 1996, Clinton visited 25 states on 58 visits, 47 percent to swing states.

In June 2004, the Associated Press published a report saying that Bush had used his Air Force One privileges for campaign travel more often than any president in history. Federal Election Commission rules stipulate that for campaign trips using the presidential plane, the campaign must reimburse the government the equivalent of a first-class commercial fare for each person on board.

Compared to the $56,800 estimated to operate Air Force One per hour, the first-class fare is a bargain.

Only 1 percent of the $203 million Bush raised for his reelection campaign went toward reimbursing the government for travel costs, according to the AP's report.

Indeed, the trend of Bush, Clinton and now Obama's travel habits suggest a "permanent campaign trail,"presidential scholars claim, with an unending focus on swing states.

"I try to balance my job with my desire to win four more years," Bush said in August 2004.

Beginning today and until Wednesday, Obama will travel through Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota via bus.

Watch the RNC's accompanying video attack ad about Obama's bus tour, in which a narrator intones "the road ahead darkens." Embedded below via YouTube.

RNC Accidentally Highlights Study That Proves Dems' Tax Cut Plan Is More Generous

ByJason Linkins

One of the promises made in the GOP's "Pledge to America" is that the party will make all legislation available for three days so that legislators can read it for clarity. One can hardly blame them for seeking to confront their own shortcomings! Perhaps they can take that promise further, and actually promise to read the studies that they circulate to the media, especially the ones that actually undermine their professed policies. This is just an idea I had!

See, yesterday morning, the Republican National Committee really wanted to stick it to Democratic legislators for that time they totally punted on holding a vote on the future of the Bush-era tax cuts. And so, they armed themselves with a shiny new study from the Tax Foundation that they thought really aided their criticism. "What excuse will the Democrats use now?"

Hey, who knows the answer to that question, right? Nevertheless, as Greg Sargent pointed out, the RNC really miscalculated:

As it happens, the study compared the actual Dem plan with the GOP one. And it found that for a family of four with an income of $40,000, the Dem plan -- continuing the low end tax cuts, plus the stimulus measures -- would cause a 7.8 percent jump in after-tax income. That jump would only be 6.8 percent under the GOP plan to continue all the Bush tax cuts.

For a single parent with two kids and an income of $20,000, that difference is even more pronounced. The jump is 8 percent under the Dem plan, and only 4.4 percent under the GOP one.

In fairness to the RNC, the study is good for the GOP in one sense. It confirms that the Bush tax cuts were helpful to the poor, despite popular belief that they only helped the rich. But the author of the study, Nick Kasprak, confirms that this finding isn't directly relevant to what Dems have proposed.

"Our study shows that the Bush tax cuts helped the poor a lot more than the popular perception, so the RNC is right to send it around for that reason," Kasprak tells me. "But the study also shows that the Congressional Democrats' plan is more generous to the poor, because it extends certain stimulus provisions into 2011, which the Republican plan does not. That isn't what the RNC wants to show."

Guess they really, really should have read that study, all the way to the end. But now you know whose tax cut plans are more generous to ordinary Americans.

Tea Party activists distribute signs paid for by the RNC at ‘Take The Town Halls to Washington’ event.

By Alex Seitz-Wald Tea Party activists from across the country have come to Washington for a three-week long “Take The Town Halls to Washington” rally, an effort to lobby undecided House Democrats to vote against health care reform. At a press conference for the event on Friday, the Daily Caller spotted signs and buttons clearly paid for by the Republican National Committee. Activists distributed “red-white-and-blue buttons and signs emblazoned with the words ‘Listen to Me!’” — an official RNC slogan — with disclaimers at the bottom of the signs reading “Paid for by the Republican National Committee:”

Michael Patrick Leahy, an organizer of the Take the Town Halls to Washington project that is bringing Tea Party activists to the capital to lobby Democrats on President Obama’s health-care bill, admitted that the RNC “did provide the signage,” but said he didn’t know the details of the arrangement with Republicans and couldn’t explain how the signs got there. “They just showed up,” he said.

An RNC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Daily Caller that the signs were given to the group at its request. [...]

Leahy downplayed the significance of the items, explaining, “We’re taking help from anybody that has an interest in this cause.”

The Tea Party movement claims to be an independent, grass roots coalition unrelated to either party, but this is not the first time activists have been caught using materials or logistical support provided by Republican operatives or Republican-aligned corporate front groups. For example, many large Tea Party protests have used signs and buses provided by groups like Americans for Prosperity.

Steele defends RNC ‘fear’ docs depicting Obama as The Joker: ‘It was stuff that was pulled off the web.’

By Ben Armbruster

Politico recently obtained a 72-page RNC Power Point presentation suggesting that their own fundraisers prey on donors’ “fear” of socialism. The seemingly Tea Party-inspired documents also depict President Obama as The Joker and Democratic leaders as part of an “evil empire.” “How do you defend this?” Fox News’ Megyn Kelly asked RNC chair Micheal Steele today. “You can’t defend it,” Steele replied, adding that the presentation is “inappropriate.” Yet, he went on to defend it anyway:

STEELE: It was unfortunate. It was, you know those are images that were pulled off the internet. They’ve been out in the public domain for a while and a staffer was putting together a presentation for a small group of about 9 or 10 folks and thought they would intersperse their presentation with humorous shots. [...] It was stuff that was pulled off the web that was inserted into a presentation to members of a finance team. It did not go out publicly.

Steele later begged Kelly to change the conversation. “Can we not raise this to the level of the health care debate? Please? This is an internal matter,” Steele pleaded. Watch it:

Tea Party Profiteers: How Republican Operatives Are Exploiting Economic Anxiety For Power, Cash

By Lee Fang Republican partisans — aided by lobbyists and corporate front groups — are exploiting the legitimate feelings of anger and distrust among many struggling Americans. These operatives and profiteers, many of them experienced public relations professionals, have set up sophisticated social networking portals and online solutions to control the flow of information within tea party organizations. As gatekeepers to ostensibly open forums, these political operatives and profiteers have been able to set the political agenda of the tea parties and hand out marching orders. And tea party profiteers are making millions cashing in on the movement. They are selling tea party support to candidates and policies which continue the legacy of Bush-era unregulated capitalism and corporate bailouts:

– Eric Odom: Odom, who appears regularly on Fox News and on other venues as a spokesman for the tea party movement, is at the center of tea party profiteering. Odom maintains dozens, possibly hundreds of tea party websites and community forums which he controls through a “Ning” technology based social networking platform. Odom’s vast online control of county, state, and issue oriented tea party websites is done through his two for profit consulting companies: American Liberty Alliance and Strategy Activism, LLC. His American Liberty Alliance has served as a hub between disparate tea party groups and right-wing front groups. In a biographical video he posted on YouTube, Odom explained that he has worked for years on local and statewide Republican campaigns developing “stealth type marketing…some say ‘attack sites.’” He boasted that he built “sites behind the scenes, many of them to this day no one today knows I took part in, some of them were actually very effective in defeating the opponent.” While it is unclear exactly who is paying Odom now for his tea party profit ventures, Odom has delicately straddled independent populist rhetoric while proclaiming that his network will work exclusively for the election of Republican candidates this year.

– Allen Fuller: According to Tennessee business records, Odom’s Strategic Activism, LLC business partner is Republican new media consultant Allen Fuller, who also maintains a firm called Flat Creek Public Affairs. Fuller may be the best clue to find out who pays Odom. On his website, Fuller counts Jane Norton, the GOP candidate for Senate in Colorado, as a client, and also receives payments from several other Republican members of Congress. Fuller helps corral tea party support to American Majority, a Republican training organization.

– Glenn Beck: Beck, the most powerful promoter of the tea parties in the media, often rants during his regular programming that investing in gold is the only way to hedge against a supposed deep inflation in the future. He does not disclose, however, that gold companies are his primary sponsors, or that the gold companies he promotes have predatory fees: Goldline, one of Beck’s sponsors, sells gold for 30-35% more than market value. “Here’s the deal, call Goldline, study it out, pray on it,” Beck advises his listeners. Beck has cemented his control over the tea parties by launching his own 9.12 project network of social networking sites — which are hosted by his for profit media company Mercury Radio Arts.

– Tea Party Nation: As a for-profit business, Tea Party Nation organized the Tea Party Convention this year at Nashville’s swank Opryland Gaylord hotel. The convention, set at the “grassroots” ticket price of $550 per person, features a Madison Avenue fashion company selling tea party jewelry and a paid ($120,000) speech by Sarah Palin. Tea Party Nation also maintains a message board.

– Dick Armey: As ThinkProgress has documented, Armey has a long history of organizing conservative grassroots causes in support of his corporate clients. Armey presents himself as a ideologue, who helms his nonprofit FreedomWorks as a mere exercise in his free market beliefs. But while Armey rails against the Wall Street bailout and efforts to rebuild the foundations of the economy, his own lobbying firm represented AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch during the bailouts. Indeed, even his nonprofit still pays him a lobbyist salary of $550,000 per year.

– Tea Party Express: The Tea Party Express bus tour, and affiliated political action committee, has raised funds using tea party messages. The Tea Party Express effort has been a slick public relations gimmick of the Sacramento-based consulting firm Russo, Marsh and Rogers (RMR). RMR has worked on several stealth campaigns for Republican clients, including the underhanded push to recall Gov. Gray Davis (D-CA). In any case, the Tea Party Express, which RMR staffers operate, has proved to be a cash cow for RMR — in 2009 alone, it plunged at least $1,025,559 of money it raised back into RMR.

The profiteers say that the original American revolutionaries cast their tea into the Boston harbor as a simple rejection of taxation, so the modern tea party movement should similarly reject increased financial regulations, health reform, and taxes on the rich. But the history tells a different story. Boston revolutionaries rejected subservience to the East India Company, a British-run international corporation. They cast the tea into the harbor as a symbolic message to say that their taxes should go back into the American community, not subsidizing the profits of London elites and foreign corporations. Now, Republican tea party profiteers are trying to exploit the movement, pushing them to oppose policies which would actually liberate the middle class and crack down on international corporations. Despite the populist rhetoric, the profiteers see the tea party movement as a pool to extract fundraising dollars and volunteers for Republican campaigns. Indeed, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, himself a former lobbyist, has said that he has an “expectation” that tea partiers loyally toe the Republican line.

Tea Party divide: Some complain of being ‘ignored’ by RNC, while others warn of being ‘hijacked by GOP.’

By Faiz Shakir

The “tea party” movement can’t seem to find a happy balance in its power-sharing relationship with the Republican Party. The Washington Times reports today that Dale Robertson, head of TeaParty.org, is complaining of being ignored by the GOP. “I have called into the RNC many times, and they still haven’t called me back,” Robertson said. “I’ve called them, lots of times. I called them this morning. I called them yesterday. It’s like they ignore you as they try to figure out a strategy on how to defeat you.” But some tea party organizers, like Texas-based Shane Brooks is advocating that tea partiers ignore the GOP. TPM’s Zachary Roth notes that Brooks has posted a YouTube video urging fellow activists to “boycott the National Tea Party Convention.” “We must not allow the Tea Parties and other patriotic grassroots movement to be hijacked by the GOP,” Brooks wrote. Watch it:

While the RNC can’t seem to return Robertson’s phone calls, it is more than happy to pander to the tea partiers. Last May, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said, “‘Change…is being delivered in a tea bag. And that’s a wonderful thing.” More recently, Steele has said he “embraces” the tea party movement and has claimed he’d be a protester if he weren’t in his current position.

GOP Claims It’s Upholding The Legacy Of MLK, A Fighter Against The ‘Injustice’ In Health Care Inequality

By Amanda Terkel In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Republican National Committee (RNC) put out a statement from chairman Michael Steele today honoring Dr. King’s “epic and historic fight for civil rights.” Yesterday, Sarah Palin also put up a Facebook message celebrating his “efforts against racial discrimination.” Both the RNC and Palin also tried to tie the conservative movement to King’s work:

RNC: “Though close to 50 years have come and gone since Dr. King delivered his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, the principles by which he lived and worked remain as true as the day he began his epic and historic fight for civil rights. The principles of freedom, faith, and opportunity for all people are truly timeless and will continue to influence America and the world for generations to come. As we celebrate his legacy, I’m reminded that his message is rooted in ideals and principles that the Republican Party has advocated since its inception. Today, our Party and the nation honors Dr. King’s dream by continuing his fight — the fight for all Americans to have an equal chance at the American Dream.”

Palin: “Please take a moment to tell your children about this great man. He fought for liberty and equality because he knew they were God-given and he knew that no government should be empowered to thwart our freedom. King summarized his mission when stating that no one should be judged based on skin color, but by the content of one’s character.”

King is best remembered for his work fighting racial discrimination. But King’s vision for equality extended beyond integrated schools and businesses. He was also a fierce champion for the labor movement and living wage laws. Additionally, King believed that universal health care was essential to ensuring true equality in America. In a speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1966, King famously said:

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

As the Kaiser Family Foundation has noted, the health reform bills being considered by Congress — which conservatives are opposing — would significantly benefit persons of color, who make up more than 50 percent of the uninsured (even though they comprise just one third of the U.S. population).

In September, Steele claimed that “Dr. King would be disappointed in the political leadership of this country for failing to address the least of us.” But as Richard Payne wrote in an April 2, 2006 op-ed in the Charlotte News and Observer, “Is there any doubt that King would have been on the forefront of arguments for payment of a living wage to the working poor, and that he would have advocated for universal health care?” Today in a speech at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in remembrance of King, Obama said of health reform legislation, “[U]nder the legislation I will sign into law, insurance companies won’t be able to drop you when you get sick, and more than 30 million people — our fellow Americans — will finally have insurance. … This will be a victory not for Democrats; this will be a victory for dignity and decency, for our common humanity. This will be a victory for the United States of America. “

M.C.L comment: Yes the Republican party are doing their best to uphold Martin Luther King jr's legacy just ignored the southern strategy, their last Republican nominee for president trying to stop MLK day from being a national holiday, their unofficial chairman Rush Limbaugh telling a black caller to pull a bone out their nose and claiming the media wants a quarterback to succeed only because he's black, opposition to programs like affirmative action, against workers' rights, supporter of the idea of war first diplomacy much later, weaken the middle class, their tea party members who like to carry around signs of the first ever elected black president dressed as a witch doctor with a bone through his name and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

Will the RNC apologize for racist Facebook photo? By Amanda Terkel at 2:27 pm Will the RNC apologize for racist Facebook photo?

By Amanda Terkel/Think Progress

Since Oct. 20, the Republican National Committee’s Facebook page has had a picture of President Obama with a caption reading “Miscegenation is a crime against American values”:

As Raw Story notes, the RNC finally took the photo down today, after readers at Democratic Underground first began discussing it on Sunday. While it’s likely that the RNC “wasn’t aware the racist photo was on their page and it wasn’t produced or posted by anyone at the RNC,” the group had attacked MoveOn.org for a similar incident in 2004. As Chris Harris at Media Matters Action Network notes, when “a web user posted a self-produced web video that compared President Bush to Hitler as part of a MoveOn.org video contest, the RNC acted as if the video had been produced by MoveOn itself.” According to the National Journal:

“This is the worst and most vile form of political hate speech,” Republican National Committee spokesman Ed Gillespie proclaimed. “MoveOn.org should apologize.”

Boyd did just that, expressing “deep regret” that the ads made it through MoveOn’s filtering process, and promising to scrutinize such material in the future. Pariser emphasized that MoveOn had not produced the ads, not aired them, not endorsed them in the voting, and had removed them from the Web site –adding that the RNC had put them on its Web site to score points. Still, the damage had been done.

Will the RNC now issue a public apology?

M.C.L Comment: Since Republicans discover the invention of photo-shop they gone crazy with the photos comparing President Obama to all kinds of crazy things.. I guess right wingers can't complain when people start posting photos making fun of the tea baggers, Beck fanboys and your garden variety right wing loon.

RNC refuses to distance itself from far-right website.

By Zaid Jilani

Last Monday, John Henke at TheNextRight, a right-of-center blog, called for a conservative boycott of the far-right website WorldNetDaily (WND). Henke referred to WND as “the pamphlet” of the birther movement, which he has referred to as “fringe idiocy.” Following his call for the boycott, Henke discovered that the RNC had rented access to the WND e-mail list. Henke then e-mailed the RNC and ask them to stop supporting the far-right website. The RNC Press Secretary responded to Henke’s e-mail by dodging the issue and refusing to distance itself from WND:

Nice to meet you. Pls note that we have already weighed in on the birther issue — weeks ago. Thanks.

Henke e-mailed additional questions to the RNC but has yet to recieve a response. Reflecting on the Press Secretary’s comments, Henke writes, “In the 1960’s, Goldwater and a few Republicans had the integrity and guts to denounce the irresponsible fringe in the fevered swamps of the Right. Today, as far as I can tell, the Republican National Committee works with them.”