And according to Newt today, Nancy Pelosi can be Mitt’s partner in that deli.  Pelosi told CNN that she’s sure Newt will never be president because “There’s something I know.”

Newt replied, “I think if she knows something, she ought to say it, and if she doesn’t know something, she ought to quit saying it.  But this is baloney.“  Emphasis added.

But no one quotes these folks much now, save for former English teachers typing away on a quiet Sunday evening in Hollywood. We now have other cultural touchstones. But luckily we have Mel Brooks, and we have Blazing Saddles – and an Occupy Movement that seems to be quoting one of the odder characters in that movie – “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”

Who hasn’t felt that way? We’ve all felt that way. And then there are those words of consolation offered to the handsome new black sheriff in that all-white frontier town:

What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny?” “Make yourself at home?” “Marry my daughter?” You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land – the common clay of the New West. You know… morons.

Perhaps Barack Obama likes this movie, although he’d better not admit it. He got in enough trouble long ago when he was overheard commenting on those voters in small towns who are simply bitter and ”cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

You know… morons. It took him quite a while to dig himself out of that hole.

But, more and more, people may be watching that video clip of Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Schtupp singing “I’m Tired” – it’s classic. It may be the ultimate Marlene Dietrich spoof, delighting film buffs and cultural historians. But who hasn’t felt that way? We’ve all felt that way. You really don’t have to know a damned thing about Marlene Dietrich as the Blue Angel to get it. We’re all singing that song now. Enough is enough.

And that is said on the Sunday evening after two more Republican debates, one Saturday night on ABC and one Sunday morning in place of Meet the Press (NBC) – and both long and tedious. Much was said, much of which had been said before, and much of which was nonsense. One thinks of Samuel Johnson – “Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.” It was like that.

And Slate’s John Dickerson hones in on one key problem that surfaced in the second debate:

Newt Gingrich spoke for everyone in America when he asked during the NBC News-Facebook New Hampshire debate, “Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” Gingrich was talking to Mitt Romney, but let his exasperated call reach President Obama and leaders in Congress and let it ring in the ears of all the GOP candidates on that stage. Newt Gingrich is not immune to the request. Any candidate who says his adultery came in part from loving the country too much knows how to slice that baloney thick and wriggling.

Yes, it’s baloney, but Dickerson argues that what Gingrich said may actually represent progress:

Fifteen debates and finally the exchanges are getting a little more frank, a little more serious, and inching towards some identifiable lines of reason. The candidates are talking about the leadership attributes necessary to be president and pressing each other on their qualities. They are actually debating, owning up to their arguments, and stating them clearly. In prior debates, the candidates merely recited their stump speeches in parallel. Or they sniped over useful things like Mitt Romney’s lawn care company.

But there’s pious baloney of many types, and Dickerson suggests one must know which type of baloney one is talking about:

One is the lunch meat you hurl at your opponents or dish out to cover up a shortcoming. When Gingrich called himself a small businessman during questions over his payments from Freddie Mac, this was pious baloney. He wanted to align himself with the noble, dry-cleaning Mom and Pop to duck being charged as an influence peddler. So too when he inveighed against highly paid Washington commentators, in the last debate, since he was one. This is called politics. Sometimes politics requires a dash of pious baloney during negotiations, public ceremonies, and other times that call for mild prevarication. Mostly, though, it’s regrettable and we’d all like to see less of it.

That’s business-as-usual baloney, and relatively harmless, or at least expected. But Dickerson is more concerned with what he calls the pious baloney that points to a deep character flaw:

It is that posture you take easily, frequently, and dishonestly on all manner of issues because you have no core and you’re constantly re-characterizing your motivations and positions. This second type of baloney is what has dogged Romney this entire campaign. Some conservatives don’t think he has a core. Romney said in Sunday morning’s debate that he’s gotten more conservative as he’s grown older, but if he has no core, how do voters believe him?

It is one thing to be accused of this condition, it is more damaging to mint fresh product during a debate with everyone watching.

And that’s what Romney did:

When asked about the super PAC ads attacking Gingrich, Romney at first said, “I haven’t seen ‘em.” It was a part of his larger effort to distance himself from the attacks being made on his behalf. But moments later he was able to recite, in considerable detail, the exact criticisms in “the ad I saw.” It didn’t seem plausible that a man who was so distanced from these super PAC ads could detail their claims with such specificity. This is where Gingrich’s pious baloney charge comes in.

Basically, Romney was under attack for being what Dickerson calls malleable:

If he’d been such a good governor, Rick Santorum asked, why didn’t he run for office again? “Why did you bail out?” asked Santorum. “I go and fight the fight. If it was that important to the people of Massachusetts that you were going to go and fight for them, at least you can stand up.”

Under attack for lacking the courage of his convictions, Romney tried to pivot. “Run again? That would be about me. I was trying to help get the state into the best shape as I possibly could – left the world of politics, went back into business.” This was a whopper and Gingrich called him on it, pointing out at length that Romney didn’t suddenly develop a yen for becoming a citizen when he left office in 2007 and started his presidential campaign for the 2008 cycle.

And this is where the progress was made, as the debate, for some reason, actually became a debate about what makes a good leader:

When Romney makes the case about Washington politicians who want to get re-elected, he is making a character charge – they are self-dealing careerists – but he is also arguing that the Washington worldview limits them.

In the debate the night before, for example, Romney argued that only Washington politicians would call him a mere “manager” for having been a CEO. They just didn’t understand the world of the real economy and all of the leadership skill it takes to run a business. “I wish people in Washington had the experience of going out and working in the real economy first, before they went there, and they’d understand some of the real lessons of leadership,” said Romney, who argues that business experience is a necessary requirement for improving the economy as president.

But Santorum and Gingrich offer a different kind of leadership:

The experience they present entails working within the political system to move the country in their chosen direction. Gingrich has the better case. He’s done more, and he offered a strong argument for how you can lead and work with the other party even when you are trying to defeat its leaders in elections. “As speaker I was negotiating with Bill Clinton. He knew I wanted him to be a one-term president. And we got a lot of things done, including welfare reform … the first tax cut in 16 years, 4.2 percent unemployment, and four straight years of a balanced budget.”

And there was Jon Huntsman:

Taking umbrage at Romney’s criticism from the night before that he had worked for President Obama as ambassador to China, Huntsman said he was offended that his public service and duty to country was so devalued. It was that kind of attack, he argued, that has made politics a zero-sum game in which nothing gets done. It was his strongest debate so far and the best articulation of his candidacy.

So this is progress, if you understand the taxonomy of baloney. But that’s not really progress. It was just a catch phrase Gingrich wanted to attach to Romney – think of Mitt and those two words pop up – Pious Baloney. Keep it simple. That’s the ticket. And the Democrats are at it too, with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, referring to Romney’s work at Bain Capital, calling him a Job Cremator – and as head of the Democratic National Committee that’s her job. Find the devastating catch-words and pin them on the guy. What she said has the additional advantage of being pretty funny. It’s more Oscar Wilde than Samuel Johnson. She’s funny.

And Newt Gingrich is notoriously unfunny – a mean and nasty and arrogant and angry man. But of course they’re all unfunny, and Dickerson addresses that in this companion piece:

A remarkable fact about the 2012 Republican presidential campaign is that it is not funny. Republican candidates give speech after speech and draw only a handful of chuckles, and the occasional wry smile. This makes for boring politics, but it also makes for bad politics. People want to like politicians they vote for and a smile helps with that. Laughter is also an effective tool for undermining your opponents and spreading your message with voters.

You would be on firm ground if you said that times are too serious for a lot of jokes. You would also be on boring ground, and we would quickly move away from you and find someone more pleasant to talk to. It is possible to be humorous and serious at the same time. Great presidents who faced trying times were known for their humor. FDR mocked his Republican opponents in his “Fala speech,” which got its name from his charge that his opponents would stoop to even attacking his dog: “I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them.” Abe Lincoln’s wit was collected in volumes Old Abe’s Jokes and Abe’s Jokes-Fresh from Abraham’s Bosom, John Kennedy was a first-class wit, and Ronald Reagan was a famous jokester. “I hope you’re all Republicans,” he quipped before doctors operated on him after the 1981 assassination attempt.

But those days are no more:

This is a once-in-a-generation political humor crisis. Every campaign since 1968 has had at least one candidate who could make audiences smile. In 2008, Gov. Mike Huckabee and McCain could have qualified for Last Comic Standing. Even grimmer candidates such as Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan cracked jokes. My favorite from Dole, who wrote a book on political wit: “History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford and Nixon – See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil.”

It seems these guys just don’t get it:

All of the Republican contenders insist they are optimists, but they don’t seem to realize that there is no better way to convey optimism than with a smile. Humor suggests that no matter how dark things are, you have the sensibility to laugh, to see a bit of sun around the corner. This is McCain’s gift. He certainly has no trouble conveying his fears – campaigning with Romney this week he spoke in dire terms about the danger the current president presents to American foreign policy – but his jokes suggest a brighter day.

And it’s simply hard to sell despair. And additionally Dickerson also points out humor is also good viral campaigning:

A joke well-told gives the audience something they can pass along later to their friends. It magnifies your message easily or at least makes voters feel good enough that they report back favorably about their experience at your rally. Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign – and arguably his presidency – was defined in a joke. During a speech attacking Republicans during that campaign, a supporter yelled “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” Truman replied, “I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.” That quip became Truman’s nickname.

Yes, a good joke that says it all can spread like wildfire, or like a virus, infecting everything. And Dickerson argues that there’s nothing to fear in being funny:

Wit suggests an agile mind, which is useful for a president who needs to cut through complex subjects, rally people to a cause, or break the tension in negotiations. Given the polarization in Washington at the moment, perhaps wit is required more than ever. Peggy Noonan tells the story about Reagan who listened while a reluctant senator explained why he wasn’t supporting a bill. “I’d jump out of a plane for you,” said the senator, testifying to his loyalty. Reagan responded, “Jump.” He got the vote.

Still one must be careful with this:

James Garfield’s political adviser warned him against humor – “Never make the people laugh. If you would succeed in life you must be solemn, solemn as an ass.” Herman Cain used humor so much to dodge questions that it was unsettling. That joke about not knowing the name of foreign leaders isn’t that funny if polls consistently show that voters think you’re incapable of handling a foreign policy crisis or managing the serious duties of the Oval Office.

But then Dickerson says that his characterization of the current field may be slightly unfair to Newt Gingrich. This one guy has been known to at least make a quip or two. But it just doesn’t work:

Gingrich is so busy calling people stupid and adopts such a lecturing tone it may be harder to hear the humor in his pitch. And the bile in some of his jokes may sap their effectiveness. When he said Michelle Bachmann was “factually challenged” and compared her to one of his dumb students, it may have struck some as funny, but it might also have just seemed mean.

And that’s why Dickerson calls this the Great Republican Humor Crisis of 2012 – but he means that humorously.

But Politico reports that Jon Huntsman now openly questions his party’s sanity:

In an interview Friday the Utah governor turned China ambassador said bluntly that the GOP had lost its equilibrium in the Obama era but predicted it would eventually return to its bearings – and vindicate his own brand of pragmatism.

“I believe in the ideas put forward by Theodore White, the cycles of history,” Huntsman told POLITICO. “I believe we are in one such cycle. I think that cycle ultimately takes us to a sane Republican Party based on real ideas.”

Suggesting that the GOP currently is something other than sane isn’t the best way to win the support of Republican voters and may stir speculation that he’s preparing to launch a third-party bid.

And Steve Benen comments:

Huntsman is probably confusing Theodore White and Arthur Schlesinger, but the larger point is what matters here. Huntsman returned from service in the Obama administration, working under certain assumptions about the state of his Republican Party. What he came to realize is that the GOP of 2011 and 2012 is just not where he thought it was.

This is a party so radical that an anti-abortion, anti-tax former governor who’s vowed to eliminate Medicare is considered a center-left candidate, unworthy of consideration.

Huntsman looks forward to the eventual reemergence of “a sane Republican Party.” I suspect he’s not the only one with that wish, but this is not the year for such a development.

There will be no sanity this time around, or humor – just several varieties of pious baloney.

And there was Mitt Romney making the case that electoral politics is for wealthy people:

I happened to see my dad run for governor when he was 54 years old,” Romney said. “He had good advice to me. He said never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage. If you find yourself in a position when you can serve, you ought to have a responsibility to do so if you think you can make a difference, and don’t get involved in politics when your kids are still young because it may turn their heads.

And Benen offers this:

Here’s the follow-up question: if there’s some blue-collar worker in Ohio, who cares about public service and is thinking about asking his neighbors for their vote, should he or she stand aside and allow some rich person to “get involved in politics” instead?

Indeed, Ben Smith noted the exchange “brought out Romney at his most tone-deaf, and echoed his offer of a $10,000 bet to Rick Perry in an earlier debate.”

I rather doubt this was a planned line; Romney probably just said what was on his mind. That’s why “just be yourself” probably isn’t good advice for this guy.

As for what was actually proposed in the Saturday night debate, see Andrew Sullivan’s live-blogging of what was said – and as for Sunday morning, see Talking Point Memo’s Debate in 100 Seconds: Debate for Breakfast – both useful. We should reinvade and occupy Iraq right now, and bomb Iran immediately (along with replacing their government with one we like) – and there is far more discrimination against Christians than gays, or anyone else. And it has to stop. Who will stand up for the oppressed few against the many? It’s a hoot – both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. Samuel Johnson is always pithy.

But we’re all singing along with Lili Von Schtupp. The song is “I’m Tired.” It’s our new national anthem.

via Maggie Haberman, Politico

If it’s Sunday, it’s meet the candidates.

In a debate moderated by “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, the six remaining major GOP presidential hopefuls took the stage for the second time in 12 hours — and this one was a far livelier and entertaining debate than the forum the night before.

Below are POLITICO’s six takeaways from the NBC News/Facebook event in Concord, N.H.:

1) For the most part, the attacks on Mitt Romney didn’t stick

Romney was under much more forceful attack in Sunday morning’s debate than he was in the Saturday night faceoff. He handled it with mixed levels of success.

For the first half of the debate, Romney was under sustained assault from Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — the ghosts of his 1994 race against Ted Kennedy were summoned again — and the former Massachusetts governor generally handled it smoothly.

Romney didn’t get rattled and lose his cool, as he did in the Las Vegas debate when Rick Perry went at him. And he pushed back hard against the aggressors.

He also managed to respond to a question about comments he made in 1994 about supporting gay rights, well, without sounding like he was distancing himself from them.

However, he had some faulty moments, including his boast that he’d forced Kennedy to take out a mortgage on his home to keep fighting for his seat — a line that Democrats are sure to use against the multimillionaire in an economic climate with a high rate of foreclosures. Romney also gave an eyebrow-raiser about why he decided not to run for Massachusetts governor again, after Santorum noted he was seen as trailing in the polls.

His exchange with Gingrich about super PACs — in which he said he hadn’t seen ads by a group supporting him and then listed specifically every attack in them — may live on. His opponents have, if not explicitly, then tacitly, decided to make an issue of character instead of Romney’s specific record, most notably “Romneycare.”

However, Romney is still a superior debater compared to the field, most of whom seemed either unable or unwilling to maintain attacks against him. Once again, Ron Paul came to Romney’s rescue by changing the subject instead of answering a question about whether his rival is electable.

At this point, Romney’s so far ahead of the pack — particularly in New Hampshire — that it’s not clear how much a Sunday morning debate will resonate going forward.

2) Newt coined a memorable phrase

It was the moment when Gingrich made clear that he was going to come out swinging this time, after largely taking a pass on Saturday night.

And he did it with a clever phrase — telling Romney to cut the “pious baloney” — that will almost certainly find its way into Democratic ads if the former Massachusetts governor is the nominee.

There were instant jokes about the phrase — “What does that taste like?” — but for Gingrich, it was a significant moment after telegraphing different messages about how he plans to handle the campaign heading into South Carolina. And it will be one of the lines from the debate that people will remember.

Given how aggressively the super PAC supporting him is going at Romney — and his own disdain for the “pious baloney” he says Romney is espousing — it will be hard for Gingrich to do anything less than own the negative message.

How it all plays with voters remains to be seen. For one thing, Gingrich on attack doesn’t always translate well. That said, his poll numbers are low now, and his options for climbing back are limited.

3) Romney will need more practice for the general election debates

All of the debates so far have been multicandidate affairs featuring undercard hopefuls attacking each other. If Romney is the nominee, he won’t have the luxury of letting others slug it out. His exchange with Gingrich over super PAC ads was a reminder of that.

Neither Romney nor Gingrich came off particularly well in that moment, in part, because both claimed they didn’t see ads that they then described in detail. And Romney benefited by the fact that Gingrich is something of a flawed messenger in this type of fight.

But President Barack Obama, regardless of opinion about his governance abilities, is a good debater — and one whose likeability numbers remain high in public polls. Romney still gets a bit shaken in the heat of battle, so he’ll need to work on one-on-one debate skills before the fall.

4) This was Jon Huntsman’s best day since he got in

It may be too late to matter — or maybe not, if tracking polls showing Huntsman on the rise are to be believed.

The former Utah governor got the most air time he’s had in any of the debates so far. That is partly a product, it seemed, of the fact that the debate was in New Hampshire, where he has anchored his campaign.

Huntsman has staked the fate of his bid on doing well in this state — how well is something of a fluid measure, according to his advisers — and it paid off for him.

-Continue Reading-

Following the latest Republican debates, I was tempted to give a baloney recipe. (I never thought I’d say this, but shout out to Newt Gingrich for calling out Romney on his pious baloney.)

Ann Romney says her husband likes peanut butter on everything so here’s a spicy Singaporean recipe for Garlic-Peanut Sauce from Steve Raichlen’s cool book, Planet Barbecue!: 309 Recipes, 60 Countries. Obama 2012!

Fried Garlic Peanut Sauce
2 T. vegetable oil
5 cloves garlic, 3 cloves thinly sliced crosswise and 2 cloves minced
1 shallot, minced
1 stalk lemongrass, trimmed and minced, or 2 strips (each 1/2 by 2 inches) lemon zest
1 to 3 small hot chiles, such as Thai chiles or serrano or jalapeño peppers, stemmed, seeded, and minced (for a hotter peanut sauce, leave the seeds in)
1 T. dried shrimp, minced, or 1 teaspoon fish sauce (optional)
3/4 c. peanut butter
1 c. unsweetened coconut milk, or as needed
2 T. sugar, or more to taste
2 T. soy sauce
1 t. fresh lime juice, or more to taste
1 T. finely chopped cilantro
Coarse salt (kosher or sea) and freshly ground pepper

Heat the oil in a wok or saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the sliced garlic and cook, stirring, until golden, 2 minutes. Remove the garlic with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain. Add the 2 cloves of minced garlic, the shallot, lemongrass, chile(s), and dried shrimp, if using, to the wok and cook over medium-high heat until fragrant and lightly browned, 2 minutes.

Stir in the peanut butter, coconut milk, sugar, soy sauce, fish sauce, if using (instead of the dried shrimp), lime juice, and 3/4 cup water. Reduce the heat and gently simmer the sauce until it is thick but pourable, 5 to 8 minutes. Stir in the cilantro during the last 2 minutes of cooking.

Just before serving, stir in the fried garlic slices. If the sauce has gotten too thick and pasty, add a tablespoon or so of water. Taste and correct the seasoning, adding salt and pepper, and more sugar and lime juice if needed. The sauce should be richly flavored.

Is “pious baloney” the Catholic answer to Kosher baloney?

Newt himself is no slouch at dishing out the pious baloney.  It was a classic “pot meet kettle” moment.

Mitt Romney said last night that he thinks only wealthy people should run for office:

Recalling something his father, who served as governor of Michigan, told him, Romney said, “He had good advice to me. He said, ‘Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage. If you find yourself in a position when you can serve, why you ought to have a responsibility to do so if you think you can make a difference, you oughta have a responsibility to do so.’” A few moments later,

Romney bragged about making former senator Ted Kennedy take out a mortgage on his house when Romney ran against him. “I was happy that he had to take a mortgage out on his house to ultimately defeat me,” Romney said.

 Here were their ‘thoughts’ on same-sex marriage:

NEWT GINGRICH: We want to make it possible to have those things that are most intimately human between friends.

RICK SANTORUM: I’m certainly not going to have a federal law that bans adoption for gay couples, when there are only gay couples in certain states.

MITT ROMNEY: There is every right for people in this country to form long-term committed relationships with one another. That doesn’t mean that they have to call it marriage.

RICK PERRY: That is a war against religion and it’s going to stop under a Perry administration.

I don’t even know what Gingrich means.

And here’s an interesting exchange between Mitt and Newt:

ROMNEY: “This for me, politics is not a career,” Romney, who began running for office in 1994, replied. “For me, my career was being in business. … I long for a day when, instead of having people who go to Washington for 20 and 30 years, who get elected and then when they lose office, they stay there and they make money as lobbyists or connecting to businesses. I think it stinks.”

GINGRICH: “Look, can we drop a little bit of the pious boloney? The fact is, you ran in 94 and lost. That’s why you weren’t serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is you had a very bad re-election rating. You dropped out of office. You had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn’t have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what to do. You were running for president while you were governor.”

“You then promptly re-entered politics. You happened to lose to [Arizona Sen. John McCain] as you had lost to [former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy]. Now, you’re back running. You’ve been running consistently for years and years and years and years. So, this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind, just level with the American people. You’ve been running for at least since the 1990s.”

Put Mitt and Newt together and you’ve got the best pious baloney sandwich ever.

To summarize: