GOP foot-in-mouth disease

I'm feeling a bit punchy tonight (have no idea why). And so I'm getting a bit of a kick out of the way conservatives continue to push their foot deeper into their mouths every time they open them.

For example, have you seen that they tried to make some big brew-ha-ha over the basketballs that were used at the White House Easter Egg Roll? Here's a Fox Nation screenshot from the Media Matters story. All the usual suspects picked it up.



Apparently all the wingnuts think they've caught President Obama in some sort of hubris. But of course that only works when they ignore the fact that the balls were supplied by the NBA/WNBA players at the event.

Remember where you saw this. I'd predict that somewhere in your future lies a conversation in which some wingnut is going to tell you that President Obama is arrogant. When you ask them why they think that, I'll bet money they'll mention this story. Once you've straightened them out - you'll need to thank me for giving you the scoop.

Next, I suppose folks with reasonable intelligence would expect that asking Herman Cain to pontificate on the growing gender gap between Romney and Obama would be a risky move. But then the folks at Fox News have never been accused of anything resembling "reasonable" or "intelligence." So of course they took a crack at it. Here is the result.



I'm not sure I can come up with anything better on that one that Steve Benen's reaction.

Cain was addressing the gender gap in the latest national polling, with a narrow majority of men supporting Mitt Romney and a strong majority of women backing President Obama.

Reflecting on this, the failed presidential candidate said, "I think many men are much more familiar with the failed policies than a lot of other people, as well as the general public."

Hmm. First, the argument here is that women would agree with men, if only women weren't, in Cain's mind, ignorant. I'll go out on a limb here and say that's probably not helpful.

Second, Cain is also willing to dismiss women voters in general as "other people," as if men are the voters who really count.

It almost makes the caterpillar talk appear insightful and respectful by comparison.

To switch metaphors for a minute, I can't help but think of that old saying about the best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging.

It seems the GOP can't figure out how to put the shovel down.