Damn, it's a shame to waste a song that good and performed that well -- fuck Lindsay Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac! Delores and the Cranberries rule! -- but it oddly makes a point. Not so flashy may be better...but you can really get it wrong as well. I guess I see the current Republican-T-baggers as a cover band on Ross Perot. Who was kind of a cover band for FDR. Keep that in mind...
It's hard for me to feel sorry for Bill "Fisting" Frist and Lindsay Graham. Although, Fist did decide that the nonsense that was being the Republican leader was enough to get him to retire from politics and go back to medicine and Graham is more libertarian and reasonable than most Republicans from South Carolina. There is some content to their character.
Still, Frist is kinda sorta calling out the elected leadership of the party to goddamn do their jobs and provide leadership as opposed to standing on the sidelines, cheering on the incompetent, the crazed, the insane and the blindly ambitious. Noble of him, but I suspect futile. Hell, he then promises he's not running for office. There mofos wouldn't listen to the reincarnation of Barry Goldwater. Hell, Goldwater and Jesus could appear at a Tea Party, and they'd get shouted down. Jesus would probably get stoned...with stones.
So, saying stuff like this is silly on Graham's part.
Ok, Senator, when did you join NORMAL? I know you cringe whenever someone says "Palin" or "Joe the Dickhead" within earshot, but since NIXON!fucking NIXON! the party has come and stayed in power on the backs of a core of ANGRY WHITE GUYS! That's your thing; to quote you ersatz, erstwhile leader, "That's the way we roll..."
I listened to something else Frist had to say on CSPAN, and it was reasonable, rational and something I actually agree with, and about health care. He began by saying that the Obama plan is not socialized medicine; socialized medicine involves the government owning the hospitals and paying all the salaries. He then raves about the overall quality of care in the UK, as a guy who did a year's cardiac surgical residency in the UK. Where was this guy when his doppelganger was diagnosing Terry Schiavo based on TV pictures and threatening the "nuclear" option on filibusters
Could we be seeing a rebirth of principled conservatism based on the ideas of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower and, shudder to say it, Nixon. ( On most things, Nixon was substantively to the left of Bill Clinton. )
Well, as left-liberal-anarcho-Defeatist, I can always trust bad to drive out good in politics; I think the right is pretty well fucked. Between Steele and his lost love, Sarah Fey, we can count on lots of good times ahead. And, it keeps getting better all the time. Up in the far reaches of upstate New York, the conservative Republicans are struggling against the Teabaggers who seem to be channelling Lindsay Buckingham instead of Graham.
Plattsburg is not Manhattan, and frankly, since the Irish-Indian part of the mix that is I comes from there, I'm not sure it isn't really in Northern Quebec. It's colder than Viking hell in the winter, humid and mosquito infested when it's not under eight or so feet of snow and people get married in Wool Shirts with Elmer Fudd hats. And, that's the women. If there's a safe Republican seat, I think this would be it.
Republicans, worried a winnable seat is slipping away, are scrambling. Mr. Boehner, the House Minority leader, promised to support Ms. Scozzafava for a seat on the House Armed Services Committee -- important in a district that's home to Fort Drum, an army base.The Scozzafava campaign issued a flier headlined: "What conservatives need to know about Dede," including such points as "Dede believes government spending is out of control." She's touted her conservative credentials, including an endorsement by the National Rifle Association. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is endorsing her, according to a letter provided by her campaign.
Now given this gal's background, in Lindsay Graham-land she'd probably be a moderate Democrat. However, in upstate, that's not enough for the pure of heart these days. And, there are some oddball quirks..."Even before the forum began, it was clear which candidate had the audience's heart. "I've never met the man, and he's got my vote," Gary Barber, 69, a retired schoolteacher from nearby Au Sable Forks, said of Mr. Hoffman. "He's conservative and he's not a lawyer.'" Well, she's a conservative and doesn't appear to be lawyer either.
In the Journal article cited above, former congressman and current Republican strategist Vin Weber compares the Tea Baggers to the followers of Ross Perot. Well, I find that an interesting comparison. I had a number of moderate right-libertarian friends during the Perot days who were followers; and, I have to admit that his common sense was refreshing and right on. Crazier than hell, of course; and, a cantankerous old coot who would never have been able to effectively govern, but very bright, charismatic and understandably so, with a career based on solid accomplishment. He and his followers had an effect that wasn't all negative and their appeal was populist. These guys, not so much. No hero-philosopher-warrior like Admiral Stockdale has joined the movement; Sarah Palin's soldier son supposedly says he's not a Republican. Compare Palin's "pitbull with lipstick" self-definition with this from the late Admiral, via Wiki:
As his introduction to the large segment of American voters who had not previously heard of him, the debate was disastrous for Stockdale. He was portrayed in the media as elderly and confused, and his reputation never recovered. In a 1999 interview with Jim Lehrer, Stockdale explained that the statements were intended as an introduction of him and his record to the television audience:
It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, "Who am I? Why am I here?" and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, seven-and-a-half years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the ... American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of them off the map. And I never—I couldn't approach—I don't say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different.
Perot and Stockdale received 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, one of the best showings by an independent ticket in US electoral history, although they did not carry any States.
So, let me be the first to praise the new hidden, high order Reptillian overlords of the Republican party, and wish them well. Crusader AXE has already endorse Palin-Steele as the Republican ticket in 2012, but I really think that she and Michelle Bachman need to really align themselves with the guys who figure Lindsay Graham is a Democrat and that Bill Frist has been bought out by big money to do Obama's bidding. Sincerity without sense is more than a little disturbing. And, there is a fine line imitation as flattery, and imitation as farce. Given the choice, HANG IN THERE T-BAGS!
Go Your Own Way
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