"10 days to go? I think it's disgraceful." Libertarian VP candidate William Weld on Clinton's FBI investigation. https://t.co/VRBJF16OCw
— New Day (@NewDay) October 31, 2016
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Weld was, for those too young to remember, essentially chased out of the Republican Party by Jesse Helms during the first Clinton administration. Ol’ Jesse felt that neither Bill C nor Bill W would sufficiently kowtow to the ‘essential traditions of the Senate’, aka the naked bigotry of the hardcore defenders of the Confederacy, unlike that upstanding gentleman Ronnie Reagan. Let the records show that, even twenty years ago, the GOP was the party of out-and-proud racists who’d kneecap each other rather than give up one iota of their ancient tribal prejudices…
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Ian
We are talking about a man willing to sign on as vice president to Gary Johnson.
Betty Cracker
I lived in Massachusetts for a few years after college. Weld was the governor and seemed like a decent guy. That surprised me because, being from the South, I was used to bible-humping mouth-breathers like the aforementioned Jesse Helms as the GOP standard.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
When Jesse Helms died in 2008, he left the world a better place – at least to the very great extent in which the world is a much better place without him.
JGabriel
@Betty Cracker:
The tradition of Republican liberalism that began with Lincoln and continued up till Teddy Roosevelt, managed to keep a toe hold in New England and the Northeast for while after the GOP started it’s slide towards Conservatism with Taft.
Weld is probably the last vestige of that liberal Republican tradition.
Mary G
I like the Jill Stein diss when he said the “three parties that are viable.”
@Ian: This interview may be his amends for that mistake. Very enthusiastic about Hillary without throwing his running mate all the way under the bus.
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: Yeah, that was well-played. I hope Stein gets less than one percent of the vote and that the Greens go back to the drawing board. They should focus on local and state-level races to build national credibility. This quadrennial vanity candidate circus is bullshit.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@JGabriel: That tradition remained in the Midwest as well. When I got to Minnesota in the mid 1980s, it had two Republican senators, Rudy Boschwitz and David Durenburger, both of whom were decent and moderate. Into the mid 1990s, I voted twice for Arne Carlson to be governor.
I haven’t heard from either of the first two lately, though they’re both still alive. Carlson has been saying bad things about the Republican party since before his second term as governor. He lost the primary in 1994 to Jon Grunseth, and then got back on the ticket well after the primaries after Grunseth was caught ogling fourteen year olds. The party already hated him at that point, and really loathed the fact that he was governor as a Republican. He worked mostly with Democrats, and got good shit done. I’d vote for him again in a heartbeat.
A
Also, too, Weld is a deadhead.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@A: Does he have Cadillac?
rikyrah
Good Morning?,Everyone ?
rikyrah
Game 7…..eeeekkkkk??????
F
Bullshit. Lowell Weicker is the last decent Republican.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: What, you think they are interested in building a viable political party? That takes work, screw that.
raven
What about Chafee?
NobodySpecial
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m hoping for a bounce back from a disastrous start to NaNoWriMo.
Mustang Bobby
@Ian: Yeah, I think they would have had a better shot at a third party run if it had been Weld at the top of the ticket and Johnson as Veep. I lived in NM when Johnson was governor and he was harmless; he seemed more interested in triathalons than governing.
Mustang Bobby
@F: I’ll see your Lowell Weicker and raise you one Bill Milliken, governor of Michigan who succeeded George Romney in 1969.
WereBear
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Up this early to take Mr WereBear for a diagnostic. More annoying than serious.
Patricia Kayden
@Ian: What’s wrong with that? At least he has consistently spoke out against Trump
@raven: Who? Just joking. I remember him — kind of — as a Democratic Presidential Candidate along with Jim Webb. That was ages ago.
Patricia Kayden
@JGabriel: Ditto Scalia and Breitbart.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: He’s a Dem.
Schlemazel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Rudy was a soulless bastard who only believed in himself. He is the guy that invented & popularized the plaid shirt bullshit that is so common today. As head of the Republican Senate Campaign COmmittee he circulated a set of rule that included being seen in plaid flannel shirts because it looked like a common man, If you had to wear a suit & tie make a big show of shedding the coat & rolling up your sleeves. Meanwhile he supported the worst of the GOP agenda.
Arne Carlson had been the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis & was rejected by the GOP until their chosen candidate got caught molesting a teen girl. He was not good enough for the GOP during his first term but won a primary. He sold off the profitable lines of the public transit to cover his tax cut induced budget shortfalls. The short term gain has led to worse public transit at higher rates for the people who can least afford it. Not really moderate as much as a nice face on ugly policies we are still paying for today.
Schlemazel
The civil rights act and voting rights were passed with support of the last moderate Republicans they were rewarded by being run out of their party.
Bill Clinton was perhaps just a bit left of the Republicans and I know a couple of libertarians who believe he was the last moderate Republican President.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Patricia Kayden: Except that the evil those two did lives after them. It will be a long, long time before we are rid of the stench.
Mustang Bobby
@Schlemazel: The best thing Rudy Boschwitz ever did was his commercials for Plywood Minnesota. I couldn’t believe that he was elected from the same state that gave us Hubert Humphrey and Fritz Mondale, and I was really happy when Paul Wellstone (RIP) kicked his plaid-covered ass to the curb.
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Weld is a Libertarian. Like Chafee he WAS a puke.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Schlemazel: There are a few Democrats who remember what liberalism was, who say that Carter was the last liberal Democrat, and that the Clintons and Obama are more in the mold of Weicker and Rockefeller.
Zinsky
I wouldn’t sing this slick con man’s praises too loudly. The asshole would still gut Social Security and every other successful social program in his blind worship of the glorious ” free market”.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Schlemazel: Carlson was never Minneapolis mayor. He served a term on the city council as a Republican, and lost to the incumbent Democrat when he ran for mayor in 1969. He served for twelve years as the State Auditor (I love the fact that, in Minnesota, the position of State Auditor can be a steppingstone to higher office), and then ran for governor in 1990. Grunseth beat him in the primary that year (I’d thought it was the 94 campaign), only to have it revealed that he’d invited three teenage girls to go skinny-dipping with him back in 1981; no actual molestation was ever alleged. Carlson replaced him on the ballot and won. He won the GOP primary over Alan Quist in 1994 for his second term.
Matt McIrvin
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Carter the last liberal Democrat? I thought it was usually supposed to be Lyndon Johnson (pity about the Vietnam thing).
Anyway, I think I agree with Scott Lemieux’s argument that the liberalism of some vanished Democratic Party is greatly exaggerated. They were way to the right of today’s Democrats on most of the cultural hot-button issues, and of course if you get back before the Sixties they get racially reactionary. Basically there was a swing to the economic right in the Bill Clinton era as a response to Reaganism, just to survive–but they’ve been moving left again since the George W. Bush years.
liberal
@JGabriel: buhbuhbuh what about Charlie Baker?!!1!
liberal
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, he wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination liberal. Started the Reagan military build-up and Reagan deregulation thing before Reagan did.
That said, Reagan was of course far worse, and he’s been a great ex-president.
Much of the party is still to the right of where it was in the past on economic issues.
Chris
@JGabriel:
More than a toe hold, I’d say – Ike was definitely in that moderate-to-liberal tradition, and so were a lot of Republicans until the eighties/nineties.
Rob in CT
But the swing back is clearly underway. This should be at least occasionally noted & celebrated.
laura
@rikyrah: good morning, your Team put on quite a show last night.
dww44
@Comrade Scrutinizer: That’s probably true, but given how far right the country has become since Reagan the both of them had to move to the center to be politically viable. I’d like it if an Elizabeth Warren became President, but I’m fine with most of the policies that Clinton and Obama pushed through during their administrations.
If you’ve not seen these two op-eds that were linked from comments at LGM yesterday, reading them should make any Democrat feel better.
The first is from longtime blogger, John Scalzi.
The second is from Yglesias at Vox.
Anonymous patient
@liberal:
Yes, especially since he died! Reagan committed treason to be elected, went down hill his whole 8-year term. Despicable traitor to America and American values.
EBT
@JGabriel: did they ever find the collection of little shoes?
liberal
@Anonymous patient: I meant Carter was a great ex-president.
gex
@Schlemazel: I went to college during Carlson’s administrations. That’s when the gutting of the university funding really started. Every year my tuition rates went up by huge amounts. So when we see where higher education is now, let’s not forget to credit the “reasonable Republicans” who made undermining it so palatable.
maurinsky
@F: Isn’t Weicker and independent now?
He got CT back on track after disastrous O’Neill administration; then the eejits in the state voted for Republican and criminal John Rowland for two terms, then his Lt. Gov. Useless Rell, both of whom destroyed all the good Weicker did while not repealing the income tax, which is what they were elected to do.
We have high taxes, but our problem is – and I hate to say this — very generous union benefits to retired State workers. We over-promised and cannot stay solvent if we don’t figure it out.