I had no idea that the Republican candidates wanted to lose so badly.
“Sessions and Pryor were on the home team.”
I am shocked, shocked to find out that Republicans refused to even investigate any of the GOP officials implicated along with Don Siegelman in Alabama. Using law enforcement to promote your political agenda would be illegal.
“Sessions and Pryor were on the home team.”Post + Comments (9)
Wide Stance 4ever
Judge rules that Larry Craig cannot change his guilty plea. However, proving that he has been a clandestine liberal plot since always, Craig plans to keep his seat.
The New Yorker comments:
More Thoughts On The Republican Field
The sad spectacle of the GOP’s ’08 nomination race underlines major problems that the party will wrestle with for a long time. Following six years of criminal mismanagement the explosive immigration debate finally broke the fragile truce between business conservatives and social cons. Since then the rift has festered to the point that Dems trump the GOP on every economic indicator and the business vote stands ready to stampede left en masse.
Losing corporate conservatives only makes the religious bloc that much more critical, yet for some reason Republicans want to nominate a giant red middle finger like Giuliani and push Dobsonites out of the tent as well. If I had to guess why I would say that they probably understand that spiking Giuliani won’t do much good when the next options include a Mormon and a swinging, halfhearted embarrassment of an actor. Unless the GOP reaches into the backbench for non-candidates like Brownback or Huckabee their most motivated voting bloc will find something else to do in 2008.
But if fiscal mismanagement has driven away the corporate cons and issue neglect drives away the social cons, what’s holding up the tent fabric? The answer, I think, looks a lot like the two GOP candidates with something like traction – Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul. Done laughing? Let me explain. Giuliani collects and expands on everything that the GOP has come to represent in the late years of Bushism: dictatorial executive power, corrupt cronyism, pseudo-religious leader worship, unprovoked wars of aggression, torture, an unaccountable police state at home, party unity through racial demagoguing. Strip away the morality voter baggage and the fiscal conservatism and you have, basically, fascism. Rudy’s support conveniently illustrates the constituency in America who personally vindicate Sinclair Lewis’s famous thesis.
Ron Paul’s insurgent campaign represents almost exactly the opposite. Paleo-con in every way including racism, the Paul movement out-Goldwaters Goldwater. Paul’s insurgent success comes entirely from the Buchananite faction who have quietly (and not so quietly) stewed since they lost their party to Gingrich/DeLay corrupticons and Pat Robertson Jesus warriors. They hated Iraq, detest Bush and want their party back.
A Giuliani nomination win would cement the GOP’s place as a catchbasin for islamophobic security freaks, basically a militia without the greasepaint. A Ron Paul win would put the GOP exactly on the rails that it left some time between Goldwater and Reagan, and I honestly can’t blame GOP supporters who want to get back in touch with their roots. However, Pauliacs need to remember that movies we saw when we were twelve seemed so crazy awesome because, well, we were twelve. The Legend of Billy Jean remains one of the coolest movies ever made and I will brook no disagreement on that topic, but neither will I ever watch the movie again. The world has moved on since Paul’s isolationism, small-government absolutism and racial baggage were relevant, and I suspect that a Ron Paul win would ghettoize the party as effectively as Giuliani would.
In my view the rest of the GOP frontrunners are basically ciphers, non-entities whom GOP voters would support tepidly in 2008 and forget soon after he loses to Hillary in a landslide. A nomination win by any of them won’t create any clear direction for the party, meaning that the intra-party civil war will just go on for another four years until Newt tries to bring back the 1998-2002 corrupticon glory days in 2012.
The Republican Field
Depending on the state, Mitt Romney comes up next. Or Fred Thompson.
Fundraising returns indicate that the rest of the field, including the increasingly unwatchable McCain, don’t matter.
But as they say a fish goes a bit nuts from the head down. Again referncing Larison (a very good blog when he isn’t diagnosing liberals from a distance), the RNC’s ’08 convention logo would precipitate a parent-teacher meeting if a withdrawn fourth grader drew it in crayon.
This Is Insane
There is no way to describe this situation other than “insane”:
Eduardo Gonzalez, a petty officer second class with the U.S. Navy, is about to be deployed overseas for a third time. Making his deployment even tougher is the fact his wife may not be around when he comes back.
Mildred and Eduardo Gonzalez worry about what would happen to their family if she is deported.
His wife faces deportation to Guatemala — her home country that she hasn’t seen since 1989. He also doesn’t know what would happen to his young son, Eduardo Jr., if that happens.
“I like being in uniform and serving my country, but if she goes back I’m going to have to give it all up and just get out and take care of my son and get a job,” he said.
“Defending the country that’s trying to kick my family out is a thought that always runs through my mind.”
What a country!
Damned Liberal Media
So Bush vetos a bill for Children’s health insurance- a bill that had wide bi-partisan support and almost every Demcorat voted for, and it is being portrayed as the Democrat’s fault:
SCHIP slips as Dems trip over message -By Jonathan E. Kaplan – October 03, 2007
Democratic leaders on Tuesday moved quickly to shift public attention to President Bush’s expected veto of a children’s health insurance program from a surtax to pay for the war in Iraq.
Democrats had been reveling in their good fortune, believing they had a winning issue in legislation to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which Bush is expected to veto Wednesday.
Damned liberal media.