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Give a man a fish and feed him for a day....Teach him to use the internet and he won't bother you for weeks!

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Election '06 Preview

Sirotablog: GOP's culture of corruption vs. Dems culture of weakness
Let's just forget about the fact that congressional Democrats refuse to take a serious position on the Iraq War - the most pressing national security issue of the day. Let's forget about what a joke it is for the party to think it is going to compete on national security without taking a serious, contrasting position on the war. Let's even forget about the fact that the party is still too afraid to do this while polls have now shown for 3 years that the American public wants a change of direction on war policy. Let's just take a look at what's gone on over the last week.

First, you saw the House Democratic Leadership publicly pee down its leg in knee-shaking fright, removing a major report on Republican corruption from its website....

Then, yesterday, you saw Democratic Senators run for cover when one of their own - Sen. Russ Feingold (D) - courageously asked the U.S. Senate to stand up and defend the Constitution by censuring the president for breaking the law with his illegal, no-court-order domestic wiretapping scheme. Again, polls show the public believes the president should have to get a court order, and should not be able to simply make up laws on his own. Yet, Senate Democrats - cowering in fear in the comfortable confines of the Senate cloakroom - refused to back up Feingold....

The question, then, of the 2006 election is really simple: will voters support the GOP's culture of corruption, or will they support Democrats culture of weakness?...

People certainly hate corruption, but polls show most believe both parties are corrupt. And people would likely rather have a corrupt party running the show, then one that is so weak, so indecisive, and so needlessly frightened of its own shadow that it can't take the most basic stands....

If you are just a little bit nostalgic about the Democratic party in better days, this little video just might do the trick. Let's hope they can get it together and not let this opportunity slip through their fingers.
|| JM, 10:05 PM

1 Comments:

And some related thoughts via today's column from Maureen Dowd:
" There's only one reason I continue to brave Washington's dreary formal press dinners, which are so calcified they're a bad cross between a zombie movie and those little Mexican Day of the Dead sculptures.

I find it highly instructive to hear politicians make humor speeches. It's difficult, and few pols do it well.

It took Bill Clinton almost two terms to make a funny speech. He kept letting a petulant tone creep in. Even though W. would probably rather spend the night in Baghdad than go to a banquet, way past his bedtime, where he's getting lampooned by reporters still able to drink, he was a master right from the start.

Lynne Cheney is a practiced speaker, but a bit tone-deaf on humor. At the Gridiron dinner here on Saturday, she said of her husband: "He has a great sense of humor. Just the other day I asked him, 'Do you know how many terrorists it takes to paint a wall?' And he answered right back, 'It depends on how hard you throw them.' "

People laughed, but it felt creepy, the kind of humor that makes more terrorists.

Everyone was curious to hear Barack Obama, the Democratic speaker. He arrived last year as a star, then lapsed into a cipher, even getting punk'd by John McCain last month. In the capital's version of "Dancing With the Stars," Senator Obama won, turning in a smooth, funny performance that lifted him from his tyro track.

He tweaked fellow Democrats, telling the white-tie crowd: "Men in tails. Women in gowns. An orchestra playing, as folks reminisce about the good old days. Kind of like dinner at the Kerrys."

He mocked the president's unauthorized snooping, saying he'd "asked my staff to conduct all phone conversations in the Kenyan dialect of Luo." He advised W. to "spy on the Weather Channel, and find out when big storms are coming."

After saying he'd enjoyed the Olympic biathlon of shooting and skiing, he, deadpan, turned to Dick Cheney: "Probably not your sport, Mr. Vice President."

It may be true that Americans, as one Democrat told me, "will never elect a guy as president who has a name like a Middle East terrorist." And it may be true that Democrats are racing like lemmings toward a race where, as one moaned, "John McCain will dribble Hillary Clinton's head down the court like a basketball."

But the clever, elegant performance by Mr. Obama — who is intent on keeping his head down in the Senate until he, too, can be a tedious insider — underscored the Democratic vacuum. Not only do the Democrats "stand for anything," as Mr. Obama semijoked, but they have no champion at a time when people are hungry for an exciting leader, when the party should be roaring and soaring against the Bushies' power-mad stumbles. They should groom an '08 star who can run on the pledge of doing what's right instead of only what's far right.

The Republicans won with Ronald Reagan and W. by taking guys with more likeability and sizzle than experience. They figure they'll win in a McCain-Hillary duel by running a conservative beloved by the media and many Democrats against a polarizing Northerner who can't win any red states despite pandering to conservatives.

The weak and pathetic Democrats seem to move inexorably toward candidates who turn a lot of people off. They should find someone captivating with an intensely American success story — someone like Senator Obama, Tom Brokaw or some innovative business mogul who's less crazy than Ross Perot — and shape the campaign around that leader. Barack Obama is 44. J.F.K., who had a reputation as a callow playboy and lawmaker who barely knew his way around the Hill, was 43 when he became president.

With seniority comes dullness. And unless you can draw on it in desperate times, promise is merely a curse."
Blogger JM, at 7:09 AM  

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