And you college football fans thought you were having a weird year. Pity the poor political junkies.
This all happened in just the last couple of days: a Libertarian candidate raked in over $4 million in one day, a liberal senator says Newt Gingrich is a genius, and supposedly fed-up Dems capitulated on yet another Bush nominee.
The latest Evans-Novak Political Report has quite a bit on Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), the so-called “fringe” candidate running for the White House. Paul’s online haul is, per the report, “the largest single day of online fundraising in political history, and the largest single day of donations for any Republican candidate ever.” The report crows quite a bit about Paul, but that shouldn’t come as a total shock, as Novak has previously sung the praises of the Texas maverick.
Speaking of singing praises, liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says that wannabe president Newt Gingrich, disgruntled architect of the Contract with America and the ’94 GOP takeover, should be counted among the likes of Einstein, Newton, Jefferson, etc. “Newt Gingrich is a great thinker,” Schumer said after a briefing from the former House Speaker, “who is trying to find a way to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans, and that’s a good thing.”
Is forced camaraderie even necessary for the GOP? The Evans-Novak report suggests that the minority Republicans are presently operating from a bizarre position of strength. Regarding the recent approval of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey by a Senate committee including two pro-Mukasey Democrats (Schumer being one of them), the Novak report said bluntly of the Dems, “their eventual capitulation also followed their pattern…: Raise a cry, attack the White House and then give the White House what it wants.”
It should come as no surprise, really, that Novak et al. misidentify Schumer as a Republican before asking aloud, “Will two years of Democratic retreat on Iraq and anti-terror issues depress the base?” I think the picture below says everything you need to know.
Sen. Russ Feingold (c) appears depressed by base GOP appeasers.
Categories: Politics/Law/Government
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
I think you have a punctuation error in here: liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer
Should be quotation marks around “liberal.”
Nitpicker. 😛
Apparently Schumer gave up sanity for lent.
That Feingold picture just says it all, doesn’t it? Imagine what he must be thinking….”Oh, man, this is a shit sandwich, only the shit’s on either side of me.”
I wonder if cognitive dissonance gives Chuck a headache.
When Brittany Spears calls someone a “great thinker,” I don’t pay much attention. It’s kinda the same thing with Congress these days.
Poor Russ. Don’t hear much outta the boy anymore.
Feinstein’s completely predictable since her husband’s a war-profiteer getting the lucrative government contracts. She always the opportunist.
Schumer’s also kinda predictable. Maybe it’s because of his Wall Street background and he’s never been too principled.
Democrats don’t have much to offer in 08. And it’s all been self-induced. They may as well strap themselves to the Execution Rocks
Robert Parry has an excellent piece Democrats’ Year of Living Fecklessly that pretty much nails it.
So, the question is, what do you do with a government that doesn’t work anymore?
“STINKER. I said Gingrich was a great STINKER.” — Senator Upchuck
So, the question is, what do you do with a government that doesn’t work anymore?
Fix it. Throw out the bums who busted it, and keep doing it until you’ve got people who will step up dressed in grubby clothes and steel-toed boots, grab toolboxes, and plunge their hands into the mess to fix it.
Re Ron Paul: You’ve got to hand it to people who have that much faith in their candidate that they contribute their hard-earned (or .with some of his backers, -invested) cash to a candidate that’s not likely to win the nomination.
Their faith is based, I guess, on the possibility he could have a significant impact — even win — as a third-party candidate.
Thanks, Dom Pierre, for the Execution Rocks link. I’d never heard of it even though I live in that part of the country.
I am a former Democrat who is backing Ron Paul. Even though I disagree on several issues, he is the only one who seems sane. Get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bring our troops home from all over the world. Use diplomacy and business to deal with other countries, and follow the US Constitution. What a concept. Isn’t is strange that a person who thinks that the government should follow the law of the US Constitution is looked upon as a radical, while a president who takes us into illegal wars,lies about pretty much everything, spies on Americans, destroys Habeas Corpus, and tortures people is acceptable.
For the record, I do not find Dubya acceptable in any way, shape or form. Nor do I consider Ron Paul an even remotely acceptable alternative (not surprising, just wanted to be clear).
What I don’t understand is why he is considered such a radical departure from the same old anti-immigrant, anti-choice, anti-education funding, anti-gun control crowd. I read every position statement on his website and found nothing new, as well as a few truly borderline ideas… If “let’s get the hell out of Iraq” makes him a Republican revolutionary, the revolution must have some low, low expectations.
Ron Paul “a Libertarian candidate raked in over $4 million in one day”
Dr. Paul is NOT “a Libertarian candidate” – he is the Republican candidate.
And to ‘Ann’ – Dr. Paul is NOT anit- anti-anti- – all of his policy positions are pro-Constitution – if a policy is based on the Constitution, he’s for it, if it is not, he’s against it.
I meant it facetiously, t quigly… but he ran for president as a Libertarian in ’88, and is still often referred to as one.
I lost all faith in Chuck Schumer this week when he let Mukasey out of committee.
Russ, fyi, during the American Revolution, the British found hanging in public squares caused more residents to be sympathetic to the other side, so they started using Execution Rocks to do away with their prisoners.
Now about Ron Paul (aka Dr No), if he’s a strict Constitutionalist, I’m surprised he didn’t vote for Kucinich’s impeachment bill against Darth Cheney, since that is pretty much about crimes the Constitution at its core.
Me, since Pat Paulsen won’t be running this election cycle, maybe Mayor Bloomberg would change his mind about running. 😉 Otherwise, I’m looking for someone on the Heathen ticket. Maybe I’ll even have to run.
Now, whether you agree with Dr. Gingrich or not, that has no bearing on whether he is a genius (which he no doubt is) or even a gerat thinker. For example, I think that Marx’s ideas are the source of the worst evils the world has ever seen — but he was a genius and a great thinker. Heidegger was a life-long Nazi — but he was a genius and a great thinker. I can manage to distinguish between ideological agreement and whether or not someone is a genius and a great thinker . . . why can’t you?
Y’know Doc (honorary degree, I’m guessing?), you’re right. It takes a pretty ingenious thinker to lambaste a sitting, popular president about infidelity while he was screwing around on his wife himself… get fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for ethics violations by the House… have a rock-bottom approval rating at the time he quit as Speaker… and somehow believe that Americans will still send him to the White House too if only they’d pony up $30 million for him. Feckin’ brilliant thinking there by a true Renaissance man. Enough to bowl over James Dobson, at any rate.
See, here’s the thing – telling me that Ron Paul bases every decision on a strict interpretation of the Constitution is like telling this agnostic that I’m going to Hell based on a strict interpretation of the Bible.
In general, I don’t believe in the possibility of objective interpretation. I certainly don’t believe in the benefits of an immutable Constitution (for one thing, I wouldn’t be able to vote). And I sure as hell don’t believe that Ron is practicing a disciplined exegesis of the text of the Constitution as it stands.