Tag Archive for 'Republicans'
UPDATE: I write all of this and then go read Ezra and he’s written what I wish I had written in the first place. Don’t bother reading what I wrote, read him and then pretend like I was going to write that too. The key bit from Ezra:
Today, McCain chose his campaign over his presidency. Over our presidency. In this decision, country did not come first. Polls did. Palin seems like a promising young politician, but McCain increasingly seems like a desperate one.
End Update
The first thing that popped into my head when I heard John McCain had chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running-mate: What a brutally cynical choice. McCain is making a desperate play to win this election, to hell with the responsibility of actually governing the country should he win. Here is Palin’s experience: She was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 5,470. She’s been the Governor of Alaska for two years. That’s it. That’s all of her experience. I guess all of McCain’s attacks about Senator Obama being inexperienced are out the window. Does McCain really think Palin is ready to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency? It is unfathomable that he would think that.
Further, there seems to be no indication, from anything I’ve heard or read, that McCain actually knows Palin all that well. At least if he’d chosen Lieberman the argument could be made that he went with someone he liked and trusted. With Romney or Pawetly McCain would have gotten a VP with real executive experience. But Palin is just a political play, and a bad one at that. You can’t say he’s doing it for the electoral college, Alaska’s only worth 3 votes and was going red anyway. This is purely about trying to appeal to the Republican conservative religious base and, I suppose, in some crazy way hoping that putting a woman on the ticket will get all of Hillary Clinton’s 18 million voters over to McCain’s side. That ain’t happening.
Her selection is being compared to when President Bush picked Dan Quayle as his running-mate but as a former colleague points out, at least Quayle had four years in the House and eight years in the Senate as experience. James Fallows says the pick is more like when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court. I think Amy Sullivan gets the proper analogy: this is Harriet Miers redux. Palin is not the right choice for anyone who is serious about being President. McCain wasn’t thinking further then winning a news cycle. He’s done that but gained nothing else.
Its probably not great for a “pro-life” Republican Congressional candidate to have his ex-girlfriend expose the fact that he pressured her into getting an abortion seven years ago. Hypocrites.
Those silly racist Republicans. A pin is being sold at the Texas Republican convention that says “If Obama is President…will we still call it the White House?“. Should be a great campaign!
Ah, journalism. So refreshing to see:
Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?
Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba’s shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is “akin to urban legend,” said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.
“China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period,” said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon’s research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.
Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that “drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.”
I’ve been meaning to write something on Scott McClellan’s book and I suppose I’ll get around to it at some point but in the mean time Jonathan Martin has a copy of a pretty remarkable email former Senator Bob Dole sent to McClellan (via):
Bob Dole yesterday sent a scalding email to Scott McClellan, excoriating the former White House spokesman as a “miserable creature” who greedily betrayed his former patron for a fast buck.
In an extraordinary message obtained and authenticated by Politico, Dole uses his trademark biting wit to portray McClellan as a classic Washington opportunist.
“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”
Michael Marshall, Dole’s spokesman and colleague at the Alston Bird law firm, confirms the message came from the former senator and presidential candidate. “Yes, it is authentic,” Marshall wrote in an email.
“In my nearly 36 years of public service I’ve known of a few like you,” Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate. “No doubt you will ‘clean up’ as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, ‘Biting The Hand That Fed Me.’ Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years”
Dole assures McClellan that he won’t read the book — “because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job”
“That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively,” Dole concludes. “You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?”
He signs the email simply: “BOB DOLE”
Tell us how you really feel Senator.
Almost too good to be true: The House Republicans came up with a new “theme” for their policy agenda: The Change You Deserve. Only problem is, that’s also the slogan of an anti-depressant drug.
Now there’s speculation that Lieberman might speak at the Republican Convention. Super.
I don’t care what the polls say, I would love it if Condolezza Rice was Sen. McCain’s VP choice. The most incompetent National Security Advisor and someone known to be completely loyal to President Bush on the ticket? Yes please.
In the comments David writes that yesterday’s McCain comment regarding Iran and Al-Qaeda might have been more of a slip of the tongue then anything else. David’s giving McCain a little bit more benefit of the doubt then I’m inclined to, especially in light of the fact that McCain made the same mistake three times in two days. And further, right-wing blogs are up in arms defending McCain, saying what the Senator said was correct. Powerline, RedState, The Weekly Standard, etc.. Matthew Duss has more on that front, but the point is that it might not have been a mistake. In right wing circles at least what McCain said is correct.
Ezra Klein notes this comment by Max Bergmann:
That is not a gaffe. That is called believing something that isn’t true. It is called being confused. And being confused about the differences between Shia and Sunni when claiming that you should be elected president of the United States on your foreign policy knowledge and experience, is simply not okay. This is a big deal.
Exactly. I’ll also recommend reading this from Josh Marshall.
I’d like to note a point made my NBC’s Chuck Todd (via Atrios):
…this was not a one-time slip and so, you know, this just shows you how much bank — how much of the foreign policy experience stuff he’s got in the bank, because had Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over, and would have absolutely hurt them politically.
As Blue Texan notes:
It’s almost impossible to imagine the wingnut/media outrage circus if Obama or Clinton had claimed Iran was training al Qaeda. I see Sludge Report headlines like, HOW CAN WE TRUST OBAMA TO FIGHT THE WAR IF HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE ENEMY?, a series of passive-aggressive NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME posts from Glenn Reynolds, declarations by Tweety that the race is already over, grim-faced former generals expressing their disapproval on MSNBC, Fixed News playing the clip over and over and over…
Whats frustrating about Chuck Todd’s comments is that he’s actually IN THE MEDIA. I admire his ability to be self-aware but he is in position to change things and yet most likely will chose not to.
When I first heard this I remembered that a reporter had gone around a while ago asking members of Congress about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites but I couldn’t recall the specifics. Brendon Nyhan helpful remembers that it was CQ’s Jeff Stein.
Via Firedoglake, here’s video of the most recent incident:
And finally, to bring the Democratic nomination into the picture, I would certainly gain new respect for Senator Clinton if she followed Mark Kleinman’s advice (via Drum):
Given McCain’s buffoonish performance in Jordan, wouldn’t this be a good time for Hillary Clinton to say, “Gee, I thought he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. The least we should expect from the President is some basic knowledge about who our enemies are.”
McCain’s supposed “strength” is foreign policy. The fact that he appears to be clueless about it (along with domestic policy, which leaves him with what exactly?) should be mentioned by Democrats more then once.