Late Night Rundown
Idaho: Republican Robert Vasquez is bowing out of his Senate primary challenge citing an inability to adequately fundraise. Oh well. Woulda been fun to see him mix it up in the ID-GOP Senate primary debates.
Alaska: When Republicans in the Senate or House complain about reckless spending on pork, know their hypocrisy. The #1 pork offender by a vast margin: ancient Republican warlock Ted Stevens [emphasis added by me]:
As chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Ted Stevens secured funding for pet projects worth $1,044 for each Alaskan in 2005 — more than three times any other state, an analysis of newly released federal data shows.
Do Republicans have the gall to refer to themselves as the Party of "fiscal responsibility"?
Nebraska: DaveSund at SSP offers background on the history of the schism in the NE-GOP between the Hagel/Heineman Republicans and the Bruning/Osborne Republicans.
West Virginia: Carnacki at WV Blue illustrates the pathetic weakness of GOP attacks against popular Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller.
WaPo's Cillizza looks at the potential of Democrats to gain a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, suggesting both a one-cycle and a two-cycle scenario. For the record (and to initiate discussion), looking at the 2008 and 2010 maps, I do believe 60 is very well within reach for the Democrats by 2010. (Remember: 2010 contains many GOP vulnerabilities.)
Right-wing chickenhawks were all in a tizzy and up in arms over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's recent comments on Iraq, despite, lo and behold, a majority of Americans agreeing with the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. Now, I wonder how all of those chickenhawks feel about Laura Bush saying that nobody is suffering more when it comes to Iraq than George W. and Laura Bush - certainly not the families of the 3300+ killed American soldiers, certainly not the 24,000+ wounded. Disgusting. Truly, inhumanly disgusting.
5 Comments:
Three things about your Alaska comments:
1) The measure that they're using is amount of pork per resident in a Senator's state. Alaska is 49th in population, so half the reason why he ranks as number one is because he represents a sparsely populated state. That, of course, isn't mentioned in your post.
2) To be sure, Stevens is a king of pork, as other other Republicans (like Thad Cochran) and many (if not most) Democrats (like Patty Murray, who led the charge in the Democratic caucus for Stevens' Bridge to Nowhere). However, there is a group of 15-20 Senators who consistently fight and vote against this pork. Guess which party those senators belong to? You can point out the hypocrisy of individuals who claim to be fiscally responsible than load a budget up with pork. But to assign blame to just one party when that party is the only one who has people willing to do something about it is specious logic.
Also, didn't you support the House Democrat War funding bill that was loaded with over $20 billion in superfluous, non-germane pork? On what leg do you stand on when you rail against fiscal irresponsibility?
3) Would you agree or disagree that so many Alaskans benefitting so much from Stevens work makes his re-election chances stronger?
As far as the two-cycle scenario is concerned, any ruminations about 2010 are worthless until we know the political environment, that will be primarily decided upon who wins the White House in '08.
va blogger, my two-dimensional friend, the point of that segment of the post isn't about Stevens' pork - it's about GOP hypocrisy on fiscal responsibility. And that's just the latest entry - we could also look at the national debt and annual deficit figures, which make Republicans look amazingly fiscally irresponsible and, therefore, hypocritical.
Where on this blog did I "support" the House Democratic (nice chirping of idiotic GOP ploys by typing "Democrat" instead of "Democratic") Iraq bill? I've repeatedly noted American majority support for withdrawal, but I've never on this blog chimed in in support of or in opposition to that specific piece of legislation. So please don't misrepresent me or my posts.
2010 ruminations are worthless, even by Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, who has more political analysis experience than both of us put together? When I took issue with something Stu Rothenberg wrote, you rammed down my throat that how dare I question somebody with more political analysis experience. But you, hypocritically, act even worse when Cillizza posts something you don't like. Instead of just arguing the point, you entirely write it off as "worthless." Hypocritical and rather unclassy.
I only have one response to all of this.
Largest Deficit in US History.
Who is responsible for that? A Republican President and a Republican Senate and a Republican House.
Again, I ask, on what leg do you have to stand on to criticize the Republican Party for that? We at least have a handful of Senators willing to fight against pork.
Are you saying then that you don't support the House Democrats' war funding bill?
I wasn't saying, like you did with Rothenberg, that Cillizza was wrong. I was saying that it doesn't matter how 2010 looks right now, because the landscape will be dramatically different after January 20th, 2009. There is a world of difference in thinking that a political analyst is premature, and thinking that a political analyst doesn't know as well as you do. Its sort of similar to when you reached a vastly different conclusion about Senator Dole's fundraising prowess than the Washington Post, Cook Political Report, and Daily Kos.
there is no difference between comparing her to herself and comparing her to everyone else?
if you are gonna argue minute things to defend yourself dont ignore minute things to attack others.
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