My Party Screws The Pooch On Taking Over The Senate...

[Lord Jim]

With realistic victory chances in states like Pennsylvania, New York and California, the GOP had a real (albeit still long...we'd have needed to pretty much run the table) shot at taking back control of the Senate....(we still have excellent prospects for regaining control of the House thanks to Nancy Pelosi) but unfortunately, voters in two states have decided to nominate a pair of loud mouthed kooks....

In Nevada, given a choice between the son of a legendary basketball coach, a hottie, and a wing nut, the voters (by a plurality...there's no run off provision in Nevada...it's very unlikely Angler would have won a runoff) decided to go with the candidate wearing the propeller beanie....

There's still a fighting chance to win this race because Harry Reid has popularity ratings similar to British Petroleum and Jorhann Vander Sloot, but what should have been a gimmie is now in serious doubt....

In Kentucky, the party last month nominated another member of the tin foil hat brigade, Rand, "The Acorn Didn't Fall Very Far From The Nut Tree" Paul, who keeps shooting himself in the feet, reloading and firing again....Again, this is another seat that should have been an automatic to put in the win column....

Marco Rubio in Florida is not a nut, and is in fact in many ways a very appealing candidate...young, articulate, good looking, Cuban....but with Chris running as a Demo leaning third party candidate, this is yet another seat that is now in jeopardy that should have been an easy victory....

Why can't we ever learn to leave the circular firing squads to the Democrats? They're pretty good at it....

[Big RR]

Your party nominated Sara Palin for VP, does this really surprise you?

[Scooter]

The first time it happened, we were all laughing because they nominated George W. Bush. Not many of us were laughing after being subjected to eight years of that.

Come to think of it, a lot of us were laughing when they nominated that actor guy who played straight man to a chimp*.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate.








*or was the chimp playing straight man to him, I forget.

[Lord Jim]

Come to think of it, a lot of us were laughing when they nominated that actor guy who played straight man to a chimp*.

Are you referring to the man who brought down the Soviet Union and won the Cold War? That feller?

I had a good laugh when the Demo's nominated a dopey looking peanut farmer who had a face that made Alfred E. Newman look like a visage of inscrutable intellect by comparison....Figured even Gerald Ford could beat a corn-pone rube like that....

Unfortunately, I wound up doing a lot more crying than laughing over that one....

[Gob]

Jim, how much influence has the "Tea Party" had in these selections?

[Lord Jim]

The Tea Party influence varies. It was an important factor in the Kentucky race, a little less so in Nevada where the favorite, State Sen. Sue Lowden, also had some Tea Party support, and saw her candidacy go down as a result of a couple of gaffes, and millions of dollars spent by the Reid people in order to sink her. (They saw her as the strongest opponent and Angle as the weakest)

The Tea Partiers were divided in California too; where their support has been divided between two or more candidates, they've had less impact.

But the reasons for these nominations (and some other voter decisions, in both parties) goes way beyond the Tea Party. The electorate in this country, with some justification, is in a VERY foul mood as we approach these midterm elections (in both parties, and among independents....across the board)

I've seen some truly startling poll numbers in the past couple of weeks. I saw a poll that said that over 60% of those polled where saying that they planned to vote against their own congressional representative.

This is very unusual in this country. Usually, polls show that while Congress in general is viewed very negatively, people think that their representative is just fine. It's this disconnect that has enabled the system to become so dysfunctional.

There's another major disconnect driving the process. Poll after poll shows that by wide margins, the vast majority of the people want to see Republicans and Democrats working together to get things accomplished. But any office holder in either party who does this, finds themselves getting punished with an "ideologically pure" primary challenger, some of whom actually win the nomination. (And even the ones that don't influence the behavior of the incumbent and make them less likely to make compromises)

The result is that more and more people get elected from both sides that are less likely to work with the other side, which is the exact opposite of what most people want.

[Gob]

Lovely sumation Jim (as in; "I think I understood that..)

[Andrew D]

Come to think of it, a lot of us were laughing when they nominated that actor guy who played straight man to a chimp*.

Are you referring to the man who brought down the Soviet Union ...?

I rather doubt that Scooter was referring to Mikhail Gorbachev.

... and won the Cold War?

The Cold War is very much still going. And China is winning it.

I had a good laugh when the Demo's nominated a dopey looking peanut farmer who had a face that made Alfred E. Newman look like a visage of inscrutable intellect by comparison....Figured even Gerald Ford could beat a corn-pone rube like that....

Unfortunately, I wound up doing a lot more crying than laughing over that one....

Yep. The Republicans would much rather have someone who actually is dopey than someone who is dopey looking.

[Timster]

Well, that explains the last 8 years...

[Lord Jim]

I rather doubt that Scooter was referring to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Yeah, let's give the Super Bowl Trophy to the losing coach....

[Andrew D]

I rather doubt that Scooter was referring to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Yeah, let's give the Super Bowl Trophy to the losing coach....

Successfully presiding over the (relatively) orderly dissolution of an empire -- a dissolution driven by that empire's internal conditions and only peripherally related to any foreign power's policies and which, had it not been skillfully handled, could well have resulted in a war of global annihilation -- is not "losing".

Unless, of course, one defines "losing" as preventing World War III and "winning" as delivering a gratuitous kick in the teeth to an enemy who is already down and is desperately struggling to become a friend.

[Gob]

I think we've done this one before....

[rubato]

The party that by application of what is still their avowed agenda drove the country into the worst crisis in 80 years is too stupid to get the support of any intelligent person.

Good for them they have a lock on unintelligent voters.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Who but a republican would vote for someone who has had so little education in government that for 30 years she never bothered once to vote?

The Democrats deserve a better opposition party than the racists and pure idiots the Republicans have become.

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http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/53746

CA GOP Ticket Shares One Attribute: Not Voting
By: Teddy Partridge Wednesday June 9, 2010 11:53 am
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The Secretary of State is the person in California charged with protecting the integrity of the voting system, reporting results of elections, and monitoring campaign integrity. So it is fitting that the GOP, in defeating Birther Queen Orly Taitz, instead nominated former XFL player and real estate company owner Damon Dunn, who describes himself as a "recovering non-voter" who never voted until 2009. He joins ticket-toppers Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, notorious non-voters both, on the GOP ticket.

Dunn is a self-described "recovering nonvoter" who hadn’t cast a ballot in an election until 2009. He had said his failure to vote would help him reach out to other nonvoters and inspire them to get involved.

This guy admits to having voted once – once! – before yesterday. Damon Dunn will fit right in with the women ex-CEOs atop the GOP ticket, though. Meg Whitman called her own voting record "unacceptable:"

Whitman sought to explain her spotty voting record for the first time after delivering a speech to a Republican women’s group.

"I was focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career, and we moved many, many times," she told reporters. "It is no excuse. My voting record, my registration record, is unacceptable."

During the state GOP convention in Indian Wells last weekend, Whitman repeatedly refused to answer questions about her voting record after The Sacramento Bee reported that the former eBay CEO was not registered to vote before 2002 and there was no evidence she had ever registered as a Republican before 2007.

And Carly Fiorina, who will challenge Barbara Boxer for the United States Senate, is not much better in this department. She said about her own failure to vote, "Shame on me:"

According to Fiorina’s campaign, she voted in six of 14 elections in California since 2000. She lived in New Jersey for the previous 10 years but never voted.

So when Californians hear this GOP team talk about not being career politicians, we need to remember: they are non-voters as well.
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yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

I think we've done this one before....

Yes, we have. And we will probably continue until truth prevails.

On one side, there is the argument supported by the evidence -- the documents which show what the leaders of the collapsing Soviet Union actually considered important. On the other side, there is Reaganolatry. Eventually, evidence will triumph over myth.

Lamentably, that may be a long time coming. And until then, we will have to suffer through periods of Republican rule. I weep for my country.

[Gob]

I think we've done this one before....

Yes, we have. And we will probably continue until truth prevails.

Or until we realise that niether side will compromise?

[Andrew D]

Compromise is useful -- even vital -- in determining how we ought to proceed from wherever we are. But what is the utility of compromise in determining what actually happened in our past?

Reagan is no longer in power. He is no longer even among the living. He is a corpse all too slowly rotting in the ground. As is my father. As is everyone else who has lived and died.

If we are to learn from history, we must first describe that history truthfully. Otherwise, we just run around in hamster-cage circles.

[Gob]

But history is mutable...