Monday’s political round-up

March 19, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* After a week or two of acrimony, Al Sharpton seems to have buried the hatchet with Barack Obama. The two made nice a five-minute phone call yesterday, which reportedly went well. “We had a good conversation. He said he’s got a lot of respect for me and what I’ve done. We agreed to keep in touch,” Sharpton said. Sharpton will host all of the candidates at a National Action Network Conference next month.

* South Carolina Gov. Mark Stanford (R) continues to be the subject of presidential speculation, but Stanford denies any interest. “If you’re running for president, you have to be doing real (campaign) stuff today — not in six months, not in a year, today,” Sanford told The State, South Carolina’s major newspaper. “So what is so ridiculous about this is I’m not doing those things that you’ve got to do. And so that’s why it’s indeed a bizarre and silly story.”

* Bob Perry, the principal funder of the Swiftboat liars from the 2004 campaign, has signed on to raise money for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s GOP presidential campaign. When news of Perry’s decision to sign on with Romney made it to John Kerry’s Senate office, his spokesman, David Wade, said it was “appalling but not surprising that a Texas tycoon famous for funding lies would now bankroll a presidential campaign built on flip-flopping and fiction.”

* According to Bob Novak, Actor-politician Fred Thompson, who is reportedly weighing a presidential campaign, is “viewed by the Christian right as more acceptable than any of the three Republican candidates leading in the polls: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney.”

* Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign is so desperate to convince GOP primary voters of the former mayor’s conservative bona fides that it’s circulating a seven-year-old quote from The Amsterdam News, a NYC paper geared towards an African-American audience. The quote reads: “[Giuliani’s] Only Hope For An Overwhelming Victory In Upstate New York Would Be To Remain As He Is: A Hard-Nosed, Evil, Racist Republican Conservative.” (Yes, apparently, Giuliani thinks the description will help him curry favor with the far-right.)

* And former Rep. Bob Barr (Ga.), who left the Republican Party earlier this year, delivered a well-received speech to the Libertarian Party over the weekend, calling for a “multidecade effort” to build a movement to make the party nationally competitive. He added that many “real conservatives” have become disillusioned with Republicans. “They are eager for a philosophical home,” Barr said. “There are enough of them out there that a significant number can be weaned away” from the GOP.

And former Rep. Bob Barr (Ga.), who left the Republican Party earlier this year, delivered a well-received speech to the Libertarian Party over the weekend, calling for a “multidecade effort” to build a movement to make the party nationally competitive. He added that many “real conservatives” have become disillusioned with Republicans. “They are eager for a philosophical home,” Barr said. “There are enough of them out there that a significant number can be weaned away” from the GOP.

Libertarians – an even bigger collection of morons and losers than Marxists. Unfortunately for them, their tidy little society can only exist if everyone is in agreement over what the society needs and is willing to voluntarily limit themselves in competition with others. Has anyone seen any evidence anywhere in the entire recorded history of the human race of a society like this existing for longer than 30 mico-milliseconds?

But I hope they’re successful, because the more quarterwits they attract to their brand of idiocy, the fewer will be the halfwits we have to defeat in the thug party.

The is not to say that most libertarians are not among the nicest, most polite people one can meet. They just don’t know how to add 2+2 and get 4 on consecutive attempts.

  • I think you made a mistake. I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be one story:

    …He (Barr) added that many “real conservatives” have become disillusioned with Republicans. “They are eager for a philosophical home.” Guiliani agrees and comes up with a campaign slogan for those ‘real conservatives’: “Our (sic) Only Hope Is To Remain As We Are: Hard-Nosed, Evil, Racist Republican Conservatives.”

  • Libertarianism is, at bottom, a really childish worldview: it essentially holds that all the complexity of society can be willed away while everyone is, for better and for worse, left to themselves.

    It’s preferable to big-government authoritarianism, certainly, and it might have worked–hell, its advocates argue that it did work–in the early agrarian days of the Republic. But it’s absolutely impossible as a governing philosophy today.

    I’m with Tom, though, that I hope they do thrive. Because libertarianism is completely incompatible with the Christianism and crony capitalism that are the foundation stones of today’s Republican coalition, and the real ideological threats to America as we’ve known and loved it.

  • “You sound a little too angry…”

    Adam, you have to excuse Tommy Boy’s persistently foaming mouth… he sometimes forgets to take his meds.

  • Libertarianism, like anarchism, is too idealistic to work with real people, but both parties could learn a few things from both philosophies.

  • Sounds like Romney got a case of the botch-ula down in Florida, quoting Castro and Scarface to Cuban refugees.

  • In Salon today, http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/19/al_sharpton/,

    Debra Dickerson is castigating Obama for being behind a column in the New York Post (rightwing rag) that is based on ‘anonymous sources’. Why in the world would she believe a column in the NY Post for one thing and why is she blaming it on Obama.

    Then the LA Times has some silly article called, The Magic Negro, that claims the American electorate has more hysteria than one of Sigmund Freud’s Vienna babes.
    http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,3391015.story?coll=la-home-commentary

    Pundits please! Spare me the race-psych.

  • You have to take any philosphy to its extremes. I take what I like from many philosophies.

    I think that there is a lot to be said for libertarianism.

  • It’s a little frightening to see the fundies resuming their search for a new fuhrer they can worship the way they do the Shrub. Seriously, the way the “Christian” Right follow that man in spite of his obvious evil is one of the most frightening things I’ve seen in my lifetime. They will follow Bush to perdition, and now they are looking for another figurehead, stinking faintly of sulfur just like ol’ W.

    We can only hope like Tom that the various factions in the Repug House of Hate will eventually smash it to pieces, before it’s too late.

  • I agree with Tom’s strategic point about Libertarians peeling off the Republicans. I do not, however, believe Libertarians are inherently stupid; they are, like Marxists, merely idealistic. Libertarianism is a philosophy that would work in a perfect world. And that cannot exist.

  • I spoke with a aquaintance of mine this weekend. She’s white, Catholic, college educated,married with four kids,etc..
    She gushed about how she just loves Bush, at the same time admitting she doesn’t watch the news or read newspapers, because they’re too depressing.
    I asked her, in as light a voice as I could muster without causing myself physical pain, why she thought he was such a good president. She said because he’s so cute.
    That, Susan, is the definition of frightening. Speaking to a real member of the 30% club.

  • Terri, @13. I have an acquaintance who’s similiar. An educated professional (now retired). Voted for Bush (and Macaca Allen) because they’re “cute” in those cowboy boots. “the hands fall down in despair”, as we used to say back in Poland.

    If I wanted “cute”, I would buy myself a rhesus (also known as macaque) — as destructive but more useful when trained properly.

  • As for us Libertarians, the reverse is true, as well. Republicans are picking up just as much support from ex-Libertarians, as the Libertarian Party folks are picking up from ex-Republicans.

    Within the last year, some top Libertarians have defected to the GOP, including their highest ranking elected official – a County Executive in Georgia.

    And with the onset of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign, look for even more support from Libertarians for the GOP for 2008. Rudy is the most Libertarian Presidential candidate since Goldwater.

    Eric Dondero, CEO
    MainstreamLibertarian.com

    • Comments are closed.