Wednesday’s political round-up

January 31, 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:

* At a campaign stop in South Carolina, Republican Mitt Romney once again had to face questions about whether his Mormon faith would be an impediment to his White House aspirations. “I’ve had a number of meetings with pastors of various faiths and religious leaders,” Romney said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Almost to a person they’ve subscribed to what Dr. Richard Land (of the Southern Baptist Convention) said, which was: ‘We’re not electing Mitt Romney as pastor in chief.'” That’s not working with everyone. State Rep. Gloria Haskins (R), Bob Jones University graduate, said, “I don’t think that I could see someone who is a member of a faith so contrary to my faith having my support.”

* Barack Obama has reserved the Old State Capitol in Illinois for Feb. 10, the day he’ll likely announce his presidential campaign. CNN reported, “Abraham Lincoln served in the Old State Capitol when he was a state representative. It was the site of his famous ‘House Divided’ speech warning that America could not remain half slave and half free. If Obama decides to run, making the announcement there would help reinforce his message that America should set aside partisan differences. It would also invite comparisons to Lincoln, another lanky Illinoisan who served in the state legislature and in Congress.”

* Common Cause President Chellie Pingree announced yesterday that she will step down from her post in order to “consider political opportunities back in Maine.” She’s expected to run for Congress in Maine’s 1st District, which will likely be vacant if sixth-term Democrat Tom Allen runs against Sen. Susan Collins (R), as expected.

* Massachusetts Rep. Martin Meehan (D) is rumored to be weighing retirement so he can become the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. It would create the first competitive congressional seat in the state in over five years, and the number of candidates running would likely be enormous.

* And at the risk of running a little too much Massachusetts-related news in one round-up, Mitt Romney has had enough trouble from his previous endorsements of various Democratic candidates in the 1990s, but yesterday we learned that Romney hosted a fundraiser for a Democratic Senate candidate in 1992. Election Central noted, “The fundraiser is significant because it shows that Romney actively sought to help a Democrat take an open Senate seat from the GOP.” A Romney spokesman confirmed that the fundraiser had occurred but dismissed its significance.

Re: Romney & The Democratic Party: “I would tell you that relationships back in 1992, whether they were personal or political, don’t really have a reflection on where somebody is in 2007,” Madden said.

Is this from a member of the same party that mentions Bill Clinton’s blow job at every opportunity? The people who still go on about Clinton in Somalia and Bosnia?

But I forgot. Time passes in a strange manner on ReThuglican World. On the one hand ReThuglican years are a bit like dog years*. Any action by a ReThug that occurs more than a year ago (Earth time) happened so long ago that the GOPers can’t believe some tedious twerp would mention it. So 1992 is eighty five years ago in RDIT (ReThuglican Did It Time).

But at the same time (ha) ReThuglican World has DDIT. This means actions by a Democrat never move further into the past than a week ago. Unless it makes the ReThugs look stupid, venal, wicked or criminal. Then it never happened at all.

tAiO

* No offense to dogs. Down boy! Yeowch! Guess I deserved that.

  • Romney is toast. The majority of the Republicrook base will never be able to bring themselves to vote for what they consider a cult member.

    So I support him wholeheartedly!

  • RE: Romney

    Is this Democratic Senate candidate the same Mormon buddy reported on a few days ago?

    Isn’t opposition research wonderful? Especially when fellow Republicans will rip each other apart to win the nomination.

  • Parochialism, although bearing some modicum of merit, is a flawed concept currently bandied about by various pro-nationalist organizations. Take the issue of breakfast cereal, for example. After all, “el floosh” did bring it up. think of the production process required to manufacture that cereal. Even a miniaturized production line would process one entire community’s breakfast-cereal needs in about 30 minutes—and the plant sits idle the other 23-point-5 hours of the day.

    Would a community manufacture its own automobiles? I should think not. The same goes with tires, fuels, electronics, major appliances, and so forth.

    I live in an area where there are a LOT of Amish. Their self-sufficiency is at the household level; not the community level as indicated by “el floosh.” They buy things as needed; but they do not limit themselves to “buying from community.”

    Ever see the inside of an Amish house, el? Ever take a close look at that $6,000.00 woodburning stove in the kitchen? Chances are that it says “Made in Germany.” That’s because the Amish don’t want to buy the warped, inefficient, grotesquely-unsafe piece of crap made in “your community.” All the Amish know that Lehman’s is among the best supply houses in the US; I’ve several Amish friends who get their catalog every year. And the best buggies come out of Pennsylvania—even the Amish groups in Canada know that.

    So much for using my friends to prop up your Parochialism-uber-alles rubbish.

    Granted, Parochialism has its merits—but it can never be the be-all, end-all program that you espouse it to be—and hijacking a discussion that had absolutely nothing to do with either your pet topic, or the polar opposite of it, is no way to win converts to a definitively-narrow economic microcosm.

    Now that I’ve finished my little foray into counter-digressive commentary, let’s look again at the topic-at-hand:

    It isn’t going to matter how much of a machine Romney has; he’s dead-on-arrival in ’08. You’ve got entire groups of the Americn culture who think that “Mormonism” is a fanatic sub-sect of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (the NascarMan crowd comes to mind here). Large portions or “Religious America” still associates Mormonism with “a bunch of lecherous old men, each with a half-dozen wives who are all under the age of 14.” That’ll win a lot of votes, now won’t it? Mainstream Christians will never support him, simply because of the Mormon presentation of their “Book of Mormon” as “the Third Testament to the Bible.” Winning over the Jesus crowd by trumping Jesus is like the Trojan Horse being one of those wind-up toy monkeys with a pair of cymbals. You just can’t sneak an army into the enemy camp with it—it’s too freaking tiny….

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