Showing posts with label mid-term elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mid-term elections. Show all posts

Friday, October 29, 2010

Learn from the masters: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams show how mud should be slung

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

Do you think the attack ads we've seen this political season are the nastiest ever?  They're not even close.  Check out the mud Thomas Jefferson and John Adams flung at each other in 1800...


---o0o---

Sunday, October 24, 2010

President Obama's illegitimate Presidency

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor
Research by Jack Brummet



What will it take to convince the teabaggers, conspiracy theorists, and wingnuts that President Barack Obama (they usually prefer to include his middle name) is in fact a legitimate President, who is neither a Muslim, nor was born in Kenya?  Facts haven't worked, his relatively centrist Presidency has convinced no one, and his very public declarations of Christianity seem to convinced no one on the far right.  He even stands shoulder to shoulder with them on gay marriage!  And yet, a small, but highly vocal contingent of nutjobs consider him to be not an American by birth, but also a Muslim who lied his way into the Oval Office--a Trojan Horse of Islam.



Recently, BHO called off a visit to the Golden Temple in Punjab, India, due to “logistical problems.”  There were, at the time, numerous reports (which the White House vigorously denied,) that in fact, The Prez didn't want to wear the white robe traditionally worn in the temple. Before the mid-term elections, he wanted to avoid another photo that might be used as "proof" that he is Muslim by his political enemies.



While no one in their right mind takes these claims seriously, it is a sad state of affairs that the wingnuts and teabaggers can have that degree of influence on the President.  Unfortunately, unless conventional wisdom is seriously wrong, it looks like those very groups will at the least have some wind under their sails after the elections next month. 

With a little power, maybe the tea party will begin to focus less on the wedge issues, and more on the substantial political and social ones.  It's hard to tell with these folks.  Honestly, probably the best thing for the Democratic Party would be if the tea party and its sympathizers focused on the Presidential campaigns of Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and whatever other deranged dingbats emerge from the closet over the next year or so.  While the Tea Party seems able to stir up pockets of support in localized areas, up to and including entire states, on a larger canvass, their message and their anger will be accorded the scant respect it deserves.
---o0o---

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

What are Sarah Palin's Prospects? Pablo Fanque speculates on the mid-term elections and beyond

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

As we all know,  the vice-presidency in modern politics has not exactly been a golden path to the Oval Office.  Sure, George Bush (Sr.) pulled it off, Dick Nixon was finally elected after eight years in the political wilderness, and Harry Truman and LBJ were catapulted into office by the sudden deaths of the Presidents under whom they were serving. 

Recent unsuccessful vice presidential nominees — like Jack Kemp, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, and Dan Quayle — never got within miles of the Presidency.  The only two losing vice presidential candidates to win a nomination--Walter Mondale and Bob Dole--were trotted out as sacrificial lambs with no chance of surviving against wildly popular incumbents.  They were both thoroughly trounced in the general election.

What does this mean for Ex-Governor Palin, who was not only a losing Veep candidate, but eventually resigned little more than halfway through her only term as Governor of Alaska?  It's hard to say.  None of these other also-rans attached themselves to a populist movement like the "tea party."  None of them ever stumped as hard as she has for fellow Republicans.  And none of them had amassed the vast mega-million personal war-chest that Palin has collected in the last year.  Whatever you think of her, she has garnered some good ink, a lot of tea-party love,  and political I.O.U.s from GOP candidates and their supporters.  Does that translate into traction as a candidate?  Probably not, but it's too early to tell.  Sarah Palin is unique, her fans are especially dedicated, and the voters seem particularly cranky.  I suspect we will know much more about her prospects after we see what happens in the 36 Senate, 435 House, and 37 gubernatorial elections coming up on November 2nd. 
---o0o---