Midday open thread
by kos
Wed May 21, 2008 at 12:43:29 PM PDT
- Every day, Lieberman makes it harder for Democrats to keep him in their caucus.
How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?
Keep it up Joe, keep it up. And how delicious is it to see Obama upending the Beltway's foreign policy and media establishments by running on a platform of tough diplomacy, rather than a "my dick is bigger than yours"
- Anyone notice that the GOP is in trouble?
Politics is cyclical. The Republican brand is not what it was in 1994, due in large part to the unpopularity of President Bush. Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said his party would reverse its losing streak in November by proving that it, not the Democratic Party, is the agent of change.
Stranger things have happened, but it will be a feat worth watching. Congressional Republicans are in a pickle right now largely because they have faithfully supported a president who has one of the lowest job-approval
ratings in history. Are they going to renounce him?No. They won't.
- Those previously nose-picking Mississippi Democrats are gearing up for more victories.
For the first time in years, the Mississippi Democratic Party is enthusiastic about winning major elections.
One reason for the enthusiasm is the recent victory of Travis Childers. Tuesday Childers was sworn in as the newest member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The former Prentiss County Democrat beat Southhaven Republican Mayor Greg Davis in a special election for the state's first district congressional seat.
The GOP response:
But Republicans disagree. They say Childers won by pretending to be one of them.
"Every belief he espoused were those that we share and not those of the party that he carries their label," said Mississippi Republican Party Executive Director Brad White.
Wow. Republicans now believe in pulling out of Iraq, supporting SCHIP, targeting price-gouging Big Oil, protecting social security, and opposing free trade deals? Who knew they had all become Democrats?
- Today's "talking points" for blog trolls at the McCain website are the same as yesterday's. I wonder if they'll mix them up?
- It's tough being a lobbyist.
More than a few Republican lobbyists in Washington are scratching their heads these days, asking: So this is the thanks we get?
It was a small band of loyal lobbyists who stood by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain last August when his campaign went broke and his White House aspirations seemed doomed.
They raised money for him under impossible odds and kept him company in budget hotels during his darkest days.
Now they are under siege as McCain purges active lobbyists from his campaign team in a quest to wrest the reformist title from Democrat Barack Obama, his likely opponent in this fall's general election.
This lobbyist, however, has a point:
"If it was OK to have these people working for you in February, why is it not OK today?" asked one Republican lobbyist who counts a friend among the new McCain outcast class.
- Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck lie about immigration, repeatedly, on the air. Shocking!
- Man, those damn Negroes are so savage, with their riots and whatnot.
- Appalachian whites are different than whites elsewhere, no matter how much the media can't grasp that simple fact.
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