Brassmask delivers a solid post about the Ford debacle.
Here's a choice cut:
There are two basic schools of thought on how Ford is conducting himself. One is he is a sell-out who is sucking up to those he thinks will get him elected and let him feed at the national troughs on his way to being the first (allegedly) african-american president. The other is that he is a swell guy who is doing what he has to do politically in order to get into the senate so he can help his dear, sweet constituents here in TN.
This blogger thinks that the second one is what is wrong with America and American politics today. If you pretend to be something that you are not and then get into office based on the lies you tell in your candidacy then you are, in effect, nothing. You wind up betraying a lot of people.
3 comments:
You know, when you join a club you sign on for certain rules and regulations applying to members, if you move into a neighborhood you may have to abide by the regulations of the neighborhood association. If you're going to be a Democrat, and receive support from Democrats, you should be proud to go to DC and say, "Democrat, Democrat, Democrat." Otherwise, you're just a leach, using the system for your personal gain. It's the theory that you can be a Democrat and take any political stand you want to take that's completely and utterly absurd.
Pesky beat me to it.
If a candidate runs as a Dem and gets into the Senate and votes to ban abortion, cut taxes and allows logging on protected reserves, is that person a Democrat or is that person an office-seeker using the Democrats who see his D after his name as piggy banks?
In a perfect world, we would see the shattering of the two parties into many shard parties. If say you are a Dem but want to ban abortion and cut taxes when the country has huge deficits, then you could go join the Lieberman party.
But what happens now is that people must settle for the most basic resemblance of their beliefs or the assumed resemblance of the party they mostly agree. What kind of bullcrap is that?
What we have now is a system where office-seekers and power-seekers can just put a letter behind their names and draw supporters then stand in front of their campaign headquarters and flip the bird to those people.
GCantstandya,
please tell us what planks in the republican party you like and what planks in the democratic party you don't. Maybe we can come to a consensus here. We would just like to see what the big tent party entails.
I think most of us "lefties" believe in the promotion of equality, giving people the opprotunity to reach their potential, protecting people from the abuses of unregulated capitalism, and having our nation act as a responsible member of the international community and abide by the treaties it has signed. Now there is a lot of gray area within those, but they function as guidelines for me and may be for you too.
What bothers us about Ford is his willingness to use republican talking points and stereotypes of the Democratic party. It undermines the efforts of Democrats to counter those stereotypes and talking points.
As for compromise, how often in the past few years have republicans compromised with Democrats? Democrats many times aren't even aloud to enter legislative conferences in D.C.. If your side is doing all the compromising, what does that say? That republican positions are inherently better. I understand politics is the art of compromise, but I also understand what surrender is.
Finally, JR says he is non-ideological. Too many that says he has no core beliefs. As Autoegocrat said, Jr had the ability to do more for the financial well being of the constituents of this district than anyone ever has because of his committee seat, but he didn't. Doesn't that bother you gcantstandya?
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