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Saturday, November 8. 2008
Welcome to the Jungle
One of the great moments in American history. Even Barack Obama’s former opponents agreed on that and one, Sarah Palin, even went on to say we should celebrate the momentous occasion. President Bush, in one of the great moments of his time in office, recognized not only the moment, but commended Obama and his staff for the excellent campaign they ran — which is ironic, considering the main theme of Obama’s campaign was “No more Bush!”Graciousness all around … well, not completely. On Wednesday Republican members in the House of Representatives said they would oppose Obama and his initiatives right from the start. No honeymoon for Obama, like Ronald Reagan received in 1981 when he took office. It’s already looking like a replay of Bill Clinton’s first days in office when the Republican opposition in Congress immediately began their vitriol to the Clinton Administration.
Ohio Republican and House Minority Leader John Boehner said, in a Washington Post op-ed, “America is still a center-right country. This election was neither a referendum in favor of the left's approach to key issues nor a mandate for big government. Obama campaigned by masking liberal policies with moderate rhetoric to make his agenda more palatable to voters. Soon he will seek to advance these policies through a Congress that was purchased by liberal special interests such as unions, trial lawyers and radical environmentalists, and he'll have a fight on his hands when he does so.”
Ah the irony! Slam the mainstream media for being leftist, but use that very same media to promote your message. Hypocrite.
Mr. Boehner, on average, over 55% of the voters chose Democrats over Republicans, so this actually was a repudiation of Republican philosophy and a referendum in favor of Obama’s vision. You still have a constituency, but it is not the majority of our citizens — America is no longer a center-right nation.Some Republicans, like Lindsey Graham and John McCain, were not only gracious about Obama’s victory, they pledged to work with Obama and the Democrats on the major issues that will face President-Elect Obama once he takes office January 20, 2009.
The defiance of the House Republicans is understandable though. They now occupy just a little more than a third of the seats in both houses of Congress: 179 out of 435, a net loss of 19 seats. They are significantly out numbered. In the Senate, the Republicans were able to avoid a filibuster-proof majority by the Democrats, but with the two Independent who caucus with the Democrats, the Republicans are looking at a 57 to 43 deficit. And with moderates on both sides of the aisle looking to avoid filibusters, it’s not likely there will be many, if any, filibusters once the new Senate is seated.
More significant though is all the criticism being leveled at Sarah Palin — from people inside the McCain campaign. She didn’t know Africa was a continent, didn’t know what countries were part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the three nations that make up North America.That Palin and her family went on a spending spree with the credit card from that anonymous RNC operative and worse yet, Palin scheduled the phone call from President Sarkozy of France that turned out to be a prank from a Toronto radio program.
The anonymous sources claimed Palin refused to be prepped by top aide Nicolle Wallace for the Katie Couric interview; Palin blamed campaign staffers, Wallace in particular, for not handling per properly, that Plain threw tantrums in the mornings after reading the bad publicity, that she met with campaign staffers directly from the shower, wearing only a towel around her body and one on her hair.
Those same sources actually called her and her family the “Wasilla Hillbillies,” even while they were promoting the Alaska governor as a hockey mom, an every woman representing all America’s average women, stoking the class warfare, to quote Campbell Brown of CNN, between “real” America and the “elite” America Barack Obama supposedly represents. The hypocrisy is horrendous.These are the very people who “vetted” Sarah Palin for John McCain and told us she was ready to be vice president, just one heart beat away from the presidency. They controlled her schedule, controlled what she said on the campaign, told her to use Joe the Plumber and talk about William Ayers and Obama’s other “questionable associations.”
And then they turn around, under the cloak of anonymity, and stab her in the back. Is this the American way? Is it even the Republican way? That may be true, although I’d like to think some, if not most, Republicans have a little more honor than that, but so far few Republicans on the national stage, other than Palin’s own supporters and aids, have stepped up to the plate to denounce these anonymous allegations.
Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top foreign policy advisor who was rumored to have been fired in the last week of the campaign for defending Palin and telling his friend, columnist William Kristol about the infighting, has been one of the few to show some class, along with Nicholle Wallace, who is also at the center of the controversy. They have not only defended Palin, Wallace and Scheunemann have strongly firing back at the accusers, the latter saying, “The people that are spreading these lies refuse to go on the record. They obviously have no loyalty to John McCain or to the person John McCain chose to be his vice president.”
When asked about the anonymous allegations Palin at first said, “I have absolutely no intention of engaging in any of the negativity because this has been all positive for me.” Adding we should not, “… not let the pettiness or maybe internal workings of a campaign erode any of the recognition of this historic moment.”
Palin may have been a terrible choice for a vice presidential candidate, but she had shown far more class and decorum than those who now attack her. Campbell Brown, on CNN came out with the most impressive comment on the long knives of the McCain campaign post mortem. Click Here to watch.
While losing campaigns of past have engaged in harsh criticism — in 2004 Democrats heavily criticized Senator John Kerry for not fighting harder to win and not using all the funds available in states like Ohio — none have trashed one of their own so thoroughly and viciously.
This speaks volumes about the people who control the Republican Party, at least in national policies and elections, and more pointedly, it is a reflection of John McCain who not only jettisoned his own “maverick” ideals to win the party nomination, but dropped his own advisors for the very people who screwed him so viciously in 2000 in hopes they could do the same against President-Elect Obama and these are the very people who are stabbing Sarah Palin in the back.
McCain, watching his reputation getting flushed down the toilet, has told the aids to stop the anonymous back-biting.To those anonymous advisors now bashing Palin, since you and your candidate are responsible for bringing Sarah Palin to the national stage, you and your candidate are responsible for his stunning, nearly landslide defeat. It will be a great laugh if Palin does what she is rumored to be thinking, resigning as governor and running to be elected as the replacement for the now disgraced Senator Ted Stevens.
I would support that just to see her get the last laugh. On the other hand, just when you want to take sides with Sarah Palin, after watching her at first take the high road in this affair, she starts blaming the media for printing and airing stories based on anonymous sources, accusing the press of not doing its job. Really Governor, maybe you should fade off into that long Alaskan Good Night.
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