Barry and the Tea Party Sunday, Aug 5 2012 

Politics , , , victorgold 4:45 pm

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be constitutional does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional.” 
—Tea Party favorite Rand Paul on the Supreme Court decision on the healthcare case 6/28/12

Translated: La Constitution, c’est moi. Call it the Tea Party credo, otherwise reflected by Ted Cruz’s notion that the only way to get things done in Washington — or in his words, “Take our country back” — is for everyone to adopt his point of view.

Would Barry Goldwater agree? George Will thinks so. In a column cheering Cruz’s victory in the Texas Republican runoff for the U.S. Senate nomination, Will writes that it is Goldwater’s “spirit” that “infuses the Tea Party.”

To which Barry, if still around, would predictably respond, “B——–!” How can I be sure? Let me put it this way: I knew Barry Goldwater. I was on Barry Goldwater’s staff. And believe me, Barry Goldwater would have nothing good to say about the Tea Party.

Nor, let me add, would the Tea Party have anything good to say about Barry Goldwater. Who can doubt that a political faction that finds Bob Bennett, Orrin Hatch, and Dick Lugar not conservative enough would be fulminating today over a Republican senator who in his autobiography wrote:

“For years, the New Right preached little or no spirit of compromise—political give and take. … Public business— that’s all politics is — is often making the best of a mixed bargain….Our Constitution seeks to allow freedom for everyone, not merely those professing certain moral or religious views of ultimate right.”

So much for George Will’s notion that it’s the spirit of Goldwater that infuses the our-way-or-no-way Tea Party. But then, we have to consider Will’s perspective: While Barry was running for president in 1964, Will was away from the fray, taking his tea at Oxford.

Sound Bite to Remember

“Neurologists will tell you that medication used for seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness, and other cognitive problems.” — Tea Party fellow traveler Michael Savage on John Roberts’ vote in the healthcare case

 

The Mitt and Johnny Show Tuesday, May 29 2012 

Politics , , , victorgold 9:03 pm

Attending a Memorial Day tribute with Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Romney declared that “the world is not safe” and criticized President Obama without mentioning him by name for proposing cuts in military spending.

                          — From the New York Times report on Mitt Romney’s Memorial Day speech in San Diego

 With unerring inaccuracy, Mitt Romney sets out to honor those fallen in battle and ends up making a speech better suited for Armed Forces Day. More military spending – money even the Pentagon says it doesn’t want – but let’s understand the man’s dilemma: With John McCain by his side, you can’t very well come off sounding like a tree-hugging peacenik.

McCain, who can’t throw a dart at a map without hitting some country he thinks American troops should be invading, had his own inspired Memorial Day moment when, according to the Times, he “joked about the Marines and received laughter from the audience.”

Memorial Day tribute? Rename it: Patriotism in the age of sound bites is no longer the last refuge of scoundrels. It’s the first refuge of political clowns.

Putdown to Remember (circa 1950)

REPORTER: Mr. Lewis, somebody asked President Truman to make you U.S. ambassador to Russia, and he said he wouldn’t appoint you dogcatcher.

U.M.W. CHIEF JOHN L. LEWIS: Of course he wouldn’t because if he did he’d have more brains in the Dog Department than he has in the State Department.

 

Liberating Leon Panetta Thursday, Apr 26 2012 

Politics , victorgold 7:39 am

“For 40 years that I’ve been in this town, I’ve gone home because my wife and family are there and because, frankly, I think it’s healthy to get out of Washington periodically just to get your mind straight and your perspective straight.”

–Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, explaining why he ran up an $800,000 travel bill making 27 personal trips to his California home via government aircraft since July 2011.

Forty years enchained in Washington! Good God, where was the Thirteenth Amendment when Leon Panetta needed it? There was Leon, working his heart out for the American taxpayer in the unhealthy environs of our Nation’s Capital for four decades as – let’s see, how many government offices, elective and otherwise, has the poor soul had to endure? Let’s run down the list, beginning with his arrival as an upwardly mobile indentured servant in the mid-1960s:

From 1966 to 1969 he was legislative assistant to California Senator Thomas Kuchel; after which he served for two years at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; after which he took a two-year break from Washington – to go into the private sector? No, to indenture himself on New York’s public payroll as the executive assistant to Mayor John Lindsay; then back to the federal payroll as a U.S. congressman for 15 years; after which he was shackled to the Clinton White House as OMB director and chief of staff, then. . . .

Have I made my point? If not, the question to be asked is how – after eight years breathing free air during the Bush 43 era – Leon was lured back to Washington to serve as CIA director (2009-2011), then Secretary of Defense (2011- )?

Given his obvious distaste, if not contempt, for the place, it’s an ongoing mystery. My solution? Term limits for appointed federal office holders. After four to six years in Washington, back to private, not to mention family, life. Call it the Panetta Rule, an Emancipation Proclamation for all those put-upon political hacks who’ve been in Washington so long they consider the town a place you have to “get out of periodically just to get your mind straight and your perspective straight.”

Sound bite to remember

“I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do; and for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down.’”

                                                                                         –Bob Newhart

 

Reports from the campaign front . . . . Saturday, Mar 24 2012 

Politics , victorgold 12:52 pm

Santorum Sees Chastity Belts As Answer

New Orleans, La., March 21 (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a rally here today that what he termed “a growing national crisis of marital infidelity and teenage pregnancy” demands “a strong leader, unafraid to return to the tried-and-true methods of a former time, up to and including the widespread use of chastity belts.”

The idea that prior presidential candidates, including John F. Kennedy, might be repelled by this notion, added Santorum, “is enough to make me throw up.”

Romney Campaigns in Flatbush

Brooklyn, N.Y., March 21 (Reuters) – Wearing a yarmulke and entering with a cry of “Oy gevalt!,” Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney paid a surprise lunch-hour visit to Goldstein’s Kosher Delicatessen today, regaling customers with stories about his days as a “young mensch” when he “noshed on knishes and matzo balls” to gain weight to qualify for his prep school’s squash team.

“My fondest memories of time spent with my father are those glorious summer weekends we went fly-casting for gefilte fish on Lake Michigan,” Romney told the midday crowd, adding that although he doesn’t have any Jewish friends who keep kosher, “I do know a number of kosher food manufacturers.”

Sound Bite to Remember (sports)

“The same things win that always win. The only thing that changes are the excuses when you lose.”

         –Paul “Bear” Bryant

 

Of Safety Nets and Muck-Ups Wednesday, Feb 8 2012 

Politics , victorgold 8:44 pm

Responding to Mitt Romney’s most recent Mittism – that he’s not concerned about “the very poor” because they have a safety net – Newt Gingrich tells an audience that he’s opposed to even a safety net because it’s part of  “the welfare state.”  Elect me president, says the Herodotus of West Georgia College, and I’ll replace the “safety net” with “a trampoline.” Meaning? Presumably an opportunity for “the very poor” to better their lives by gainful employment cleaning the lavatories at Tiffany.

Not that Republicans in the remaining primary and caucus states don’t have other choices: There is Rick Santorum, the most appealing presidential candidate to come out of Pennsylvania since Milton Shapp, and Ron Paul, who wants to do away with the Federal Reserve, return to the gold standard, and if that doesn’t work, the barter system.

Meanwhile we can take further comfort in having a President who, commenting on an upbeat jobs report, tells a Northern Virginia audience that the economy will continue to improve unless Congressional Republicans choose to – his eloquent choice of words – “muck it up.”

Democracy, said Churchill, is the worst of all forms of government – except for all those other forms.  It’s times like these that make me wonder whether we shouldn’t keep looking.

Sound Bite to Remember

“Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.”

–Franklin D. Roosevelt on General Douglas MacArthur

 

Why 2012 Should Be a GOP Year Monday, Jan 9 2012 

History and Politics , , , , victorgold 9:58 am

“Why 2012 Should Be a GOP Year”

— Headline, George Will’s New Year’s column

The Oracle has looked into his crystal ball and foreseen the future. According to the Washington Post‘s pre-eminent conservative pundit, Republicans should “stride confidently” into the coming election year, with nothing but good news ahead – unless you include losing the presidency again to Barack Obama.

That’s what the man said: Republicans will win the House and Senate but because of a flawed nominating process will lose the White House. They can then spend the next four years blocking everything Obama wants to do in a happy state of partisan gridlock.

Flashback: I recall a bright young Post columnist once summing up a dismal political situation with the trenchant observation that “if you set your standards low enough a train wreck can be counted a success.”

That columnist, if my octogenarian memory serves, was George Will. But of course George, as he confessed in another recent column, has now reached the septuagenarian stage of life, so he can be forgiven a few lapses; such as recommending, in his  second column of the new year, that a Romney-Santorum ticket is just what Republicans need to capture the key state of Pennsylvania come November.

That would be Rick Santorum, the Great Right Hope of the moment, who lost his home state of Pennsylvania by 17 points when he ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Small wonder why Will is touting a Romney-Santorum ticket for the fall: He’s out to make his prediction of an Obama victory a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I digress — a common failing among those who have lived through too many presidential elections to take the promise of “change” seriously. My original point was that if the GOP loses to Obama in November it won’t be because of its nominating process but the fact that Republicans took over the House in the mid-term elections.

Lucky Barack Obama. What would the odds against his re-election be this new year if he didn’t have an out-of-control Republican majority in the House to blame for his failure to deliver “change you can believe in.”

A little political history is in order, if Professor Gingrich won’t mind my muscling into his territory:

In 1948 Harry Truman was so unpopular that both the left and right wings of his party broke off to nominate their own candidates for president. Yet he won re-election not by running against his nominal opponent, Tom Dewey, but a Republican Congress whose time and energy had been spent trying to repeal the New Deal.

Flash forward half-a-century to find another unpopular Democratic president rescued by the mid-term election of a Republican House that undid itself by closing down the government because, as its Speaker confessed, he was asked to leave Air Force One from the rear rather than the front exit.

In that case, it was lucky Bill Clinton. What would the odds against his re-election have been in 1996 if he hadn’t had an out-of-control Newt Gingrich to blame for his failure to deliver the New Covenant he’d promised.

Obviously the idea that elephants never forget doesn’t apply to pachyderms of the political species. On the other hand their Democratic opponents have taken heed: A front-page New Year’s headline in the New York Times tells us OBAMA PLANS TO RUN AGAINST CONGRESS.

SOUND BITE TO REMEMBER

Steele might become a reasonably good writer if he would pay a little more attention to grammar, learn something about the propriety and disposition of words and, incidentally, get some information on the subject he intends to handle.

                                 — Jonathan Swift on Richard Steele

 

Thirteen years? Unlucky (or unlikely) number Thursday, Dec 8 2011 

History and Politics , , , victorgold 12:49 pm

So Herman Cain has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination after a woman came forward with a lurid story of a 13-year sexual relationship with the one-time GOP frontrunner.

My cynical Louisiana-bred reaction? Big mistake to leave the race. In former Gov. Edwin Edwards’ famous formulation, there is no practical reason for any modern-day politician to quit running unless he’s found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.

Consider David Vitter, still spouting platitudes on the U.S. Senate floor, despite being listed as a frequent guest at a wicked Washington call house. Or, for that matter, the private life of Cain’s successor as the Iowa frontrunner, Newt Gingrich.

No, what Herman Cain should have done on getting word of a pending sex scandal was punch in Edwin Edwards’ number to find out what Edwards advised Bill Clinton when a model named Gennifer Flowers claimed that she had a 12-year relationship with Clinton during his days as attorney general and governor of Arkansas.

As Edwards recalled the occasion, Clinton, then in the early stage of his run for the presidency, got news of the charge while on a fund-raising trip to New Orleans. Concerned about its impact, he asked his fellow Southern governor, Edwards, what he should do.

“I told him,” said Edwards, “that if that sort of claim were made against me I’d say, ‘12 weeks, maybe. Twelve months, maybe. But 12 years? Never.’”

Clinton, a simple Arkansas philanderer who lacked the flair of his Louisiana counterpart, said he didn’t think he could do that. Instead he and Hillary headed for “60 Minutes” and the first of what would be an eight-year series of “Stand by Your Man” reconciliations.

It worked, but I still prefer Edwards’ way. Mendacious perhaps, but it had the virtue of political wit, an element sadly lacking in the current race for the Republican nomination. For that reason alone, we’re going to miss Herman Cain’s presence in the field. He was the only candidate running who could at times be intentionally funny.

Sound Bite to Remember (Occupiers and Tea Party members take note)

“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”

                               — Theodore Roosevelt (1913)

 

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