Tag Archives: Democratic Party

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GOP fights with itself

I remember a time when Democrats were the fractious bunch and Republicans all held hands and sang off the same page.

That was, oh, about 40 years ago. The times they are a-changin’.

Now it’s the Republicans’ turn to fight among themselves. Democrats have locked arms and aren’t exactly crying crocodile tears over their “friends” troubles on the other side of the aisle.

Boehner-right fight moves to Senate

GOP House Speaker John Boehner stuck it in the tea party wing’s eye the other day after the House passed the bipartisan budget bill worked out under the leadership of Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray.

Now it’s the Senate’s turn to approve the deal and, one can hope, start the nation toward a long-term repair of its budget problems. I’m not holding my breath for that to occur.

Republican senators are taking heat from their so-called “base,” aka the tea party, over their willingness to compromise with those dreaded Democrats. Many key Republicans aren’t being intimidated. “I’ve said for a long time that there are some outside groups who do what they do solely to raise money,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “I’m glad that people are wising up.”

One GOP senator, Texan John Cornyn, is going to get a primary challenge from U.S. Steve Stockman, who might be among the looniest of the tea party types to serve in Congress. I’ll predict right now that by the time the March primary rolls around, Cornyn will be seen by many Americans — perhaps even me — as a true statesman when compared to the kookiness of Stockman’s pronouncements.

The Cornyn-Stockman fight symbolizes what’s happening to a once-great political party. It might be helpful for Republicans to have this fight, just as it cleansed Democrats of bitterness back in the 1970s. Of course, Democrats had some help from a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who got entangled in the cover-up that occurred after that “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate office complex.

For now, I’m going to watch Republicans gnaw on each others’ legs.

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Will the tide turn on Hispanic votes?

Paul Burka’s blog on the candidacy of state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte suggests a now-or-virtually-never scenario for Texas Democrats.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/leticia-van-de-putte-enters-race

Van de Putte is running for lieutenant governor. She is a Hispanic woman with a lot of appeal to the base of her party. The question she faces — as do Texas Democrats — is whether she can motivate Texas Hispanics to vote in next year’s race for lieutenant governor and governor.

Van de Putte joins state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth at the top of the Democratic Party ticket next year. Davis’s chances of becoming the next governor are longer than long, according to Burka and many other analysts. I’m not so sure about that … but that’s just little ol’ me.

Burka is right about Hispanics’ turnout in previous elections. It hasn’t been good. He notes also that Texas Hispanics are descended from folks who came into Texas from Mexico, where the political culture hasn’t been kind to folks who depend on government. Burka writes, “Hispanics emigrated to America from a country whose government seldom did things FOR people, but rather did things TO people. In such circumstances, the degree of trust or belief in government and politicians was, and remains, negligible. All too easily, the culture of Mexican politics was transplanted to the Texas side of the border.”

A very high hurdle sits in front of Van de Putte and Davis as they seek to break the GOP’s hold on statewide offices.

They’ll need to “nationalize” this campaign by linking the Republican nominees for governor and lieutenant governor to the extreme policies of their party’s national brain trust: government shutdown, immigration reform reluctance and, of course, women’s reproductive rights.

If they can connect those dots, there might be a Texas transformation in the making.

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Gov. Christie faces key election challenge

Republicans love Chris Christie, by and large.

The New Jersey governor is expected to cruise Tuesday to an easy victory in a state that’s twice voted overwhelmingly for Democratic President Barack Obama. He’s done a good job running the state. Christie has been outspoken at times, to the point of being perhaps overly blunt with constituents. But that seems to be part of his tough-guy charm.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/04/21278657-centrist-or-a-conservative-christie-faces-fork-in-the-road-for-2016?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1

He’s also been willing — unlike many of his GOP colleagues in Congress and in statehouses around the country, such as the one in Texas — to work with the president when the need arises. Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged New Jersey on the eve of the 2012 presidential election, offers a case in point. Christie’s glowing comments about the federal response to the storm relief angered many on the right.

So now the New Jersey governor is considering whether to run for president in 2016. His good pal, Obama, won’t be on the Democratic ticket, given that he’s term-limited out by the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment. The field, therefore, is wide open.

Does the governor tack to the right or stay on course down the center?

He ought to follow the late Richard Nixon’s advice, which is good for candidates of either party: Run to the fringe of your party in the primary and then steer toward the center during the general election.

I’m supposing that Christie knows about President Nixon’s advice and he’ll follow it. His particular concern at this moment in time, though, will be whether the tea party fringe followers of his party will forgive him if he moves toward the center and plays up his across-the-aisle working relationships.

Heck, they might not be able to forgive him for saying all those kind things about Barack Obama a year ago.

Oh, the joys of running for office in this highly polarized climate.

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Explain those fears, Mitt

Mitt Romney talked some sense in trying to curb some congressional Republicans’ enthusiasm for shutting down the government while defunding the Affordable Care Act.

Bravo, Mitt! The right-wing rogues within his party — the folks who never quite trusted the centrist-leaning former Massachusetts governor — are out of control. They’re the tea party new guys who don’t quite understand the consequence that will cascade down on them if they succeed in shuttering the federal government.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/07/19914511-romney-re-enters-gop-fray?lite

But then Romney veered off into a strange little tangent about what has happened since President Obama’s re-election — in which he defeated Romney by nearly 5 million votes.

“I must admit. It has been hard to watch or read the news,” he said. “What we feared would happen, is happening.”

What?

I kind of wish Romney would go into detail about what is happening that upsets him so much, or what is happening that would have been different if President Romney were at the helm.

Let’s see: We’ve added about a million jobs since Obama’s re-election; unemployment is down to 7.4 percent, which isn’t great but it surely is a lot better than the 9 percent jobless rate the president inherited when he took office in January 2009; the budget deficit has been slashed significantly; we’re continuing to kill terrorists around the world.

Have we reached a state of geopolitical nirvana? Of course not. The Obama administration has committed some serious mistakes. Those errors, though, do not rise to the level of “scandal” that’s being portrayed in the right-wing mainstream media.

My threshold question to Mitt, though, is this: How would any of this been different had you been in charge?

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Weiner poll numbers numbers take a dive

This is what I’m talking about.

Anthony Weiner – aka Carlos Danger – is taking a serious hit in public standing as revelations about his latest “sexting” escapade start to sink in with New York City voters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/poll-anthony-weiner_n_3653422.html

Weiner revealed this week that he engaged in lewd communications via the Internet after he resigned his congressional seat in 2011. He called a press conference with his wife, Huma Abedin, standing with him. The New York mayoral candidate vowed to “move forward” and will stay in the race until the end.

Good for him, and that’s not because I want him to win.

The former frontrunner is now running second behind fellow Democrat Christine Quinn, who’s about 9 percentage points ahead of Weiner.

Many pols and pundits have called for Weiner to drop out of the race. I maintain he should stay in and let the voters have their say. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that a majority of New York Democrats will nominate him. If they do, that’s to their discredit – but they have to live with the result. Thus, it’s their call to make. Not mine. Not anyone else’s.

My guess is that Weiner’s polling will continue to slide as primary day approaches. If he loses, then we’ll be done with the tasteless jokes. Let’s hope, too, the nation will be done with Anthony Weiner.

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Get some help, Mr. Weiner

Anthony Weiner has just held an extraordinary news conference in which he admits that some of the “sexting” messages he sent out came after he resigned his congressional seat in 2011.

But everything’s OK, said the New York City mayoral candidate, because he and his wife, Huma Abedin, have repaired their marriage and she’s forgiven him.

Well, forgive this, Mr. Weiner: The people of NYC should take a dim view of these latest revelations into your (lack of) character.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/23/weiner-comments-on-new-sexually-charged-messages/?hpt=hp_t1

This is a preposterous turn in the life of a once-promising Democratic lawmaker who now wants to run the nation’s largest city. It’s NYC’s standing as the financial capital of the universe that makes this story important in places far away from the Big Apple.

Weiner got in trouble two years ago when it was revealed he had sent lewd text messages and tweets that showed parts of his anatomy that should remain, um, private. He quit Congress after first denying that his body part on display and then admitting it. Now we learn that even after leaving office, he kept doing it.

Now he wants to New York voters to elect him mayor and take the reins of arguably the most important city in the world?

Good grief.

Is there no limit to this man’s gall?