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Ah, About That Vote I Cast...

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Fenian_Bastard, Mar 2, 2008.

  1. Dear Barack:
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3466823.ece
    No.
    None of them. And I like Hagel and Lugar.
    But still, no.
    Not in the first term, anyway.
    The first term is about surveying the wreckage, undoing the damage, and holding the vandals accountable. This will not get you there. These guys, for all their virtues at being Not Insane, helped enable the crazy people.
    If you honestly believe that this will buy you good will, good-faith bargaining, and the bipartisan progress you say you want, you are sadly mistaken about the nature of the forces aligned against you. They hate Hagel and Lugar and the like more than most Democrats do.
    I am worried by this.
     
  2. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    I don't have a problem with it.
     
  3. Good for you.
    I do.
    Until the Republican party is disenthralled from the people and the forces that have done it, conservatism, and the country at large so much damage, "bipartisanship" remains, as Grover Norquist called it, "date rape."
     
  4. STLIrish

    STLIrish Active Member

    It might be a bit much for Obama to expect any goodwill from the Republican leadership for putting folks like Hagel and Lugar in his cabinet. But it'll probably demonstrate to the rest of the country that he's actually serious about governing the right way, and listening to well-thought-out ideas that he might not share. And it's hard to see how that'd be a bad thing.
    Also, even discussion of this will help inoculate him in a campaign against charges of inexperience and runaway liberalism.
     
  5. D-Backs Hack

    D-Backs Hack Guest

    I hope this isn't a capitulation to the calls of bipartisanship from the Broders, Blitzers and rest of the Beltway establishment, now that it's possible that the Democrats could have the White House and Congress in 2009.

    (Expression of the virtues of bipartisanship, by the way, were strangely silent from the establishment while Mr. Uniter-Not-A-Divider and his party had total control.)
     
  6. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    This would engender the same level of goodwill that a GOP president would gain from putting Joe Lieberman in his cabinet, which is to say none.
     
  7. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    Did you see the debate last night? Russert said something about Obama's voting record being more liberal than Ted Kennedy's, and Obama, to his credit, said such rating were silly. I'd have loved it if he'd said, "Gee, Tim, either you've recently patented a new invention called the liberal-o-meter that objectively measures one's liberalism or you are making a purely subjective measurement according to your own bias. Which is it?"

    Or I'd like to have heard him say, "Regardless of your political persuasion or personal opinion of Ted Kennedy, he's had a long record of public service and reelection. I condemn your using him as an example of something I must avoid, and I find your question patently ridiculous and offensive. Shame on you."

    Instead he kind of slithered out of it. Now I'll vote for him if he gets the nomination. But I don't buy the idea that he's different, that it won't be politics as usual. He's the same as all the rest in that regard, Democrat or Republican. Phonies all.
     
  8. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    But I don't think Hagel or Lugar fit that definition based on the roles they would have in the cabinet. I mean, it would be one thing if he wanted to put Wolfowitz in the Defense Department.

    What I think it does is send a message that Obama is serious about putting this era of politics behind us, that he wants to put qualified people in cabinet positions regardless of party, and that he wants to put experience in his cabinet where one of the automatic knocks against him is his perceived inexperience.

    Would they be my first choice? No, but I'm not going to knock Lugar's foreign affairs expertise either.
     
  9. My guess would be Lugar at State, a boring but not unreasonable choice, and Hagel at DoD. which would make him, as far as I know, the first infantryman to hold that post in an awfully long time, which would be good. Now, let me tell you what will happen. Unless there is a massive shift in the Congress to veto-proof Democratic majorities -- which, I concede, is not entirely outside the realm of possiblity - the GOP remnant will make the nomination process of both these guys a living hell, and it will yell loudly about the "dictatorship" of the majority, as though Tom Delay and Denny Hastert were never born, and the Village media will chime in, because it has no memory dating back beyond breakfast. He will get nothing for these gestures and, by March, we will be treated to long exegeses on Obama's "rookie mistakes."
    Watch and see.
     
  10. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Could be.

    Or, Obama could spin the congressional opposition as "Washington business as usual" and the GOPers who try to oppose the nominations get roasted for what would clearly be a cynical political move.

    Depends on the mood of the country at the time I guess.
     
  11. The country?
    THAT makes me feel better.
     
  12. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    Good for him. Especially from the Senator least likely to have have voted in a bipartisan manner during his entire Senatorial career.
     
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