Tim Pawlenty was at a book signing in San Franciso and two women came through the line and sprinkled glitter all over the table as they challenged his “courage to stand”. A few weeks ago Newt Gingrich was on the receiving end of similar behavior. My question is what is the screening process for people coming up close and personal with candidates? The sad fact is people are crazy and they do crazy things to get attention, and some resort to very dangerous things. The Pawlenty intruders were led away by the police, but I would say somebody needs to stop this kind of behavior before someone drops something on the table that is more lethal than glitter.
Why would Herman Cain say the president was raised in Kenya? He is playing to his race-baiting base. He says it they love it. When asked it he thought the president was born here he played their favorite tune again. He said he does not know. So what’s Cain’s end game? Who knows, but he won’t be the nominee his base won’t have that. http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20110613/pl_atlantic/hermancainobamawasraisedkenya38751
I am a supporter of the president, but I am not happy with the pace of the recovery. I thought I elected a change agent, but I am disappointed to see more of the same, but what am I supposed to do? When I look at the Republican Party I see that some of the prospective candidates still want to fight the fight of 2008. Mike Huckabee mistakenly talks about the President being raised in Kenya. Newt Gingrich accuses the president of having a “Kenyan world view”. Gingrich also tosses the notion around of impeaching the president for not defending the Defense of Marriage Act. I would be remiss if I did not mention the never ending attacks on the First Lady. Have you ever seen a first lady vilified like Michelle Obama? No you haven’t because it has never been done. Are these the central issues Americans are going to base their votes on? I mean really Barack Obama is the president. Isn’t it time to stop the birth certificate nonsense? When Barack Obama ran in 2008 he did not have a real paper trail. He had been a community organizer, a state senator and a US Senator so the right had to fashion a persona for him, and they defined him as “other”, and that did not work in 2008 so why bring out the same old playbook in 2012. Whatever happened to issues? Price of gas…Price of Food…Unemployment…Two Wars and the list goes on. I am ready to hear some new ideas and so far I have not heard any.
Last night during the Deleware debate Christine O’Donnell was asked to name what recent Supreme Court decision did she disagree with. She was unable to answer the question. It seemed reminiscent of the Sarah Palin interview in which Katie Couric asked her what magazines did she read and she was unable to respond. Are these fair questions or are they desinged to embarrass the candidate? Tell me what you think.
Eric Wargotz is the Republican candidate for US Senate from Maryland. He Has some interesting things to say, but what he reveals is he is a birther and that is something the people of Maryland need to know. He just might be the catalyst some folks need to get them to the voting booths this off year. He will be for me.
Congressman Barney Frank finally stopped coddling the nuts. At a townhall meeting he started confronting the lunatic fringe. When a woman prefaced her questions with reference to Nazis, asked her “what planet did she spend most of her time on?” He did not try to give a thoughtful response to a ridiculous question. He simply refused to entertain this lunatic fringe. The woman was holding a photo of President Obama with a Hitler moustache drawn on it. So Frank knew this person did not want an answer she just wanted an opportunity to rant in the microphone. Other Democrats have seemingly been afraid to confront this aggression. Democrats need to learn you can not reason with the unreasonable. Rep. Jesse Jackson also had a townhall meeting Tuesday night. CNN had a live feed of the event, but for some reason that meeting did not go viral. Wonder why? Because the people assembled in a church were sitting listening to what the congressman had to say. There was no screaming and hollering just Americans listening and trying to learn, and obviously not good television. Some are saying Rep. Frank was rude, not me I think he was speaking the language that the crowd understood. It was frank and blunt, but not rude. The rest of the Democrats need to take a lesson out of Franks’ playbook. They need to stop being intimidated and share the information they have come to share with those who are actually there to listen.
Michael Steele made the mistake of expressing a real opinion in GQ magazine. Steele said he believes abortion is an “individual choice”. Well that is not the party line and he finds himself again in hot water. He has already started his customary back-pedaling, but it might be too late. Steele continues to say something and once it is criticizes he tries to clean up the statement in an effort to please the base. Steele was never the darling of the party, but in this era of Obama they bit their tongues and said let’s try it, but they are seemingly have more than buyer’s remorse, they seem to be ready for mutiny. While Steele still has a shred of dignity he needs to just quit. Every time he makes a statement whether its to Rush Limbaugh or GQ magazine and retracts it or attempts to clarify it he chips away at his own credibility and if this continues he will have no credibility. Steele was the first black man to be chairman of the GOP and if he continues on this road he will be the first black man that was head of the GOP that got dumped by the party.
Throughout the campaign John McCain has bragged on his considerable experience. He has yielded the experience card like a sword. He has diminished Barack Obama by calling him a young man with interesting ideas, but lacking the experience to be the commander in chief.Barack Obama has successfully leveraged the experience argument by saying he had the judgment to be commander in chief. Recently, John McCain has started touting his judgment. He is moving away from that argument because it is not resonating with the voters. Hillary Clinton touted her experience when she campaigned against Obama and that argument failed to win her the nomination. Today McCain said “And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president — as we were all reminded 10 days ago by events in the nation of Georgia.”He went on to say “Behind all of these claims and positions by Sen. Obama lies the ambition to be president. What’s less apparent is the judgment to be commander in chief,”. He is questioning Obama’s judgment and accusing him of wanting to be president.First of all Obama was right on Iraq and McCain supported the war. That was a judgment issue that McCain failed. Secondly, he accused him of wanting to be president well the last time I looked both Obama and McCain were running for president.McCain has more experience in the ways of Washington, but that is not what America needs this election year. Obama has the judgment to be president and that’s an argument he can not afford to lose to McCain.
McCain’s newest ad calls Barack Obama a celebrity. Britney Spears is also featured in the ad. It shows the crowd shots from Obama’s trip to Berlin. It basically acknowledges he is famous, but he is not ready to lead. McCain and the crew have been sniping at Obama the entire time he was on the trip and now that he is back the sniping continues. This ad says nothing about McCain’s fitness for office. He is just shown smiling. An old man smiling is simply not enough. The McCain strategy is simply to attack and the facts are irrelevant to their strategy. To juxapose the troubled star in a presidential commercial is simply unacceptable. If the campaign is going this negative this early what do they have in mind for the future? Will they have a white woman saying call me like the Republicans did when Harold Ford was running for a Senate seat in Tennessee? Maybe they have a Willie Horton up their sleeve? Remember nothing is too low for this crew to do. It’s still early so there is still a long way to go to get to the bottom of the barrow, but the McCain crew will get there soon because this rocket has just started to plummet.
John McCain delights in telling us his POW stories. We respect his service to this country, but he is now operating in full attack mode. In his latest attack ad he criticizes Sen. Obama for not visiting injured troops in Europe. The visit was cancelled because it was deemed inappropriate because this was the political portion of the Obama tour, but McCain and his crew have turned this into something else. The latest ad says Obama made time to go the gym but had no time to visit the troops and this is juxtaposed against McCain’s never-ending commitment to the troops. This is another case of taking the issue off the main issue. McCain throughout Obama’s visit has criticized everything that Obama has done or said. Even if we believe everything that comes out of the McCain camp what does it mean? They have proven they can demean and criticize but they have not proven they can lead. They are running from President Bush, but McCain is a Republican and he will still hold on to number of Bush policies. He has shown over the course of the campaign that he does not have good grasp over even the simple facts. How many times have we heard him refer to a country that has not existed for 15 years. His gaffes are overlooked and explained away, but do we want a president who needs a team of people to explain what he really meant? Yes McCain is in attack mode and his target is Sen. Obama, but I believe we need a leader with not only the ability to attack but who also has the ability to lead and that is not John McCain.
