What do recently crowned DNC leaders Howard Dean (DNC Chair) and Harry Reid (Senate Minority Leader) have in common? Apparently, they both love to "shoot from the lip." Howard Dean was the first to earn this stylistic distinction during the Democratic Primaries way back in 2003. Senator Reid, on the other hand, began his reign of terror in December of 2004, just before ascending to the Senate Minority Leader post.
The mere fact that Reid was voted in as the new Senate Minority Leader by members of his party says everything about the DNC's lack of vision and professionalism.
Much of the MSM continues to report—endlessly I might add—that the Republican Party is on an inexorably rightward-slide. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
The fact is, Democratic leaders are the ones on the slide, growing increasingly fringe with each passing year. Senator Reid is just one simple case in point.
Unfortunately, the MSM continues to offer favorable press coverage to DNC leaders in general and Senator Reid in particular. Are DNC leaders moving left? "No," says the MSM, "they are simply responding to the increasingly radical right-wing GOP agenda, which, among other things, has chosen to champion issues that are central to most Americans." "Those damned Republicans, cow-towing to the American people like that... Outrageous!"
But I digress.
We were talking about Senator Reid, so, let's take a look at the litany of Reid gaffes, uttered since December of 2004 even as he was preparing to take the Minority Leader position for his party. Reid has, among other things:
- Accused Justice Thomas of being an "embarrassment," saying, among other things, that Justice Thomas cannot write well.
- Called Fed Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, a "hack" for "urging Congress to deal quickly with the financial problems facing Social Security and Medicare."
- Called President Bush a "loser" in front of school children and while the President was on foreign soil no less!
- Shocked both his fellow Democrats as well as Republicans when he publicly hinted that he may have had illegal access to and was disturbed by the top secret FBI files of one of President Bush's Appellate Court nominees, Henry Saad.
- And, even, as reported by Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times today, that he might be behind an unprecendented push to investigate the financial records of every possible Supreme Court nominee!
Never mind the fact that this is the type of leadership I might expect from, say, an Enron executive. Really, next to Reid, Newt Gingrich, [a man Democrats LOVE to hate] looks like Mother Theresa!
Is there some kind of big plan that I'm missing here? Perhaps Senator Reid is the bad cop to Senator Clinton's good cop? Or maybe the goal is to look so desperate and clueless that people will actually begin to feel sorry for Reid and his fellow Democrats.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Nice to see you looking into Reid. I find him extremely creepy and I'm not surprised it's born out by his behavior.
Dave
2 - Big Time Patriot
"Called Fed Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, a "hack" for "urging Congress to deal quickly with the financial problems facing Social Security and Medicare."
Nice selective bit of editing. Why didn't you mention this part of Reids quote about Greenspan from the same article:
"Why doesn't he respond to the Republicans and tell them the big problem here is the debt that this administration [has] created?" he said. "We had a $7 trillion-dollar surplus when Bush took office. Now we have a $3 or $4 trillion-dollar deficit. That's, in fact, what Greenspan should be telling people."
Well I don't know about you, but a guy who is suppposed to be knowledgeable about money and then supports large tax cuts based on a few quarters of surpluses is not a man who is careful with America's budget.
And when just a couple short years later he now says America can't afford anything, but can't even consider that his earlier support of tax cuts are a big part of the reason we have deficits, well, it's a bit hard to take him seriously.
Out here on the West Coast we have a name for people who go massively in debt when they have a couple good months of income and then refuse to take any blame, we call them "hacks". Perhaps in other parts of the country it makes you a national treasure of financial wisdom...
3 - Dave Nalle
BTP, you have no grasp of basic economics at all, do you?
There are two ways out of debt. One is to cut expenses. The other is to increase income. Even better is to do both.
Greenspan - like any sensible economist - is a big supporter of the income increase option. Cutting taxes makes more money for the government because the economy grows and the government ends up making more money per capita from the higher GDP. This is MORE desirable than cutting expenses, because it also results in the average citizen having more money in his pocket with the attendant benefits for the economy for everyone. Cutting government expenses is also desirable, but it has a less profound and long-lasting impact on the deficit and very little impact on the economy as a whole.
So Greenspan is exactly right, the first priority is cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and increase government revenue. Then all you have to do is keep government spending level or cut is slightly - as Bush is trying to do - and given a few years the economic growth is enough to make the deficit go away.
Dave
4 - Eric Berlin
Cutting taxes to increase revenue is not "basic economics."
It may well be an economic theory, one which bright people take different sides on.
Don't assume your economics are the only economics, Dave. Smart people from the beginning of time have tried to figure out the markets only to discover that it's an artform at best: not a hard science, as you imply.
5 - Dave Nalle
It's born out by working whenever it's been tested, Eric. That's good enough for me to make it a basic principle of economics, and it seems to be good enough for Alan Greenspan as well.
Dave
6 - Eric Berlin
I disagree, but I don't have time to get into this with you right now.
7 - RealCon
To test a hypothesis using calculus, the extremes are tested. So what are the extremes of taxation? One extreme is for the government to impose a tax of 100%. The other is for the government to impose little or no tax at all. The first is what the Soviet Union did. The second is what the Founders of this country did. When settling for a compromise keep in mind a government tends to always want more… and more… -- and what is WORSE… will tend to WASTE more… and more…
Of course, the problem we have now is that for years we have allowed those we send to Washington to serve us -- to instead serve the 10,000 lobbyists who suck at the teats of the US Treasury. We will never have a properly functioning economy in this country until we get rid of the parasites in Washington who invest a few hundred thousand in political campaigns and take billions (soon to be trillions) out of our pockets in return.
8 - Eric Berlin
So you're suggesting more campaign finance reform?
9 - RJ
Reid is loonier than Daschale was.
But, Reid just won re-election in a swing state, so he won;t be up for re-election until 2010.
Daschale, OTOH, was in a Red state...
10 - RJ
IOW, Reid is relatively safe to make assinine comments for the next 5 years or so. Then he'll have to pose as a "moderate Mormon" again...
11 - RealCon
Eric -- there are ways to get the parasites out of politics without “more campaign finance reform” which isn’t really reform at all. How about “lobbyist reform” which could be done in several ways. There are many ways to skin this cat if we had the will as voters to do it.
12 - Eric Berlin
"Lobbyist reform" would be extremely difficult without jerking with constiutional rights.
But you're right about the real answer: the voters don't have the will to vote out those that are beholden to special interests on both sides of the aisle.
13 - RealCon
Eric -- Let’s not forget we have amended the Constitution 27 times. We do it when we believe it is necessary for the benefit of the country.
14 - bill plummer
to quote the vice president, on the floor of the united states senate, no less, go fu*k yourself.
15 - RealCon
A basic problem in this country is we have too many imbeciles who don’t understand the issues. They live off of meaningless one-liners which only shows their stupidity.
16 - David Flanagan
BTP:
The fact is, Reid called Greenspan a "hack," for no other reason than the fact that Greenspan had the temerity to go before congress and not critisize the President. Senator Reid was hoping for that, but, instead, heard a message challenging the congress to control their spending.
The fact is, controlling spending in Washington is important and ALSO has an impact upon the deficit. And it's not as if Greenspan never critisizes the President's policies.
Reid is just very unprofessional in his behaviour. If all it takes to be a Senate Minority Leader is to stand up and call people names, then I want that job.
David
17 - Lono
Wow,
Finally someone is willing to take on the power hungry abuses of a Democratic senate completely out of control with their quaint missives of 'checks and balances'. You are right. Reid is the only guy in the world right now with the balls to stand up to the American Taliban (the Christian Right) and you want to attack him.
The Dems hold NO power right now. The GOP has it all. the Supreme Court, the majority or governorships, the senate, the house, the presidency.
thank god for Reid, and someone besides Al Franken being willing to take on this administration.
*oh, and your Gingrich reference as being someone Dems love to hate. Keep in mind that is because he worked tirelessly to have President Clinton kicked out of office for having an affair...
while.... stay with me on this.......
HE WAS HAVING AN AFFAIR HIMSELF
Death to the Taliban
and Death to the American Taliban too
stand up and take your country back!
18 - Nancy
As a dedicated enemy of the current administration (ANY current administration, actually) and a get-go Bush loather, I have to admit that it frustrates the bejesus out of me that the Dems seem to be so feckless and clueless right now. It's like, the moment Bill left, the whole party just collapsed. But I agree with Lono, in that it's a good thing someone is standing up to the one-party rule the GOP has instituted, driven by the fundamentalist maniacs of the far reich. How I wish that Ross Perot had been a serious founder of a 3rd American political party, instead of just a wealthy nut-case! Realcon also has a good point, that too many of these scumbags up on the Hill (of BOTH parties) are half-wits - ignorant yet paradoxically cunning as long as their self-interest is at stake - who do nothing but think and speak in sound bites, because that's all they're capable of. I have to say that most of all I think Realcon has another excellent point (as does Eric), which is that one of the biggest worms gnawing at the root of state is lobbying, and unless and until lobbying and lobbyists are utterly banned, we will not and can not have a decent, honest, and honorable government dedicated to the good of the people instead of the bank accounts of the politicians and their special interest buddies who bought them their positions. This may, indeed, require some imaginative pruning of constitutional rights, but I do wonder, where in the constitution does it give anyone the right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of corruption', which is what lobbying is? I still think we need to indiscriminately tar and feather all of them, most of them for being scoundrels, and the rest for being idiots.
19 - Dave Nalle
There's standing up to the administration and then there's being an obstructionist nonsensically just to be obnoxious. Reid seems to fall into the second category.
The Dems are perfectly within their rights - hell, it's even their job - to oppose the administration. But right now that opposition seems to consist only of whining and bitching and screaming insults. That's apparently Reid's style.
If they want to oppose the administration effectively they need to offer viable policy alternatives. Right now no one is saying, "hey, these democrats have some good ideas, why doesn't the administration try to work with them", because they have no ideas that anyone thinks are viable and aren't willing to venture onto grounds where compromise is possible. They just want to stand to the extreme left and shout shrilly and point fingers. No one much likes to see that sort of behavior from people who want to be their leaders.
People like Reid cost the Democrats the last election and are on their way to costing them the next one, if they don't start putting policy first and coming up with some real ideas that catch the public imagination.
Dave
20 - RealCon
Over the past decade the US could have ended up with someone else as president but the news media dubbed them “crazy“ or “racist“. However, we would have avoided problems with which we are now confronted, and for which nobody seems to have a solution.
1. We would not have NAFTA and we would still have the American jobs that went to Mexico.
2. Our borders would be guarded and the millions of illegals in this country would be where they should be -- in their own countries. Our immigration laws would be enforced.
3. The hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost to countries such as China because of dollar-an hour slave labor would still be here in this country. We would not have the long term implications of what our future will be like when ALL our manufacturing jobs are gone.
4. Our economy would be improved because there would be less unemployment and out tax base would higher.
5. We would not be bogged down in a senseless war in Iraq. Thousands of Americans in our military would be alive or at least have their limbs intact.
6. We would not be spending hundreds of billions of BORROWED dollars to fight an “enemy” that never attacked us and did not even come close to having the ability to attack us. The worst thing that Iraq ever did to us was WHAT? (I know Saddam committed the mistake of throwing Halliburton out of Iraq before the war).
7. We would not have a White House intent on rewarding its rich friends and benefactors to the detriment of the average taxpayer. Of course, we would have some unhappy multi-national corporations who would not be able to take a product that cost $1 to make overseas and sell it here for $35.
8. We would not have a White House intent on deceiving the people with puppet spokesmen who are nevertheless capable of bamboozling the news media.
9. We would not have to contend with a Pentagon which has been hijacked by a cabal of irrational neo-cons, or should I say neo-fascists.
10. Our image around the world would be one of respect as opposed to one of ridicule and disdain.
We have what we have because our politically correct news media can vilify political candidates with impunity, regardless of the veracity of their accusations.
21 - Eric Berlin
So you're for Pat Buchannon '08 then?
22 - Dave Nalle
I think that's a given based on RealCon's previous postings.
Dave
23 - RealCon
Pat Buchanan would not run again -- he has been smeared too many times by the left wing press.
24 - Eric Berlin
Who the hell listens to the quote-unquote "left wing" press:
- President George W. Bush - 2 Terms
- Republican controlled Congress
25 - RealCon
Who listens to the left wing press? What else has there been to listen to?