Carpetbaggers - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Joe Bauers · #1 08-15-2004, 09:39 PM

Things in my state, Illinois, have gotten really interesting. The winner of the Republican primary to run for an open U.S. Senate seat took himself off the ticket because of revelations (made public primarily by a highly Republican newspaper, the Chicago Tribune), that he had taken his wife to sex clubs repeatedly, and tried to get her to perform sex acts in public. Personally, I thought he should have hung in there and run the race anyway. I think Republicans who go to sex clubs are bound to be more interesting than the run of the mill. But Republicans don't listen to folks like me much.

So the Repos began searching for a new candidate. They apparently could find no takers among the usual suspects among the Republican Party faithful, so they settled on erstwhile Presidential candidate, Alan Keyes. The good news, from the Republican point of view, was that Keyes is black, and since his opponent, Barak Obama, is also black, they figured (I guess) that they could take the race issue away from the Dems. The bad news is that Keyes does not now, nor has he ever, lived in Illinois. To compound the problems there, Keyes was one of the most vocal critics of Hillary Clinton when she moved to NY to run for the Senate there.

So what opinion do forum members have of the concept of carpetbagging in modern political life? Are we so mobile a society that it matters not where a person has lived in deciding how well he could represent any constituency? Or does residency matter? Your thoughts, please.

Joe B.

JimSmith · #2 08-15-2004, 10:03 PM

Joe,

By all accounts, it only matters if it matters to the voters. I saw Keyes defend himself on TV the other day on this charge. He is a pretty good toe dancer, as he did his best to sound convinced that when the Republican machine in Illinois called him, it was really the people of Illinois. While when Hillary Clinton did the NY move it was merely to serve her own ambitions. The difference, he stated, is very important. He is there to serve the will of the people, while Hillary is in NY to pursue her ambitions for public office and power. It sounded incredulous to even the interviewer but there were no arguments or fisticuffs.

So, it is probably just the way things are and unless the voters make an issue out of it, there is no issue. Hillary got voted into office, so I guess she is making progress on her career. Keyes is likely to be rejected, most likely because Obama seems pretty much in control at the moment. But that can change with a political blunder. I would reject Keyes, but I don't count here since I am not moving to Illinois to vote there, of his pompous mannerisms and perception he is doing God's work here. Jim

Joe Bauers · #3 08-15-2004, 10:09 PM

Posted by Jim Smith: So, it is probably just the way things are and unless the voters make an issue out of it, there is no issue. Hillary got voted into office, so I guess she is making progress on her career. Keyes is likely to be rejected, most likely because Obama seems pretty much in control at the moment. But that can change with a political blunder. I would reject Keyes, but I don't count here since I am not moving to Illinois to vote there, of his pompous mannerisms and perception he is doing God's work here. Jim

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Yes, Jim, Keyes is clearly employing a double standard. So far, if letters to the editor are to be believed, voters are not buying it. Repos are steamed that the state party did not tap the guy who came in second in the primary, and instead went so far out of state to find someone who was 1) black and 2) rigidly conservative. Dems don't like Keyes for his pomposity and all the God talk (reminds one of G.W. Bush who says, repeatedly, that he believes he is doing God's work as president).

Joe B.

KirkVining · #4 08-15-2004, 11:25 PM

When Alan Keyes looks in the mirror he sees Al Sharpton. He, like Al, is an extremist clown that appeals to the most extreme element in his party. Trotting him out to run in Illinois is bizarre. It shows who is in charge of the Republican Party in that state - Pat Robertson, who owns Mr. Keyes and his whole operation.

koop · #5 08-16-2004, 02:21 AM

I think he's a hoot. His latest is that he wants to repeal the 17th amendment and have senators appointed by the state congress. I don't know if it's a good idea but I like a polititian that comes up with the odd nutty idea.

mzsmbs · #6 08-17-2004, 01:02 AM

I'm totaly against bagging carpet. If you don't live here for a long time you have no idea how to represent me. We started having these 1/2 baggers here. they move here from Jersey or OH, live a year or two and then run for office on issues that are not important to folks around here: and it's mainly outsiders that want IN to be on daylight savings time... good luck with that one...I'm actually for being half hour off of everybody...lol

KirkVining · #7 08-17-2004, 02:52 AM

Bush needs to change the subject

The party that Nixon built has become one of rote instincts

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday August 12, 2004

The New Yorker

The drama of Richard Nixon's resignation 30 years ago this month has long overshadowed his political achievement. Nixon's criminal White House seemed an aberrant episode rooted in only his pathologies. But Nixon was the father of the modern Republican party.
It was Nixon who created a brand-new coalition of Southern conservatism in reaction to the civil rights movement. He absorbed the Dixiecrat followers of George C Wallace - urban ethnic Catholics and white-collar suburbanites fearful of racial turmoil and the breakdown of law and order and resentful of student protests, assertive women and the loosening of social mores; and he shifted the locus of power in the Republican party from the north-east and midwest to California, the south-west and Florida. Nixon's natural cynicism allowed him to juggle the volatile elements that gelled for Ronald Reagan.

By the time of Nixon's election in 1968, the Democratic coalition had cracked up under the stress of race and Vietnam. Now the Republican party that came to power is exhausted. It has lost political impetus. Its instability, contradictions and anachronisms have been apparent for more than a decade, since Clinton's victory in 1992.

George Bush did not make a new coalition or offer a refreshed Republicanism, despite the trope of "compassionate conservatism". He came to power as a result only of a flawed Democratic strategy in 2000, and even then he lost the popular majority and had to rely upon a skewed supreme court to install him in office. Before 9/11, after only nine months, his presidency was winding down, and he lost the Senate with the defection of a Republican. The war on terror was a substitute for old Republican anti-communism, the ultimate glue holding disparate elements together. Still, the party is coming unstuck, disintegrating in its historic base.

California, the home state of Nixon and Reagan, has disappeared from the Republican coalition. Its demographic transformations, especially the ever expanding Hispanic electorate (two-to-one Democratic), postindustrial economy and social liberalism, make it a forerunner of the future. Bush is so far behind in California that there is no campaign there whatsoever.

To win elections in general, Bush must raise his percentage of Hispanic votes from 35% in 2000 to close to 40%. But, according to a recent Democracy Corps poll, he is five points below his 2000 level and seven down in the south-west and Florida.

In Illinois, a former presidential bellwether, the Republican party has fallen off the map. In his famous 1960 victory, Kennedy won the state, with 65% in Chicago. The Chicago suburbs, two-to-one Republican as recently as 1988, have now begun to tilt Democratic (just as have the suburbs of Los Angeles). Meanwhile, the state Republican party has imploded: unable to find a credible Senate candidate against the star of the Democratic convention, Barack Obama, it has now come up with its own African-American, Alan Keyes. A screeching religious right fanatic, Keyes, who has worn a lapel pin featuring the feet of a foetus, is Jerry Falwell as played by Little Richard. Obama is beating him 67-28, undoubtedly Keyes's peak.

The turn in Michigan is, if anything, even more distressing for Republicans. West Michigan, home to Nixon's successor Gerald Ford and even today unrepresented by any Democrats in Congress, has John Kerry 12 points above Bush in a poll taken by a local TV station. This collapse is a consequence largely of the desertion of moderate Republicans repulsed by Bush's reckless economic mismanagement and neoconservative foreign policy. These moderates are overwhelmingly mainline Protestants, also offended by Bush's evangelical culture war and faith-based efforts to break down the wall of separation between church and state.

The party that Nixon built is crumbling. Bush is the candidate of canned talking points and a party whose instincts have become rote and often counterproductive. The "war president" wraps himself in the flag, but the latest code-orange terrorist alert aroused no rally-round-the-flag syndrome; instead, it raised questions about Bush's timing and handling. Rather than campaign on his record, he has challenged Kerry to justify his vote for the Iraq war resolution, and when Kerry explained his reasoning accused him of "nuance". How can Bush change the subject?

With independent voters bleeding away from him, he has taken to stumping with the maverick Republican senator John McCain, his mortal enemy. Can Bush dump Cheney without being seen as desperate and repudiating his entire term? Bush's father owed his political career to Nixon's patronage; now the son is in danger of inheriting the wind.

Botnst · #8 08-17-2004, 07:15 AM

re Keyes. WGAS?

el presidente · #9 08-17-2004, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Bauers

So what opinion do forum members have of the concept of carpetbagging in modern political life? Are we so mobile a society that it matters not where a person has lived in deciding how well he could represent any constituency? Or does residency matter? Your thoughts, please.

Joe B.

My feeling is that a representative should represent the members of his/her district.

Hilary was wrong (but earned herself a Senate seat regardless). Keyes is wrong as well.

Botnst · #10 08-18-2004, 11:45 PM

People should vote for whomever they trust to represent their interest in whatever office candidates aspire. If they want to vote for an out of stater, so what? That's for the folks of Illinois to figure out. Its a state issue. Let the state figure it out.

Besides, Keyes is smart and a good debater and I'll bet Obama is, too. I'd love to hear them debate important issues, wouldn't you? Hopefully C-Span will carry a debate. Anybody know?

Bot

mzsmbs · #11 08-19-2004, 01:11 AM

that's fine and dandy bot, and it'll get settles in IL BUT, this is midwest and people never vote issues here... it's all party line.. dumbarses...

Botnst · #12 08-19-2004, 08:02 AM

Not just Illinois, unfortunately. In debate candidates would usually rather nitpick for points than discuss broader issues. The exception to that was the most excellent Cheney-Leiberman debate. I came away from that one will to have eitehr man as president, forget the top of the tickets.

In the voting booth, people usually vote the party line. Its a sort of social inertia. I have no idea why.

Locally we have a full-blown ass running for congress under the GOP. I can hardly wait to vote against him--we have an open primary. I don't know who else is running and don't especially care. With this guy running, I'll vote for a yella dog instead.

B