Dumbstruck Dems * Open Thread
By Bronwyn's Harbor on September 3, 2010 at 11:24 PM in Current Affairs
Check this out from Bloomberg News on August 30, 2010 (Update: I’ve added a video of the interview at the end.)
Political newcomer Joe Miller, a Tea Party-endorsed Senate candidate [said] that politicians backed by the movement simply want to “restore the constitutional foundation of the country.”
Miller said the Constitution favors his support for privatizing Social Security and phasing out Medicare.
“If one thinks that the Constitution is extreme then you’d also think that the founders are extreme,” he said on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “We just simply want to get back to basics.”
Holy moley. The Dems are not just fightin’ a bunch of feisty, Constitution-quotin’ Tea Partiers. The Dems are also fightin’ the resurgence of the heroes and heroines of Western movies, brought to life with characters like the shotgun-totin’, pretty-as-all-get-out Sarah Palin and her ridin’ partner, the manly oh so manly Joe Miller.
One of those visuals could be enough to trample the Dems. The two visuals together are like the dynamite that blasted mountain after mountain to pave the way West, connecting the West to the rest of the country and bringing electricity and water to every region of the once distant and parched Wild West.
We Americans are desperate to feel potent and powerful again. It’s no wonder we Americans are transfixed by these new rough-and-ready cowboys and cowgirls.
Carly Fiorini is leading Barbara Boxer in most polls. Joe Sestak is now down 10 points in the Pennsylvania Senate race. And Dino Rossi has pulled ahead of Patty Murray in Washington state. (See my footnote below about Rossi/Murray.*)
Congress is going to look, and sound, a whole lot different next year. We may all find ourselves tuning into C-Span to watch those fiery freshmen start to mow down Obama’s health care bill and more.
Here’s quite the pull-no-punches story in, of all places, a San Francisco newspaper: “A big wave is headed Nancy Pelosi’s way and few places to duck“:
The news just keeps getting worse for Democrats as the Labor Day weekend marks the final, formal heat in the race to November. The Cook Political Report is now saying 70 — that’s 70 with a seven — House seats are in jeopardy. The Gallup poll is showing a 10-point spread on the generic ballot favoring the GOP.
Republicans need to win 39 to retake the House just two short years after Democrats swept to the giddiest heights of power in Washington: a young fresh leader in the White House, a filibuster-proof Senate, and a powerful House majority led by San Francisco’s own liberal champion, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
This November is shaping up as a wave election, and Pelosi is too far from shore to scramble to safety, and not far enough out to duck the big one heading her way. Nothing Democrats do in the next two months is going to bring the unemployment rate down. Period.
If Pelosi finds herself handing the gavel to House Republican leader John Boehner in January, it would be a miracle if she is not at least challenged as leader of the new minority Democrats. She is already being dissed in the hinterlands by terrified House moderates and conservatives who are trying desperately to show their independence.
What could really hurt Pelosi is this: her most loyal allies are the longest-serving members, the old bulls who fell from power in 1994 and suffered 12 long, unforgettable years in the GOP wilderness. Watch them retire in droves at the prospect of living through that again.
As ecstatic as they were when Obama took office, they know full well what faces the administration with GOP control of the Hill. …
Get this Joe Miller guy. What a candidate.
He beat incumbent U.S. Lisa Murkowski (R-AL), even though she “had 20 times the money” that Miller did, reports the Wall Street Journal. Murkowski voted against Obamacare, but she still got mowed under. She has the privileges of incumbency, which help states enormously in getting the federal contracts and monies that states — particularly under-populated, isolated states like Alaska — depend on. AND SHE STILL GOT BEAT.
Now riding into November, Joe Miller is already six points ahead of Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, a far better-known Alaskan who is mayor of Sitka.
Joe Miller’s handsome visage and his bio remind me somewhat of Scott Brown, who literally shook the world when he won “the Kennedy Senate seat” in Massachusetts. (You may recall the prominent news stories on Brown’s win in newspapers from the UK to the Mid-East to Southeast Asia. The entire world was transfixed by the astonishing upside-down victory of Scott Brown and what it said about the state of the American people’s fury and desperation about the conditions in Washington, D.C.)
You should check out the fascinating study and bio of Miller in the Washington Post: “Tea party’s Joe Miller: What he plans if Alaska sends him to Washington.” Here’s a snippet — this is a bit longer than I usually like to offer up from a printed article, because of etiquette and as recognition of the money it costs newspapers to create excellent articles like this one — but I am sure you’ll want to keep reading and will visit the Washington Post site to read it all:
FAIRBANKS, ALASKA – The people who live in the farther-flung cities of this farthest-flung state take a frontier pride in their physical and cultural distance from the cushy “Lower 48.” Many will tell you that they are especially wary of the federal government’s attempts to regulate the way they live. But this wariness had always been matched by the strong desire here to make sure their representatives in Washington kept millions of federal dollars flowing into their underdeveloped state.
Which makes it all the more curious that Alaska’s next U.S. senator is likely to be political novice Joe Miller, a “tea party” hero with an uncompromising view that government spending is out of control and has to stop – even if that means Alaska gets less.
Miller’s win in the Republican primary left the rest of the country – including shocked political handicappers and the Senate GOP leadership – asking: “Who is this guy?”
Like many Alaskans, Miller, 43, came from somewhere else. He grew up in Kansas, the son of a minister and bookstore owner. As a kid, he had a passion for hunting – deer, pheasant, quail – and military history.
In an interview, he recalled dressing up as Gen. Lafayette for a parade commemorating the nation’s bicentennial in 1976. He was accepted to all three service academies and chose West Point. “The best decision I could’ve made,” he said.
“I developed a real affinity for the founders and what they stood for, the sacrifice they made on behalf of their country, and that really had staying power,” he said.
Miller left the Army to attend law school at Yale, where a professor who knew him well recalled a passionate, conservative young man who could have found a place at any East Coast law firm but chose instead to move to Alaska for a semester-long internship.
“It was unusual for students at Yale,” said George Priest, the professor. “Yale, given its stature, makes entry into the Eastern legal establishment much more available than other schools. Miller was a smart guy. He could have clerked on courts on the East Coast if he wanted. He could have done extremely well going back to his home in Kansas. Instead, he’s a real adventurer. He wanted to strike out and go to this frontier and make a name for himself.”
Miller recalled the allure of Alaska this way: “It was the love of the outdoors; the big, wide open spaces; the rustic, hard-core environment you’ve got up here – all of it attracted me.”
Miller and his wife, Kathleen, have eight children (two are from her previous marriage), and they live on 20 acres about 15 miles outside Fairbanks. He hunts elk with his sons, and his beard, which seems perpetually to be one week from coming in, evokes the plaid-shirted Brawny paper towel man. … READ ALL.
It is clear that Miller is one smart guy. Damn well educated too, and at West Point and Yale (!). But those elite environments didn’t change him. It is evident that he has a unequivocal sense of who he is and what he stands for, to which he is unflinchingly loyal.
And he has the looks to go with his character. In other words, he’s fascinating. But he’s not colorful, and he’s not kooky like Sharron Angle. He’s got brains and a hell of a lot of knowledge, including military experience, to go with his hardcore principles.
I have no doubt that he’ll win in November. Last night I watched his opponent Scott McAdams bumble through an interview and sighed … besides being inarticulate, he was hoplessly vague and uncertain of his own views. Miller will mow over McAdams just like he sprang out of NOWHERE to now down Lisa Murkowski, despite her legendary political status in Alaska, all her money, and her crucial status in the U.S. Senate. All that Miller had lacked was visibility, but Sarah Palin’s endorsement took care of that little problem.
Some of his views make me shudder — especially his views on Social Security and Medicare. He’s as extreme as Nevada GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle, but he is a far smarter, savvy candidate than she.
He’s just one vote out of one hundred. He’ll be a newbie with few privileges. His rigidly far-right views will make fellow Republican Scott Brown look as liberal as Ted Kennedy. But he’ll be somethin’ to watch, alright. And how.
* Footnote about the Murray/Rossi senate race in Washington state: It’s an interesting race. First, some facts about the two:
Dino’s more an executive type. He’s not really a senator type, and I have a hunch that the Senate is not what he really wants (although he can do the gig since he did the Washington state senate from 1997 to 2003). Dino wanted to be governor, ran twice for governor and lost both times. However, shortly after that first Tuesday of November 2004, Dino was certified as governor-elect. Check this out:
In the 2004 election that would become the closest gubernatorial race in United States history, Rossi was certified as governor-elect before losing a second hand recount to Democrat Christine Gregoire.
Dino’s got a large army of loyal backers who KNOW in their hearts — and heads — that the Seattle Democrats cheated to give Christine Gregoire her 2004 win by messing with ballots in King County, the county that is home to Seattle and environs. It could be true. Even when I was still a loyal Democrat (before I got brutalized by the Obamabots in 2007-2008), I had my doubts about what happened in those King County Election Dept. offices…. besides their being dedicated Democrats who surely despised Rossi, those employees are a bunch of lazy lifers who are shockingly sloppy in their care of ballots. A lot of the irregularities discovered during the investigation had more to do with outright laziness and inattention than calculated vote-tampering.
Dino’s name has been knocked around for quite a while as a prospective opponent of Patty Murray, but he held back since she’s easily won reelection in the past, and Dino obviously didn’t want to add a third statewide defeat to his record, which would then essentially become his political obituary.
But the GOP heavyweights — the top dogs in the Republican party nationwide –saw a real chance to beat Patty Murray, who’s powerful in the Senate but only because of her seniority, not her brains or particular talents. She’s a dogged worker who won as the mom in tennis shoes but has never grown in Washingtonians’ perception of her. They know she’ll work hard. Beyond that, they’ve not seen in her a growth in national stature.
But Patty’s constituents lso know she’ll vote with the Democrats and for Obama’s agenda, no matter what her constituents may tell her. She’s a loyal dog sitting at the feet of the Democratic leadership, crawling her way up onto Harry Reid’s lap — and it’s no coincidence that little short Patty is always standing next to Harry in the official photos of the Senate leadership.
Further, behind that “mom in tennis shoes” persona is a person who is NOT tuned in to the people she supposedly represents. I know. I’ve called her D.C. office many times, and every time I have been shocked by the rudeness with which my comments have been received. When I called last year to express my concerns about the stimulus bill, the staffer IMMEDIATELY assumed I was a conservative Republican and tuned me out. I asked her to read back the notes she’d taken on my comments. She hadn’t written what I said. I forced her to rewrite her comments three times before I was satisfied. She was furious with me. I was far more furious with her. But the worst feeling that I had was that I was utterly disheartened by the lack of concern — the inability to listen — to me or to any of her constituents.
I can’t quite believe that I may vote for Dino Rossi. Since 2003, I’ve been 100% sure I’d never vote for Rossi for any job. Ever. But now? And after that experience I had in 2009 with her haughty, officious, demeaning staff members, which was like every other experience I’ve had when I’ve called her office (and it’s in stark contrast to the concerned response I get when I call Senator Maria Cantwell’s office), I just may vote for him. As a protest.
If I vote for Murray, I am voting for Harry Reid. I can’t stomach that thought.
I’d have the same internal conversations if I lived in California. I’d be heavily leaning towards voting for Carly Fiorina, who’s a very smart, very ambitious, very tuned-in person with great potential to ascend, in time, to leadership positions in the Senate. Rossi is like Fiorina in that way too: He is nothing if not ambitious, and he’d become a force in the Senate. If I lived in Alaska, I’d truly have a hard time because Miller’s views are so very extreme, but what I’ve seen of McAdams tells me that he’d be another lapdog like Murray.
There’s something that ALL true experts on voting patterns know. People vote with their hearts, not their heads. Nobody wants to admit to himself or herself that his or her heart decides who they’ll vote for. Nobody. So we always talk about what we think of the candidate and the candidates’ positions on issues. But, in our heart of hearts, that’s not how we decide who we vote for.
That’s always scared the hell out of me. That my emotions rule my decisions. But it is what it is. All I can do is pray that my emotions are being influenced by the best possible information and impressions. But can we ever be sure? I wonder.
But I am NOT wondering about the emotions of the American people these days. We are so damn pissed off, we could blow the lid off the roof of Congress. And we may just do that.
CBS: Face the Nation. Miller: Transfer Govt. to States, People
Republican nominee for the Senate in Alaska Joe Miller discussed with Bob Schieffer his stance on the distribution of power in the government and his support on decreasing federal aid money to states.
View more videos at Miller’s Web site.
2nd UPDATE: Here’s a 30-second spot for Miller’s campaign, titled “Credentials” — this also points out that Miller was in Desert Storm and has a master’s degree in economicss along with his degrees from West Point and Yale Law School.
by Ronald Scott
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