McCain on Border Security: Them Against Us! (eProf2)

“Senator, you’re one of us.” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu to John McCain in McCain’s latest border security ad.

The ad is wrong on so many levels. First, Sheriff Paul Babeu’s office is in Florence, AZ, some 133 miles from the ad’s setting. He had to travel across two other counties to get to the fence location in Nogales, Santa Cruz County, Arizona.

Second, McCain apparently couldn’t get the endorsement of the local Sheriff, Antonio Estrada, who is opposed to SB 1070; thus, the Sheriff of Pinal County, a self-identified Republican, is walking the line with him. In a second edition of the ad, Sheriff Babeu says he’s not appearing in the ad in his official capacity as Sheriff of Pinal County. So, why is wearing his official Sheriff’s uniform?

Third, McCain, just three years ago, said he didn’t want a fence to separate people and families from the United States and Mexico. Now, in 2010, and facing a more reactionary right-winger in the primary, JD Hayworth, he wants the “danged fence finished.”

And, fourth, if McCain and Babeu think they’re now together as “us,” who do they think is “them?” Is the Sheriff deliberately trying to divide Arizonans one from another or Anglos from Hispanics? Governor Brewer says she won’t tolerate racial profiling, so who are “they” if not those crossing the border, legally or illegally, recently or five or six generations ago?

Shame on McCain and shame on Babeu!

Tale of Two Politicians

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I am no fan of either Charlie Crist or John McCain, however only one man’s behavior in recent memory warrants contempt, that being John McCain.    It’s given us great insight into  the character of both men as to how each has dealt with threats from the extreme right wing base within their own party.    When push came to shove one man decided to walk away from his party, the other walked away from his values.  Who would you rather see elected to high office?

Hey Kid Get Off My Lawn!

Political Posturing using Iran ~ dnd

Recently some U.S. congress critters have been criticizing President Obama for not publicly siding with the opposition in Iran’s recent, dubious, election.  The list includes Eric Cantor, Mike Pense and most notably, John McCain.  They call for the President to “meddle” despite the fact that anybody who knows anything about the situation or geopolitics in general (including Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) says that what Obama is doing is exactly the right thing.  Cripes, even the Iranian protesters say what Obama is doing is the right thing.

At first I thought this was just a knee-jerk reaction from the if-Obama-is-for-it-I’m-against-it crowd.  Seems like a good opportunity to make some political hay by making a straw man argument about the administration’s stance on freedom, liberty, democracy, etc.  Don’t forget to wear your flag pin.

However the more I thought about it the more I wondered why those few critics would question Obama’s actions, given that they are aware of the diplomatic and geopolitical consequences.  If Obama was to side with the opposition and there was a bloody crackdown, he most certainly would have to take some sort of action, most likely military, in a time when he prefers to engage diplomatically with Iran.  So the conspiracy theory is perhaps that’s what they really want.

The Dumbing Down of Lincoln’s Party

 

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains.

Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000.  Many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases, by six points.

John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South. The GOP lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than the battle for educated votes.  Driving and election with nothing more than slogans like;

Energy? Just drill, baby, drill.

Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al.

Immigration? Send the bums home.

Torture and Guantanamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be waterboarding.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a good long while in the making. The born-again GW Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head.” He also filled the government with incompetent cronies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brownie.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. Its electoral success from 1980 on was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees.  The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening?  Many conservatives, particularly lower-income ones are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders.  They take their opinions from talk radio and regard Palin’s apparent ignorance as a badge of honor. The movement has little to say about pressing problems and expends too much energy on xenophobia, homophobia, Commies, and opposing stem-cell research.  They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans,” with their folksy wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g’s.”

How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride.” 

But the odds in favor of an imminent renaissance for the GOP look long and distant. Richard Weaver, a founder of modern conservatism, once wrote a book titled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

Symbols in Politics, by dnd

On 30 October I wrote the following:

“If money is the mother’s milk of politics, symbolism is certainly the strained carrots.  Or in this election, possibly the soiled diaper.  The McCain campaign is branding Joe the plumber as the everyman.  Yet Joe is a phony.  He’s not a licensed plumber.  He’s a tax cheat.  He would benefit from Obama’s tax plan, yet he’s against it.  He’s not unclogging anyone’s toilet these days because he’s on the stump with the McCain/Palin campaign.  And now he’s got a P.R. agent and a reported country and western record deal.  Joe’s most embarrassing moment may be when on 30 October 2008 John McCain said at a rally in Defiance, OH that Joe was in the audience.  In defiance, Joe wasn’t there.

And then there’s Sarah Palin, hockey mom.  Governor Palin is brilliant on the stump when pandering to the base.  But when off script, she reveals herself to be politically incurious, unethical, corrupt and power hungry.  Not what one would normally think of when thinking of a hockey mom.

Symbols are powerful in politics.  They are most powerful when they reflect the truth.”

This was replaced by my rant on Daylight Savings Time.  But the last sentence turned out to be particularly prescient.  The election of Barack Obama is symbolic on many levels, both domestically and internationally.  As such, we’ve not just elected the most competent candidate; we’ve elected a metaphor for who we have become as a people.

OBAMA WINS!