Another Big Loser On Tuesday…
…was the conspiracy theorist. Anyone recall these words by the wife of Norman Lear pre-election?
…When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca.
We all know the neocons won’t cede power easily. They have to be aware that if the tide of Congress turns, Bush’s last two years will be mired in gridlock and perhaps even be punctuated by several embarrassing congressional investigations. Of course, Cheney did say last week that everything in Iraq is hunky dory, which leads one to believe that after James Baker’s devastating report and the escalating mass destruction of the war, Dickey-boy has simply lost it. But whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House’s freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don’t win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.
Thank God we were spared the spectacle of this wealthy matron ‘taking it to the streets’…but that sort of claptrap was indicative of a particular mindset we’re all too acquainted with. Diebold machinations, the imperial Presidency, ‘we wuz robbed’…well, it’s been revealed to be the crap it always was. The Republicans lost, and now even Allen and Burns have conceded. It’s Thursday – it took about thirty-six hours for the whole thing to be over.
Even on the day of the election, we were hearing all these horror stories about voter suppression, malfunctioning electronic voting machines, etc., stories that strangely evaporated once it became clear the Democrats would win big.
American elections are seldom pretty, but they are nearly always decisive. The closeness of the 2000 race gave birth to all sorts of wild speculation that deserves to be laid to rest…but you can bet it won’t…
I think I’ve mentioned before that in 2004 I almost hoped Bush lost just to definitively prove the leftists wrong. Of course, pretty soon Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and their ilk will be parading through the streets of San Fransisco and Berkeley as if they were Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel in Warsaw and Prague.
As a proud resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I can only look forward to the day when their busts have a place of honor next to Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte downtown at the Ho Chi Minh Pavillion.
Maybe we can put them right under the statues of Marx and Lennon (Groucho and John).
This time it was the Dems that won the close races. Note that the Repubs did not contest those races but conceded within a reasonable time afterwards. No promised court battles, nothing.
If the results would have been the other way around, you would have had screaming and yelling to the max along with lawyers filing court documents and charges of voter fraud being screamed from the top of the highest mountain. The Dems proved this in the last two elections.
The Republicans lose with class. Remember John Ashcroft losing to Mel Carnahan in 2000 after the plane crash. Never did contest the validity of the election.
My own vote for the Biggest Sore Loser of all time goes to Richard Nixon in 1962.
While I don’t think that anyone wishes to revisit the Florida debacle in 2000, let’s just say that both sides had lawyers and law suits aplenty.
And before you typify Republican behavior in 2006 as exemplary, it’s helpful to recall things like the Cotter ad, the robocalls, and dirty tricks such as the following:
http://www.slate.com/id/2153432/entry/0/
This is not to suggest that all Democrats are angels – let’s not forget Mayor Daley’s 321 dead Indians who voted for JFK in alphabetical order – but to suggest that Republicans have a greater claim to civility or decency is simply untrue.
Kerry didnt complain in 2004. Republicans tried impeaching clinton over his completely-irrelevant-to-his-job-performance sex life.
They did it because they were slimy. Does anybody here think the democratic controlled congress will try to impeach bush? Thats the great thing about being a democrat- we dont stoop to those disgusting levels republicans do.
Well, now that your nancy pelosi, a vote for the dems is a vote for the terrorists, dems will raise taxes has been seen by the american public as another slimy republican tactic to win an election, what will you come up with in 08?
Keep those tactics up, and soon all you will have is the stupid south.
Ahh, the stupid south again. Well, I’m from Texas, Senator Kerry (that is you, we all know it), and if you ever get down this way, stop on by…I’ve got a boot I’d like to show you…repeatedly…
1962?
Am I missing something or do you mean 1960?
“Kerry didn’t complain in 2004″ What universe were you in?
Republicans tried impeaching clinton over his completely-irrelevant-to-his-job-performance sex life. He was impeached, but not convicted and it wasn’t about his sex life. Try perjury and obstruction of justice in a civil case. He lost his law license in New York for five years over this issue.
In 1962, Nixon lost the race for governor of California, and famously told the press that “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
In 1960, Nixon would not concede the election until well after it was over — to which JFK reportedly said “no class” — although Nixon, to his great credit, did not dispute the election and precipitate a constitutional crisis despite the evidence of vote fraud in Illinois. Or, as Joseph Kennedy said, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
As for the purportedly stupid South: I noted with satisfaction that Kinky Friedman was able to get 12% of the vote — I’ll never say another bad thing about Texas again.
“you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
I learn something new everyday. I thought he said it after resigning from the presidency.
Peter-rutgers. I still don’t believe it.
I was unaware that he ran for Governor in 1962. I remember the statement, which is ironic because he turned around and ran for President in 1968 and won. This was the election that Wallace ran and took most of the south with him and the presidency away from HHH.
I may have the all-time sorriest losers.
The gop, from this year.
“The White House said keeping the majority was a priority, but they failed to do the one thing that could have made a difference,” one House GOP leadership aide said Thursday. “For them to toss Rumsfeld one day after the election was a slap in the face to everyone who worked hard to protect the majority.”
There is whistling past the graveyard, and then there is out right revisionism.
The gop did not lose because of rumsfeld-
they lost becuase they failed completely. spending, stem cells, and their own personal failure to argue their support of Iraq. They failed to explain and they failed to follow what was going on. Didn’t see one of them on hardball defending our iraq policy, becuase they were uninterested enough to learn anything. If Rummy was unpopular, it was becuase he was the lightening rod of an unpopular war.
7% increase in domestic spending, when we are at war? They lost becuase of their arrogance, and now they want to blame it all on rummy. If rummy is their problem, there is an election in 2008, and rummy won’t be around. Surely it will be easy, since they ‘did not lose becuase of their own flaws’.
from wikipedia:
“In 1962, Nixon suffered another defeat, this time in a race for Governor of California. Years of campaigning and losing had worn Nixon down. In his concession speech, Nixon blamed the media for favoring his opponent Pat Brown and stated that it was his “last press conference” and that “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” This was widely believed to be the end of his career. In just another 12 months though, John Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas, Texas.”
No doubt, it was this endorsement that did the trick.
Hey, listen, to me the South is Rhode Island and those guys did the right thing by kicking out that despicable RINO Lincoln Chafee.
That’s some nice work on that pumpkin, Jacques…
I guess I went for the low-hanging fruit.
I shoulda done a Nancy Pelosi pumpkin …
Hey, there’s always next year…but I dare you to try a Robert Gates pumpkin…now THAT would be impressive…