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October Surprise! Leadership Demise? Larry Sabato on Fall Foley-age

Here’s Larry Sabato’s rather discouraging list of parallels between 2006 and 1994, including one involving the name Foley. His question: Are the Republicans just giving it away? We need to take it seriously. The news this morning--after the Foley stuff--was mostly excellent for Americans: Stock Market up, inflation down, record profits, gas prices quite reasonable, etc. But the Republicans seem incapable of taking credit, even when credit is due. There’s still time to turn this around, but statesmanship is required.

Discussions - 5 Comments

Dr. Lawler,

Just read the same e-mail from Prof. Sabato. I’m curious by what you mean when you refer to statesmanship in this sense. I assume you mean more than just the ability to manuver around to fit the polls correctly.

To put it another way, if one was a statesman, and one was in the House of Representatives, what would one say or do?

I know this may sound a bit ridiculous to many, but I rather think the Republicans are doing much better than most pundits think. Last night, even the Fox News guys on Brit Hume’s show virtually wrote the GOP off in the aftermath of the Foley follies. Meanwhile the Foxies bend over backwards to write President Clinton a pass for wagging his finger in the face of Chris Wallace!

Ha! Read between the lines, here, folks. The Democrats are offering nothing save to those of their rabid, silly little base of fringe kooks. Democrats are completely null and void on the issues. Hell, they’re not even in the frickin’ ball game, here. Thus, as the election draws nearer, their lack of any "Contract with America" will become self evident and America will see them for what they are. Even a common-sense farmer knows the truth in the saying, "Where there are no oxen the barn is clean."

Running this country in these post-9/11 days is a tough, messy business. And the American voter won’t be fooled by a few piles of dung on the barnyard floor once they take notice of all the healthy looking cows standing around waiting for a place on their prosperous dinner table. Three cheers for the GOP, folks! :)

The overall Congressional leadership is taking their cue from the White House. GW is congenitally incapable of blowing his own horn, so the overall GOP right now, is likewise incapable of blowing their own horn.

Recall when little GW would get several hits in a ball game, and scoot on home to tell his mom as much. And what would Barbara do, she would say that’s fine, "but what did the team do...." That’s GW’s attitude. That’s why he couldn’t simply step in during Katrina, and brush aside the incompetent hacks, Blanco and Nagin. That’s why he never crows about the American economy. That’s also partially to blame for why GW doesn’t defend his foreign policy. GW isn’t simply a verbal cripple, GW is playing by some anachronistic, WASP rule book that hasn’t been operative since the 1950s. He’s a millstone around our neck right now. GW’s style of governance, his personal tics, his mannerisms, are simply killing us.

3: Precisely, ANON. Well said.

So, you both agree that Victorian morality is deader than Beowulf. Well, don’t you think that’s a little sad? Maybe it is killing us, but if we abandon all our hard-won Western ethics, what’s left?

Yea, I know, losers don’t get the chance to be ethical, at least in governing. Nonetheless, surely there is some middle road between quaint gentlemanlike ethics and ball-busting "red in tooth and claw" Darwinian political hell?

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