Skip to main content

Talking Temperance

By



Sheldon Adelson apparently has a hole burning in his pocket and is determined to buy an election.  He was successful in Israel, where the electorate amounts to less than 6 million, but it is decidedly tougher in the US where over 120 million votes were cast in 2012.  You would think if you were Uncle Sheldon you'd put your money behind a horse that has a reasonable chance of winning, but in 2012, Adelson backed Newt Gingrich in the primaries.  Now, he is putting his money behind Lindsey Graham, assuming the dodgy South Carolina Senator runs for office.

Lindsey is certainly sounding Presidential these days, chastising Ted Cruz for his extremist views, saying "you can't govern the country based on being angry."  This would also rule out Ben Carson, who wears his anger on his sleeve.  But, the GOP appears to embrace anger and extremism these days, sounding more like the Taliban than a party of reconciliation.

Many conservative US Representatives and Senators rode the Tea Party band wagon into Congress by adamantly stating they would brook no compromise.  Lindsey likes to talk compromise, but when push comes to shove he generally backs out of any bipartisan agreement that would hurt his approval rating back home in South Carolina.  After all, he had to fend off six challengers in the GOP Senate primary last year.

You certainly won't hear him talk of his effort to reach out to Obama and the Democrats on an energy bill on the campaign trail.  Not that it went anywhere, because as soon as his Republican peers caught wind of it, he backed away quicker than Olympia Snowe and Chuck Grassley did on the health care bill.  No Republican wanted to be seen as embracing Obama's "socialist" agenda with the Teabaggers biting at their heels.

Jeb Bush finds himself in a similar situation, as he stood behind Obama on education.  It didn't go as far as the notorious hug that cost Florida Governor Charile Crist his Senate bid, but there is enough agreement here to seriously damage his presidential run, should he choose to enter.

Neither have declared yet, still feeling around the edges of the Republican tent to see just how many Bible-thumpers there are and if they can win the nomination without them.  But, if they both enter and Chris Christie does too, it would split the neo-conservative vote and make it virtually anyone's race in 2016.  Last time around, Mitt Romney stood alone as the only "moderate" voice in the pack with a huge "war chest" to rout his challengers, including Newt, who for a brief moment appeared to threaten Mitt.

Uncle Sheldon can get Lindsey started, as he did Newt Gingrich, but Lindsey will have to reach well beyond his small base of support in South Carolina to have any chance in the initial primaries.  His "temperance" message isn't going to resonate in the early stages of the campaign, where a disgruntled GOP electorate is looking for someone to do battle with the socialist dark forces  they believe prevail in Washington.

This is a conservative electorate that wants meat, red meat, and only after their favorite candidates have torn themselves apart will they consider a compromise candidate, and then only begrudgingly as they did with Mitt Romney in 2012.  Once again, Uncle Sheldon has picked the wrong horse, as Lindsey simply doesn't have the stomach for this type of campaigning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more