Halftime Post

Just as halftime shows on NFL broadcasts go quickly through the day's highlights, so I will touch on a few noteworthy news bullets from last week. During, you know, halftime.

***A week ago Pennsylvania AFL-CIO poohbah Bill George ran afoul of Godwin's Law at GOP Senator Rick Santorum's expense:

In a story [last] Sunday in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, George commented on the contrasting styles of Santorum, a conservative firebrand who is the Senate's #3 Republican, and his low-key challenger, Democrat Bob Casey. George said Santorum feeds off negative passions and lacks true charisma.

"Some see him as Hitler, 'I'm right' and 'we have to go kill them' and 'the hell with the poor and the working class and we have to protect the rich," the newspaper quoted George.

Perhaps not coincidentally, an internal poll of Santorum's Donk challenger, state treasurer Bob Casey, shows the embattled incumbent, down by double-digits most of the year, now pulling to within the margin of error.

***Much ado has been made about Virginia Republican Senator George Allen's "macaca" gaffe. And now campaign staffers of Donk challenger Jim Webb are making even more of it, to their own candidate's detriment - and you won't believe what they're calling it:

Imagine: You are on the road looking for a quick place to grab a bite to eat and up ahead of you – just past the stop light are a dozen furry and yellow-peeled creatures – a gathering of monkeys, gorillas, and bananas. They are dead serious about their message: “Racism is NOT a family value.” But they are having a great time monkeying around with yellow balloons and bananas to give away. You think to yourself: “Perfect! A free snack!” as you pull over, park, and join them.

That’s right, we’re having a Monkey Fest and we hope you WILL join us. The special occasion is the Fairfax County GOP’s Ethnic Rally this Saturday, September 9th, 2006.

(Details further down) Allen and three other Republican candidates will be attending the event. We, Mac (the Monkey) and Anna (Banana) will be there, but much more exciting will be the opportunity to hang out with Patch Adams (clown doctor activist) who will be “Gorilla”! We will have 9 monkey face masks to share – first come, first serve and plenty of our favorite yellow snacks, balloons, and stickers. We encourage you to bring your own monkey outfits, masks, and signs.

And they're calling Allen a racist? Besides, Allen made a dumb extemporaneous comment for which he has apologized. This is premeditated, as well as being over-the-top juvenile. Isn't the first rule of political public relations that when your opponent steps in it you let the stench sink in? How does running out and dropping another "deposit" in full public view help?

The GOP ethnic rally's organizers are wondering the same thing:

Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that paid members of your campaign are openly mocking our rally and advocating its disruption on the Raising Kaine website, run by two of your staffers, Lowell Feld and Josh Chernila. One of the posts this morning on Raising Kaine reads, “I expect to see people there who belong to one ethnic group, all dressed in ethnic clothing, speaking the same ethnic language with the same ethnic hairdo.” To date, this offensive post has only received positive feedback on the website.

In addition, Lowell Feld of your campaign suggests on Raising Kaine that those in attendance at the event Saturday will be White, Caucasian, Anglo, Saxon, Celtic, French, English, German, Irish, Scots-Irish. We resent this statement and its implication that only Caucasians would attend a Republican rally. While all these groups will be present and welcome Saturday, our rally will also include Afghan Americans, African Americans, Bolivian Americans, Chinese Americans, Colombian Americans, Cuban Americans, Filipino Americans, Indian Americans, Iranian Americans, Korean Americans, Pakistani Americans, Peruvian Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, Salvadoran Americans, Taiwanese Americans, Vietnamese Americans and more.

Ah, the competence of the Democrats strikes again. From Allen being in a spot of trouble for one word he shouldn't have said the Webbies have gone to making racist fools of themselves while giving free pub to a GOP rainbow coalition. And, as an added bonus, the Webb TV ad quoting twenty-one-year-old praise of him by then-President Ronald Reagan when Webb was Secretary of the Navy (a baffling PR angle of dubious benefit in any case) has drawn condemnation from Nancy Reagan and a demand that it be taken of the air.

This is the kind of extremist bumbling that always comes to my mind when I see all this media wishful thinking about "the coming Dem takeover."

***Hillary Clinton isn't taking the nutroot bait, and is keeping her eyes on the 2008 prize instead.

Oh, yeah, she's running for president, alright. Don't let anyone tell you any different.

***Another election cycle, another prominent New Jersey Democrat pol under criminal investigation. I wonder who the Jersey Supremes are going to replace Bob Menendez with. Or maybe they'll just let Governor Korzine appoint Frank Lautenberg to that senate seat as well.

***Have you noticed that the Plamegate leaker - former State Department drone and Colin Powell acolyte Dick Armitrage - has apologized to everybody except the people he actually damaged (i.e. George Bush, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, et al)? David Frum has. And Jed Babbin. And James Poulos, whose tirade is too exquisite note to quote at some length:

No, Richard Armitage's apology is meant to be blanket enough to cover everyone but those who were actually damaged by his Offhand Remark, and the cloying treacle of his cufflinked, knit-browed, and obsequiously tardy martyrdom operation is designed to satisfy the final sexual urge of American politics - guilt, confession, emoting on a Clintonian scale, an elegantly public act of "coping" that suggests "no closure" and tugs at the hem of empathy with all the pathos of the world's most expertly self-effacing beggar. "He's so sorry I feel bad for him" - that's the ticket, boys and girls, contrition as absolution, the staged self-abuse of the ego; eventually this spectacle rises to the level of embarrassment, and the thought that our public officials are actually stooping this low on the scale of psychological propriety finally unleashes a tide of wilful ignorance. Get them off the TV (the whole point in the first place) - people are dying on planet Earth!

A fate, actually, worse than death for his breed of coiffed, cologned, gucci'd moral panhandlers.

***Pop quiz - who said the following this past week:

George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black.

Give up? The answer is: Claire McCaskill, formerly a serious challenger to Senator Jim Talent (R-MO).

Are you starting to notice the same pattern I am? What's that old chestnut? "The wheels on their bus are coming off, coming off, coming off, the wheels on their bus are coming off, right into Election Day."

***And then there is this withering fusillade against Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) in, of all places, Rolling Stone magazine, over the relentless Donk attacks against SecDef Don "Big Dog" Rumsfeld:

I can take this stuff coming from most of the Democrats, but it's awfully hard to listen to this crap from Joe Biden. Actually, listening to Joe Biden sound self-righteous about anything makes me want to puke my guts out. I don't know what it is about him. Maybe it's that creepy poof of blowdried gray pubic fuzz he has now covering up that dime-store plug job on his head. Maybe it's the fact that he's been ponderously wondering aloud about his chances for the White House for eighteen straight years, his painfully obvious hard-on for power straining against his suit-slacks, ever since a plagiarism scandal and an aneurysm knocked him out of his first run. Maybe it's that his idea of outflanking the Republican Party is outspending them on the War on Drugs.

Or maybe it's just that Biden, more than almost anyone in American public life, will do or say anything that he thinks will secure him even the most temporary electoral advantage.

I was doubled over at "creepy poof of blowdried gray pubic fuzz." 'Tis a pity the Bushies are far too buttoned-down to get in on this fun. It would probably bolster GOP chances eight weeks from now.