Gingrich touts his relationship with the Clinton administration. He cites the balanced budgets and economic growth during years as Speaker of the House. Let's set those facts straight. Gingrich and Clinton mixed like oil and water. Gingrich opposed the Clintons at every turn. He vilified Clinton for immoral conduct while he was conducting his own extramarital affair. Moreover, his slash and burn leadership style modeled for what was to come: Tom DeLay and the K Street Gang including Jack Abramoff.
Gingrich, under the spotlights, is like a savant game show contestant. His strategy under withering attack is to riffle through the copious file drawers of his mind. Or lean on his history. For example when Adam Smith, political reporter for the St. Pete Times, asked Gingrich about the federal farm policy that protects and enriches sugar billionaires, Gingrich used the question to take a breather-- recalling how well the sugar industry protected itself from reform when he was Speaker.There were bright moments last night. Three of the four contestants -- Romney, Gingrich and Paul-- affirmatively support eliminating the sugar subsidy in the Farm Bill. Big Sugar and its billionaire Fanjuls command politics in Florida by sprinkling campaign contributions on the political landscape like confectionary sugar on a pastry. You could almost see the Fanjul billionaires spitting into their cafecitos. (How will Republican US Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, respond to the Big Sugar subsidy question, next, when his patron--Jeb Bush-- supported sugar at every turn including its ongoing illegal pollution of the Everglades. Big Sugar substantially paved Rubio's way to the Senate over his rival, Charlie Crist.)
The most solids of the debate went to Ron Paul on the question of US relations with Cuba. For the other candidates, the hard line against Castro was cued up like a sound track from the 1970's on a coin-operated jukebox. The kind where you flip the pages with the little silver lever only there's no other song but how much we hate Castro. Ginrich, Santorum and Romney all sang the same song, to which Paul replied: "The Cold War is over. We propped up Castro for decades. He used us as a scapegoat." Thank you, Ron Paul. "We talked to the Soviets and Chinese. We fought with the Vietnamese and now we are trading with them. We should tell the Cubans we want to talk and trade with you. We are living are in the dark ages… it is not 1962 and we don’t have to use force and intimidation any more."
Santorum delivered an especially paranoid fantasy of Cubans harboring Taliban and jihadists, sounding like McCarthy from the 1950's. If Santorum wants to police Muslim presence in the hemisphere, he'll have to advocate putting US traffic cops in every Latin American nation. Otherwise, Rick: drop it.
With the economy so awful in Miami, the majority of Cuban Americans with business acumen are itching to open business in a place where demand has been suppressed and supply choked for so long. Even as the Republicans rant against Castro, Cuban American Republicans are ramping up remittances to relatives back home, helping them start business above or under the table by the thousands. What time could not do, the terrible economy in Florida will: it is time to go back and make money.
If the Cuban Americans in Florida vote for Paul, the quixotic congressman from Texas will have made his greatest contribution to modern political history.
In other respects, Paul's vision of foreign policy-- bring the troops home-- is in line with the urgent need for fiscal sanity in defense budgets. Romney, Gingrich and Santorum all default to American exceptionalism and its resentments, linking up to rejection of any policy favored by Obama, no matter how well grounded in practical economic reality and the needs of a coherent national security. With the exception of Paul, they simply gloss over the fact that it was the Bush administration that cost taxpayers trillions and treasure engaging in the wrong wars. Speaking of which, the Bush name wasn't mentioned once in last night's debate, was it?
3 comments:
Gneut's lack of anger management is becoming more evident with each passing day.
This primary campaign reminds me of when the Democrats nominated McGovern for President. They brought in students and welfare mothers and gave them the delegate spots. These were people who never worked in a campaign in their lives. So, the experienced grassroot workers walked away from the campaign and left the nuts and bolts to their new-found friends...delegates who were given all the prizes. They didn't even throw a bone to the people who make campaigns work, the hardcore workers who labor daily in the trenches, those who know the nuts and bolts of campaigns. What happened was utter confusion and chaos. Even the tried-and-true doners, who the DNC called "fat cats," stopped the donations and money dried up...fast. The result? McGovern carried only 1 state in the general and disappeard from sight.
This is exactly what the Republicans are doing. Several of us, the hard core campaign workers will never vote for Ginrich as president and even consider his wife as First Lady. We look at Gingrich as a bully with a big mouth and that never wins elections. Campaigns depend on the grassroots hard core workers who do the heavy lifting. And I wouln't count on any of us going to that level of support to elect a president who we believe to be a liar, serial aldulterer, a man lacking in even the basics of good character, need I go on and on? Another 4 years of Obama? So be it! And why should I care? Michelle Obama is twice the woman Callista Gingrich is. And that, my dears is a fact!
i just feel like yodeling today. No comments. Just yodels.
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