Please, Senator Kerry, Don't Help!
Please don't fly back from overseas to try to gin up a filibuster to the way-foregone Alito confirmation. What part of "choose your battles" do you not understand??
It's not even that a filibuster at this point would be grandstanding in its purest form - this is the Senate we're talking about, after all.
It's you. The problem is you.
You're not the guy to carry the ball again. You gave it your best shot last time out, but winning the Presidency isn't a merit contest, it's a popularity contest. And you sir, with respect, are a barely articulate stiff.
And it's okay to be barely articulate, as our current President's good fortune attests to, but you have to be briefly barely articulate. Short, pithy non-sequiters; marblemouthed malapropisms and sentence fragments tied together with snorts and guffaws, Mr. Bush has made these a winning combination. He makes us laugh. We'd like to have a beer with him. We're not sure he hasn't just had one with Dick and Rummy.
But your gibberish bores us, and that cannot be forgiven. We have too many entertainment choices available to us to suffer a bore lightly.
So please Mr. Kerry, don't be a distraction. Don't suck up all the oxygen and give the media a go-to punching bag for the next two years. Bless his heart, we already have Howard Dean for that. Instead, suck it up, swallow your pride, and help find us a southern governor with a toothsome smile and a telegenic young family we can work with till Barack Obama is ready to run in '12.
As for 2008, I have no idea who the Dems could possibly have waiting in the wings (I think proffering Hillary would hand the GOP the election in a landslide). But unless it's the animatronic Abe Lincoln from Disneyland's Hall of Presidents, he or she will have a better chance of winning the charisma battle than you, Senator Kerry, even if the GOP nominee is Condi Rice.
posted by Fang Bastardson at 7:34 AM
5 Comments:
Funny, I thought the same thing but I could only mutter, "Go away!" when I saw his mug meddling. Does he really think that teaming up with Kennedy is going to get them anywhere, other than make a fatter target?
Also, I nearly used the word "proffer" today in a business email but was talked out of it by a colleauge who said it looked like I was trying to be "too fancy." Thanks for the validation!
4:36 PM
Have you guys considered that maybe Kerry is really concerned about how disastrous it's going to be when Alito is approved by the Senate? It's going to be horrible, absolutely the worst.
I doubt that most of Kerry's constituents like the fact that we are replacing the Supreme Court with the Star Chamber. He is doing them right by speaking up.
In sum, I don't think Kerry's doing this to improve his presidential standing. I think he's like Gore: after working his way unsucessfully through the sausage grinder of presidential poltics, he finds himself again free to speak his mind as a decent liberal human being (as opposed to another haircut with soundbytes).
The Kerry you complain about is classic Kerry. The Veterans for Peace Kerry. The Iran-Contra Kerry. I say bully for him.
6:06 AM
No, I hadn't considered that maybe Kerry is really concerned about the far-ranging imoplications of Alito's ascension to the Supreme bench.
After the ass-whupping he took in 2004, I figure Kerry's a realist by now (if he wasn't before) and realizes there's no way in hell to stop the Alito Express. So one casts about for other possible motivations, and only one looms large enough - Kerry wants another crack at that thing.
It's hubris that is the key to these guys' success when they succeed, it's also usually the core component of their self-destruction when they don't.
I think it's sweet that you ascribe lofty motives to Kerry's Hail Mary pass, but I think you're (as they say in my @#%&!! anger management class) transferring. YOU have purer motives which you subconsciously loan out to Sen. Kerry in your desire for this world to not be as hopelessly screwed as it is.
That IS sweet. No wonder I'm your Number One Fan.
8:02 AM
Fang, Fang, me sweet? In point of fact, I'm quite bitter about the fact that MSM has promulgated the notion that filibustering Alito is political suicide. I'm not so sure it is. Just wait. The Scalia-Thomas-Roberts-Alito quartet will hand down a decision saying that since nowhere in the Constitution does it explicitly say that Bush is not the living minister of God, then he must in fact be. People will be outraged out of their complacency. The GOP "obstructionist" charge that has been so thoroughly internalized by the "realists" won't even compare to the hue and cry we'll here when they overturn Roe vs. Wade.
And if the Dems took this tact, for once they would not be vulnerable to the charge that they have no principles.
I don't expect the Dems will have the votes to filibuster, and I would agree with you that Kerry is very naive if he thinks he has any influence with his collegues, but I think he is taking a principled stand. I suspect the senior Senator from his state has persuaded him to take a stand. Say what you want about Teddy: he stands up for the right things.
Now it wouldn't surprise me if Kerry did, in fact, take another run at the presidency. If he does, I sincerely hope that he and Hillary sink in the primaries.
9:51 AM
Oh, I LOVE Teddy Kennedy. Once a politician's chances at the Presidency are definitively ruled out, it frees them to be Statesmen.
You're right. Best-case scenario is for Kerry to go down in flames in the early primaries so spectacularly that he can spend the rest of his career being the basically decent fellow I believe him to be.
9:53 AM
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