Letters to the Editor
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Bipartisanship
February 12, 2008
CHICAGO -- Republican state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Westmont, has for months been featured in Barack Obama's television ads at crucial points in the Illinois Democrat's presidential campaign.
Now Dillard has a new role - a Republican National Convention delegate for Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"I'm a loyal Republican plain and simple, and no one should question my credentials," said Dillard, a former aide to GOP governors and current member of the state Senate's Republican leadership.
In July, Dillard told The Sun, "Sen. Obama is a personal friend and someone whom I have worked with very closely on a bipartisan, city-and-suburbs, black-and-Caucasian basis on some of the most difficult issues facing Illinois."
The DuPage County GOP chairman until last spring, Dillard was the top vote-getter among presidential GOP delegates in his congressional district. His win came as Obama captured the Democrats' presidential primary, and McCain easily took the GOP's.
Dillard said he wants McCain as president because of his national security knowledge and ability to be commander in chief during a time of war. He also said he wants a Republican president to counterbalance the Democratic Congress.
But in an ad repeatedly run by the Obama campaign both in the months before the Iowa caucuses and before the Super Tuesday primaries, Dillard looks straight into a camera and says: "Senator Obama worked on some of the deepest issues we had and was successful in a bipartisan way."
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Anon
Clearly there is no rhyme or reason for the red stars. One was awarded for that comment.
--Anonymous
Oh, oh. That's going to put a dent in William Timberman's fondness for the Red Star Fairy.
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re: The "Magic Negro"
All you've done, Arne, is to prove that you are too dumb to understand the Rush Limbaugh Program, which is not that high of a bar to begin with.As for accusing me of being a racist, I can say to you, with all sincerity, fuck you.-- Elephantman
Easy there, E-man. Arne is yanking your chain. He knows full well via his cite that the contemporary reference for "magic negro" was the LA Times article by David Ehrenstein. Who happens to be a black, jewish, irish, gay, guy.
As for Arne, he's a dick. I'm sure he's always been a dick, and will likely will always be, a dick. He can't help it, it's his dick nature. My own philosophy about dealing with someone acting out as a dick is to ignore them. They may not go away, but as they say the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. That works well for me. There are much better people here to spend your time with.
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Obama MUST maintain discipline; Stay above the fray
I saw an article by Johnathan Martin over at the Politico, bemoaning the "fact" that Obama has been "dangerously slow" to "counterattack" in response to these mudslinging incidents.
It is obvious why Clinton has turned to this tactic of diversion-by-personal attack over the inconsequential. Because she has no shot when it comes to issues, and her relative insincerity in expressing them.
Whoever runs against Obama has no chance unless they can drag him into the mud for an extended feces-throwing contest. The inspiring candidate with the soaring rhetoric must be knocked off his center, and lured into the mud, so they can fight on more even terms.
So long as Obama continues to run and speak out of genuine concern for the country, the "old politics" will have little to no lasting effect. He just needs to keep that focus, and leave his ego wherever it is he left it at the start of the race.
I'm going to enjoy watching his opponents turn purple with frustration as they try all the "tricks" to "get to" Obama, not understanding why none of it works.
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@ Elephantman
Let's be clear, the republicans in congress and the whitehouse and their footsoldiers in the media have been quite free and easy labeling people who don't agree with their plans as traitors, terrorist sympathizers, surrenderers, betrayers etc... (did you see Mitt's speech when he bowed out?) It goes on and on. So NOW that it looks like the repubs are going to lose the whitehouse along with the congress, you want to bring up bipartisanship? No way. Others may pussyfoot around it but I'll come out and say: Fuck the vocal religious minority who want to force everyone to follow their religion by making their religious beliefs into laws.
The Bush administration has been a colossal fuck up for America and the world and bipartisanship isn't going to fix it.
And since I know you love America so much I'll let you take back that comment about the ACLU calling terrorists, defendants. I just KNOW you love America so much that the central tenet of America's legal system of 'innocent until proven guilty' is one of the ideals you hold proudly in your chest as it puffs out with American pride. Don't you?
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hilzoy 10/24/2006
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/10/barack_obama.html
October 24, 2006
Barack Obama
by hilzoyLots of people are talking about Barack Obama. Is he running for President, or positioning himself to be someone else's running mate?
[...] I can't imagine why we're talking about this stuff when we haven't even had the 2006 elections yet.
[...] I do follow legislation, at least on some issues, and I have been surprised by how often Senator Obama turns up, sponsoring or co-sponsoring really good legislation on some topic that isn't wildly sexy, but does matter. His bills tend to have the following features: they are good and thoughtful bills that try to solve real problems; they are in general not terribly flashy; and they tend to focus on achieving solutions acceptable to all concerned, not by compromising on principle, but by genuinely trying to craft a solution that everyone can get behind.
His legislation is often proposed with Republican co-sponsorship, which brings me to another point: he is bipartisan in a good way. According to me, bad bipartisanship is the kind practiced by Joe Lieberman. Bad bipartisans are so eager to establish credentials for moderation and reasonableness that they go out of their way to criticize their (supposed) ideological allies and praise their (supposed) opponents. They also compromise on principle, and when their opponents don't reciprocate, they compromise some more, until over time their positions become indistinguishable from those on the other side.
This isn't what Obama does. Obama tries to find people, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually care about a particular issue enough to try to get the policy right, and then he works with them. This does not involve compromising on principle. It does, however, involve preferring getting legislation passed to having a spectacular battle. (This is especially true when one is in the minority party, especially in this Senate: the chances that Obama's bills will actually become law increase dramatically when he has Republican co-sponsors.)
So my little data point is: while Obama has not proposed his Cosmic Plan for World Peace, he has proposed a lot of interesting legislation on important but undercovered topics. I can't remember another freshman Senator who so routinely pops up when I'm doing research on some non-sexy but important topic, and pops up because he has proposed something genuinely good. Since I think that American politics doesn't do nearly enough to reward people who take a patient, craftsmanlike attitude towards legislation, caring as much about fixing the parts that no one will notice until they go wrong as about the flashy parts, I wanted to say this. Specifics below the fold.
Nonproliferation: the poster child for issues that people ought to care about, but don't. Here Obama has teamed up with Richard Lugar (R-IN). How did this happen? Here's the Washington Monthly:
"By most accounts, Obama and Lugar's working relationship began with nukes. On the campaign trail in 2004, Obama spoke passionately about the dangers of loose nukes and the legacy of the Nunn-Lugar nonproliferation program, a framework created by a 1991 law to provide the former Soviet republics assistance in securing and deactivating nuclear weapons. Lugar took note, as “nonproliferation” is about as common a campaign sound-bite for aspiring senators as “exchange-rate policy” or “export-import bank oversight.”"
[...] Avian flu: Obama was one of the first Senators to speak out on avian flu, back in the spring of 2005, when it was a quintessentially wonky issue, not the subject of breathless news reports. There's a list of Democratic efforts on avian flu here; Obama shows up early and often. He has sponsored legislation, including what I think is the first bill dedicated to pandemic flu preparedness. It's a good bill, providing not just for vaccine research and antiviral stockpiles, but for the kinds of state and local planning and preparedness that will be crucial if a pandemic occurs. (I was also very interested to note that it requires the Secretary of HHS to contract with the Institute of Medicine for a study of "the legal, ethical, and social implications of, with respect to pandemic influenza". This is actually very important, and not everyone would have thought of it.)
He has also spoken out consistently on this topic, beginning long before it was hot.
[...] Reducing medical malpractice suits the right way: Contrary to popular belief, medical malpractice claims do not do much to drive up health care costs. Still, medical malpractice litigation is a problem. [...]
- - hilzoy 10/24/2006