BLUMENTHAL: "the son is in danger of inheriting the wind"

[nostamj]

<snip>

In Illinois, Land of Lincoln -- former presidential bellwether and bastion of congressional GOP leadership since time immemorial -- the Republican Party has fallen off the map. In 1960, in his famous victory, John F. Kennedy won the state with 65 percent in Chicago. Nixon actually carried Chicago in 1972. But Gore won the racially calmed, postindustrial city by 80 percent. The Chicago suburbs, 2-to-1 Republican as recently as 1988, have now begun to tilt Democratic, just as have the suburbs of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the state Republican Party has imploded, unable to find a credible U.S. Senate candidate against the star of the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama. In fact, it has finally scraped the bottom of the barrel with its own African-American, Alan Keyes. A screeching religious right fanatic, Keyes, who has worn a lapel pin featuring the feet of a fetus, is Jerry Falwell as played by Little Richard. Obama is beating him 67 to 28 percent, and that undoubtedly represents Keyes' peak. Keyes opened his campaign by saying Obama's stance in favor of legal choice for women on abortion is "the slaveholder's position." Their debates, to be broadcast throughout the Middle West, may turn votes against the Republicans in every state bordering Illinois.

The turn in Michigan is, if anything, even more distressing for Republicans. West Michigan, home to Nixon's successor Gerald Ford, and even today unrepresented by any Democrats in Congress, favors John Kerry by 12 points above Bush in a poll taken by a local TV station. This collapse is largely a consequence of the desertion of moderate Republicans repulsed by Bush's reckless economic mismanagement and neoconservative foreign policy. These moderates are overwhelmingly mainline Protestants, also offended by Bush's evangelical culture war and faith-based efforts to break down the wall of separation between church and state.

The party that Nixon built is crumbling. Bush is the candidate of canned talking points and a party whose instincts have become rote and often counterproductive. The "war president" wraps himself in the flag but the latest Code Orange terrorist alert aroused no one to rally-'round-the-flag; instead, it raised questions about Bush's timing and handling. Rather than campaign on his record, he has challenged Kerry to justify his vote for the Iraq war resolution, and when Kerry explained his reasoning, Bush accused him of "nuance." How can Bush change the subject? With independent voters bleeding away from him, he has taken to stumping with the Republican maverick Sen. John McCain, his mortal enemy. Can Bush dump Cheney without being seen as desperate and repudiating his entire term? Bush's father owed his political career to Nixon's patronage; now the son is in danger of inheriting the wind.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/08/12/nixon_s_fall/index.html

[soleft]

1. I try to do that daily pass thing and it never works for me

I was the ad but it never gives me access to the whole article. Is it because I don't have cookies?

:shrug:

[nostamj]

3. "Is it because I don't have cookies?"

yup

[Myrina]

2. "may turn votes against the Republicans in every state bordering Illinois"

:wow: I never looked at it that way !

Thank you, Alan Keyes , for being a right wing fundie lunatic !!

[Richardo]

4. Keyes: "Jerry Falwell as played by Little Richard"

That's one of the funniest things I've read in a long long time. :D Works on many levels!