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Welcome back to my annual outright theft of The McLaughlin Group's awards categories for the past year in politics. What's that? We're sorry, but out lawyers insist we instead use the phrase "my annual legally-allowable constitutionally-protected parody" instead. So sorry. For those of you who missed it, Part 1 of this column ran last week, on Christmas.
Welcome once again to our year-end wrapup and awards ceremony. Honesty dictates that I immediately genuflect to The McLaughlin Group, from whom I have stolen all these award categories. We will begin this week with Part 1 of these annual awards, and then next Friday on New Year's Day, we will present Part 2, with reduced volume levels (for those who are nursing hangovers... ahem).
President Obama stunned the political world today by announcing he will switch political parties, and soon become a Republican. "It seems the only way we're going to get bipartisanship in this town is if I lead the way," he said, in brief remarks before leaving for vacation. "The Republicans have refused to work with me because I'm a Democrat, and Republicans' biggest strength has always been the ability to fall into line with whatever their leaders tell them, unlike other certain unnamed political parties in America..." (the president appeared to cough several times at this point, although one of his coughs sounded suspiciously like the word "Democrats," if truth be told...). The president, clear-throated now, continued, "So I will now be the leader of the Republican Party, and they will fall in line with what I tell them to we're going to do. The Democrats who are interested in bipartisanship can join us to pass Medicare-for-all, instead of the Rube Goldberg machine which they have been attempting to construct."
The healthcare reform fracas has gotten so bad, it has forced some in the media to actually do their jobs. This statement will come as a shock to anyone who has become accustomed to the way these soi-disant "journalists" present just about any issue these days -- by having a center-left politician and a hard-right politician on to "debate," and then fanning the flames by refusing to referee and provide actual facts to the discussion. But I think now (maybe) the "journalists" have finally gotten to the point of embarrassment, leading them to actually report on what is true and what is not in the entire debate. In other words, as I said, to do their actual jobs.
Is yelling a smart political tactic? That's an abstract sort of question, but it's going to become more and more concrete in the next few weeks, because there appears to be a coordinated effort to use the tactic of shouting everyone down to disrupt "town hall" events by Democratic members of Congress in their home districts during the August recess. My question is whether this tactic is going to be effective or whether it has the possibility of backfiring.
Senator Dianne Feinstein finally said what I've been waiting for someone to say about the whole "reverse racism" charge now being levied by Republicans against President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court pick, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. From this weekend's Face The Nation, Feinstein summed the entire controversy up in her first response to moderator Bob [...]
The "Tea Party" tax day protests which took place yesterday apparently got mixed reviews from all concerned. They did get a lot of media coverage, most of which at least tried to be respectful of their views. That's more than most protests get from the media, but this was largely due to the fact that Fox News was a de facto sponsor of the events. They reportedly broadcast live from several locations throughout the day. One of these was in Sacramento, where a Fox News personality attended the rally. Right down the road, Fresno, California also had a big turnout for their tea party. The rural areas which surround these cities are fairly conservative, even though they are in the heart of California, so it's not too surprising that they both got a good turnout.
ChrisWeigant.com is proud to announce that our much-beloved resident cartoonist C.W. Cunningham has been honored by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, by being featured in their "Jefferson Muzzles" awards column.
Perhaps I am just being alarmist here. Perhaps I am wrong about all of this. Or perhaps we will look back at Jaynes in the future with horror, as our inboxes fill up with mudslinging about the candidates. I truly hope I am mistaken about this, and not prophetic.
In the era of Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal, it's pretty hard to stand out in the world of conservative lunatic ravings. But Andrew Breitbart's recent opinion piece in the Washington Times truly raises (lowers?) the bar for the rest of the field in right-wing Crazytown. His thesis is that liberal blog commenters are ruining things for the conservatives' attempts to have a nice online chat.