Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Gee, I may be wrong that the "Grownup Republican" is a myth.

So I'll go to my emergency backup grumble: now we'll see whether anyone with any brains at all has any influence on the the troglodydes in the Bush Core Constituency, or on the undecided fluff voters. If you look at his campaign ads and so on, almost none of which even try to make valid points of any kind, Bush and Rove have apparently decided to try to win the election without any intelligent support at all -- just idiots and raving Armageddon fanatics.

[Cue some whining troll to accuse me of being an elitist].

Wow. At least we now know Smith is a principled fellow. Or, perhaps scared silly of second Shrub administration just as the rest of us are.
This is pretty consistent with what I'm seeing from people I consider principled but misguided. Generally conservative, they abhor this administration. Bodes well for election day.

I always though Big Bob Smith was a bit touched. If you ever saw him, it was easy to imagine him ululating psychotically to the dead, uncaring stars. Does this mean he has now officially crossed over and joined the ranks of the shrill? Enquiring minds want to know.

Chickens.Roost.Henhouse.

Charles

This underscores my main reason for backing Kerry in the primaries: if you think the country is too divided already, Kerry's the best guy to fix that. The GOP wants you to think he'd divide the country worse than anyone else, but he'd really only inflame the same core of wingnuts that want you to hear them out on Vince Foster. Kerry's reached out to Republicans time and again in the Senate, and for a supposed Taxachusetts liberal, you really don't see him bashing the moderate Republicans like McCain, Spector, Hagel, Whitman, etc., just the less reality-based corps of Bushites. For God sakes, the guy won't even say a mean word about Colin Powell. By contrast, the only time Bush reached out to a Democrat was to pull a whoopsie on Ted Kennedy with No Child Left Behind.

Unlike Bush, if Kerry wins, he will not (and, to be fair, cannot) claim a sweeping mandate and then try to implement an ideologue's Xmas list of hard-line proposals, like Bush did in 2000 and will do again in 2004. The Bush people saw the GOP dominance of the three branches, and calculating that this type of dominance would be fleeting, made a shrewed srtategic move, seizing the opportunity to implement the more pipe-dreamish portions of the GOP agenda, leaving the nuts and bolts stuff like budget balancing for when history followed its course and brought gridlock. Thankfully, the election of John Kerry would help usher in that day.

When Bob Smith made his speech in Summer 1999 on the Senate floor leaving (temporarily) the Republican Party, I (an intern for Schumer) was sitting in the Senate gallery, which was packed with people since this was a big deal at the time. When his speech finished and people began to clear out. I dashed down the stairs, and Smith was talking to all these reporters in front of one of the Senate elevators. I stuck my hand through the band of reporters and asked "Can I shake your hand?" And we shook hands right there.

Anyway, I don't think much of him and didn't then, but I was pretty happy to be able to maneuvre that handshake. I think his leaving the party is what put the nail in his coffin in his later primary race with John Sununu (which happened long after Smith went slinking back to the party -- I think he did so in order to get the EPW committee chairmanship after John Chafee died)

I was disappointed that Smith moved to Florida and ran in the GOP Senate primary. If he had instead moved to California, we could have enjoyed the exciting spectacle of a "Bob Smith vs. Bill Jones" race.

(zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............)

"Because of the courage and character you demonstrated in Vietnam...."

Which is documented here:

http://www.swiftvetsandpows.com/

There is no juice to be extracted from the former-wingnut-sees-the-light trope. Bob Smith was a self-important lunatic then, and he is a self-important lunatic now. Sometimes, when the right thing is done for the wrong reasons, it may as well not be the right thing. Every vote counts and we are grateful for small favors, but Bob Smith will continue to support the theocratic wing of the Republican Party, and that cannot be forgotten or forgiven.

Ah, now I get it, Patrick R. Sullivan is Brad DeLong's sock puppet whose mission is to be irrelevant and wrong to such a degree that Brad looks like a tenured professor of economics at Berkeley. Obvious.