Tag Archives: Tina Smith

A Basket of Quotes, Just a Hint of Which I’d Like to Hear from Tina Smith

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From life-long Republican Steve Schmidt, better known as the man who advised John McCain to select Sarah Palin as his running mate:

The two parties for a long time were not homogeneous ideologically. There were plenty of conservatives in the Democratic Party, and there were no small number of liberals in the Republican Party. Now, culturally, we’re in thrall to theocratic crackpots like Mike Huckabee and Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, where you’re able to justify the candidacy of a Roy Moore because you want to keep the Senate seat. The theocracy and crackpot sewer conservatism has taken over.

That’s not to mention the baby internment camps, the indecency, the cruelty, the meanness, the lying, the complicit nature of this Republican majority with an attack on the country that’s launched by the Russian Federation. So the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is dead. It’s over. It doesn’t exist . It has been taken over, lock, stock, and barrel. For there to be any redemption of a right of center conservative party in the United States of America means the party of Trump must be destroyed politically.

It’s like a fire. Fires are a part of the ecosystem, part of the natural progress. And when the forest burns, it’s purified. There can be new growth. For there to be new growth of a conservative movement, of a right center party, the one that I joined in 1988, it needs to burn to the ground.”

From conservative columnist Michael Gerson in The Washington Post:

“In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles E. Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?

They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward. And they should vote Republican in Senate races with mainstream candidates (unlike, say, Corey Stewart in Virginia).

Why vote strategically in this case? Because American politics is in the midst of an emergency.

If Democrats gain control of the House but not the Senate, they will be a check on the president without becoming a threat to his best policies (from a Republican perspective) or able to enact their worst policies. The tax cut will stand. The Senate will still approve conservative judges. But the House will conduct real oversight hearings and expose both Russian influence and administration corruption. Under Republican control, important committees — such as Chairman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp.

Alternatively: If Republicans retain control of the House in November, Trump will (correctly) claim victory and vindication. He will have beaten the political performances of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in their first midterms. He will have proved the electoral value of racial and ethnic stereotyping. He will have demonstrated the effectiveness of circuslike distraction. He will have shown the political power of bold, constant, uncorrected lies. And he will gain many more enablers and imitators.

Perhaps worst of all, a victorious Trump will complete his takeover of the Republican Party (which is already far along). Even murmured dissent will be silenced. The GOP will be fully committed to a 2020 presidential campaign conducted in the spirit of George C. Wallace — a campaign of racial division, of rural/urban division, of religious division, of party division that metastasizes into mutual contempt.

But this does not change the political and ethical reality. The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”

From conservative icon George Will, also in The Washington Post:

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

Noting that [Joe] Arpaio was in his Tempe audience, Pence, oozing unctuousness from every pore, called Arpaio “another favorite,” professed himself “honored” by Arpaio’s presence, and praised him as “a tireless champion of . . . the rule of law.” Arpaio, a grandstanding, camera-chasing bully and darling of the thuggish right, is also a criminal, convicted of contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge’s order to desist from certain illegal law enforcement practices. Pence’s performance occurred eight miles from the home of Sen. John McCain, who could teach Pence — or perhaps not — something about honor. …

It is said that one cannot blame people who applaud Arpaio and support his rehabilitators (Trump, Pence, et al.), because, well, globalization or health-care costs or something. Actually, one must either blame them or condescend to them as lacking moral agency. Republicans silent about Pence have no such excuse.

There will be negligible legislating by the next Congress, so ballots cast this November will be most important as validations or repudiations of the harmonizing voices of Trump, Pence, Arpaio and the like. Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.”

 

And finally (for now) from liberal blogger Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

“Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons. Like it or not, this is the modern Republican Party. It no longer serves any legitimate purpose. It needs to be crushed and the earth salted behind it, while a new conservative party rises to take its place. This new party should be conservative; brash; ruthless when it needs to be; as simpleminded as any major party usually is; and absolutely dedicated to making Democrats look like idiots. There should be no holds barred except for one: no appeals to racism. None. Not loud ones, not subtle ones. Whatever else it is, it should be a conservative party genuinely open to any person of any color.

… I’d like to make clear just how long this has been brewing. I know this is hardly news to anyone who reads this blog, but as I approach my 60th birthday I can say that half my life has now been marked by Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, Newt Gingrich, the Vince Foster suicide, Whitewater, the Rose law firm, Filegate, the Christmas card list scandal, Fox News, Monica Lewinsky, impeachment, the Florida recount, Swift boating, the GOP’s partywide effort to suppress black votes via photo ID laws, birtherism, the unanimous Republican rejection of the 2009 stimulus, Benghazi, Emailgate, Merrick Garland, and now the endless haze of racism, bigotry, and corruption surrounding Donald Trump.

This is very much a non-exhaustive list. But every one of these things is either a baseless ‘scandal’, an example of ethical rot, or part of a deliberate media effort to lie and mislead. These are the highlights of the Republican Party over the past three decades. No political party with a rap sheet like this deserves to be walking around free.”

 

I’ll Take Richard Painter in the Primary

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Prior to busting out of town for some desert road trip nirvana, I dropped by a “Pint With (Richard) Painter” event at Lake Monster Brewing in St. Paul. Besides responding favorably to the (former Republican’s) indignation over the gushing Trump sewer, I was curious to see what kind of crowd he was drawing in his long-shot fight to defeat appointed incumbent Tina Smith.

Expecting the usual sad collection of white-haired ideologues and sweated-up activists, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself among 150-200 people representative of a fairly broad age and gender spectrum — although no black folks that I could see.

The brewery venue was noisy and Painter — George W. Bush’s ex-ethics attorney — was ill-served by a cheesy sound system. Restlessness set in fast as he opened with a detailed explanation of the PolyMet land swap up north and Smith’s carefully calibrated position on that issue. Catching only every third word, those of us on the fringes sipped our beverages and waited for the good stuff.

The crowd got what it very clearly wanted to hear when Painter segued to Trump and the appropriate response to the most corrupt and disgraceful administration of our lifetime. A roar went up when he said, “we’ve got to get aggressive with this”. Another, even louder roar went up when he mentioned “Al Franken” and what the ex-Senator would probably have been saying and doing in the summer of 2018. In fact the applause for Franken was prolonged.

I met Painter last spring when we were both part of symposium up at Itasca Community College. (Painter was the keynote speaker. I was a presenter on “Fake News.”) Our rooms were on the same floor of a local hotel and I cornered him on the elevator. I asked him what he thought of my scenario that the key to driving Trump from office is not the “pee tape”, but rather an indisputable mortal threat to his money, the essence of his “brand” and ego, and if he could imagine a situation where Rod Rosenstein, armed with Mueller’s report, came to Trump with the message that he and his entire family of grifters could either be prosecuted down to the last nickel of their looted treasuries or he could resign. His choice.

Painter laughed. “I’d be okay with that.”

Combined with what he’s said as a talking head on cable news and the speech he gave in Grand Rapids — which was indignant and cathartically “unmodulated” by the standards of your average professional liberal — that’s everything I know about Painter. And it’s enough for me to vote for him over Smith in the August 14 primary.

Like many in the crowd at Lake Monster Brewing (nice joint BTW) “the Al Franken thing” will never sit well with me. The voters of Minnesota were Franken’s employers. We were the ones to decide whether his transgressions in the #MeToo moment required removing him from office, not a cabal of naked opportunists like New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. (And thank you Amy Klobuchar for your courageous collegial resistance to that purge.)

Tina Smith personally had no role that I know of in pushing Franken out the door. But Smith is without question a poster child for the, as I say, professional liberal class that did. These are a strata of bureaucratized, corporatized characters whose success in public life is directly related to their ability to take a belt sander to any word, phrase or facial expression that betrays honest human emotion. Emotion, like for example, visceral outrage and indignation at unprecedented corruption and god knows what else. (See Trump-Putin private meeting Helsinki).

The irony for me is that I argued to my Republican neighbors here in Edina that their best reason to vote for Hillary Clinton was “competent management.”  (I.e. “She’ll protect your portfolio”). Smith, the former Planned Parenthood exec and insider’s insider policy wonk would be perfectly fine in normal times. As in: be your numbingly bland self lady, just vote my issues.

But we aren’t there right now, and won’t be until everything Trump is bio-washed and detoxified from the gears of government. And that requires (constant) heat and pressure from high-level elected officials.

Do you see Tina Smith possessing any ability to apply those qualities?

While out cruising the empty highways of west Texas I heard of the flap between the DFL and Painter, and laughed out loud at the charge that because Painter would not profess fealty to the party sigil he must be treated as a toxic antigen.

Talk about professional liberal protocol.

I strongly suspect that the “fealty to party” thing is another endangered virtue in this unprecedented era. I don’t know about you, but in this moment I’ll vote for anyone committed to terminating this Trump “crap” (as Painter often calls it) sooner rather than later.

Smith has piled up something like 15 times the money Painter is running on, and has demonstrated no willingness whatsoever to face him in a one-on-one debate. (If Ms. Smith is too worried to lock up with Richard Painter, a well-educated lawyer and experienced bureaucrat, why would anyone think she’s up to the task of gutting right-wing nut-jobbery here or in D.C.?)

The betting line says Smith wins the primary easily. But she’ll do it without my vote.

 

Al Franken Is Putting His Self-Interest Over Everything He Claims Is Important

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If Senator Al Franken left the U.S. Senate in the wake of his sexual harassment admission, Governor Mark Dayton would be able to appoint a replacement.  Many speculate that he might name his Lieutenant Governor, Tina Smith, a respected, thoughtful leader who would likely be a very capable candidate in a November 2018 special election.  There are also other excellent choices Dayton could make.

As a result, Al Franken and Minnesota DFLers need to be asking themselves some important questions.

Who would have more moral standing to hold sexual harassers and abusers like Roy Moore and Donald Trump accountable, and send a clear signal that sexual harassment will no longer be tolerated?

Who would be a more credible and persuasive advocate for progressive causes?

Who would be a more respected representative of Minnesotans’ interests, opinions, and values?

Who would be a better role model for Minnesota’s young men and women?

Who would be more re-electable in 2020, and more likely to help Democrats stop Minnesota’s Senate seat from going to a Trumpublican?

What Al Franken did is less egregious than what Moore and Trump did, so he may be able to hold onto his job, even after a long and humiliating Senate Ethics Committee investigation that will further cement this incident in the public mind. But just because he can hold on to his job doesn’t mean that he should.

Note:  The day after this post was written, Senator Franken resigned, proving this post’s headline wrong.  In his resignation speech, Senator Franken said: “Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus with all her energy on addressing the challenges they face every day.  I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls is running for Senate with full support of his party.” 

Two days after this post was written, accused pedophile Roy Moore lost his Alabama U.S. Senate race by 1.5 points, which underperfromed Trump’s 2016 victory margin in Alabama by a staggering 30-points.