By Michael S. Johnson
Delta Airlines’ Sky Magazine had a 26-page spread last month on the Midwest’s new tourist hotspot, North Dakota . It featured Governor– and now U.S. Senator-elect– John Hoeven, who gets much of the credit for making North Dakota one of the most prosperous states in the country.
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the Feeherytheory.com
Here is an article I wrote in May of 2009 that I thought you would all find of interest:
(CNN) – “It is important for us to have a strong Republican Party,” Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tauntingly told a press conference on April 23. “And I hope that the next generation will take back the Republican Party for the Grand Old Party that it used to be.”
BY BILL GREENER
The White House, in one form or another, offered Joe Sestak some sort of political deal to get him to refrain from running against Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. The first time I heard this, I thought to myself, why would this surprise or upset anyone? Yet, the longer the story stuck around, the more I have come to conclude it is both a story and worthy of being harshly criticized. Inasmuch as most of my adult life has been spent in politics, in the abstract, it bothers me not that politics are involved in solving a political problem. However, what this White House has done is wrong pure and simple. There are four big reasons I am now upset.
President Obama promised during the course of his campaign that, if elected, everything would suddenly be different in Washington, D.C. Politics as usual would come to a screeching halt. Political deals would become a thing of the past. After all, stopping the seas from rising was not the sort of thing that ever would be associated with tawdry and ordinary politics. No matter what else can be said about the Sestak affair, it seems to me that you have to acknowledge this is, indeed, politics as usual. That accounts for the giant yawn we see on the part of most of the media and many Americans. When a conservative is caught engaging in behavior inconsistent with adherence to family values, we are told that is news because it not only shows hypocrisy, but because it also is contrary to the basic candidacy of the individual. How is what Obama has done and tolerated any less hypocritical or less central to his candidacy? Why isn’t it news that, after promising to be so very different, that Obama (and those around him) truly represent old style Chicago politics?
BY MICKEY EDWARDS
Reprinted from Atlantic.com
The purification process — hard-core and uncompromising partisans driving heretics from their ranks — has been going on for a long time.
The recent Republican convention in Utah, the one in which conservative Senator Robert Bennett was defeated for being not conservative enough (despite an 84 percent approval rating from the American Conservative Union), is just one more step in a decades-long effort to drive independent thought from the political decision making process.
This year, of course, attention has been focused primarily on Marco Rubio’s success in driving Florida Governor Charlie Crist out of the Republican Party (he’s now running for the Senate as an Independent) and former Congressman Pat Toomey’s success in converting Republican Senator Arlen Specter into a Democrat. But in both of those cases one can argue that the targeted incumbent was simply too far out of step with his own party.
The same ACU ratings index on which Bennett scored an 84 gave Specter a 40. The ratings only measure members of Congress but Crist had more than once angered party members with his support of initiatives that were fiercely opposed by most Republicans. But given Bennett’s long embrace of conservative positions, with relatively few departures from the party-line script over a period of nearly two decades, what happened in Utah was something of a very different and disturbing nature. It was checklist politics, a demand for suspension of judgment and lockstep adherence to an ideological instruction manual that would brook no deviation.
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BY JOHN FEEHERY
From the Feehery Theory
No wonder David Obey retired.
Last night, Alan Mollohan, the West Virginia Congressman and proud member of the House Appropriations Committee, lost his primary against an opponent who attacked the incumbent’s behavior on the Committee.
Over the weekend, Robert Bennett, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, lost in his efforts to gain his party’s nomination to run for re-election.
Next week, it is looking increasingly likely that another appropriator, Arlen Specter, might lose his party’s primary. Specter switched political parties because he knew he couldn’t win the nomination of the Republican primary voter.
Congressman John Murtha, who died earlier this year, was under intense scrutiny from the Ethics Committee and from the Justice Department for alleged malfeasance on the Committee. It looks like his seat will go the Republicans.
Two years ago, the long time Appropriations Committee Chairman, Ted Stevens, narrowly lost his bid to win reelection because of an ethical cloud dusted up by a Justice Department indictment. His case was later thrown out.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, resigned from Congress four years ago under an ethical cloud. Duke Cunningham actually is spending quality time in jail because he auctioned off earmarks to the highest bidder.