Originally posted on http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com on January 29, 2008.
Sebelius: Don’t Drop the Soap!
Governer Kathleen Sebelius gave the Democratic response to the President’s State of the Union address last evening. My 6-year-old son exclaimed as she spoke, “She has a skinny head!” While that is irrelevant to the commentary on the news of the day, it is nonetheless something I found funny.
One thing she forgot to mention is her son’s entrepeneurship, as outlined in the story above. I wonder why…
Liberals to Bill: It was OK when you did this to Republicans, but now you’ve Crossed the Line!
Today is the Florida primary, and it looks like McCain and Romney are in a statistical dead heat. But that’s not what this story above is about. Clearly, the big political news of the day is the Florida primary, but unless Giuliani, Huckabee, or Paul pull a stunning upset, the Republican race seems to be headed towards a two-man race that could be largely decided after Super Tuesday, February 5.
But a lot has been abuzz regarding the Clinton strategy of campaigning. In particular, Bill has been an attack dog. Now, here’s the amusing part to those of us who never particularly cared for Bill’s politics: this is nothing new. What’s new, however, is that the tactics are being directed towards a Democrat. And dare I mention it – a black Democrat. And that, my friends, is unacceptable.
Lies, distortions, class warfare, playing the race card, calling into question the other person’s record… all that is fine and dandy if the opponent has an “R” behind the name. But put that tactic into action during primary season against a beloved media figure and suddenly you have the Washington liberal elite telling you to shut your trap. The fall from grace has been quick and, well, funny.
But here’s the part that is even more pathetic: if Hillary wins the nomination, everyone will coalesce around her and Bill, call the past the past, say that politics are politics, ignore all the intentional comments that attempt to divide the electorate by race, and we will see Hillary at the pulpits of African-American churches (with nobody complaining that the church in question should have its tax status questioned) and they’ll all sing Kumbaya and convince each other that conservatives are racists.
Sick of politics yet? Hey, it’s the news of the day. And so it will be for the next number of months. Anyway, an interesting perspective here about why Edwards isn’t bowing out of the race any time soon, even though he and everyone else knows he doesn’t have a chance at winning the nomination in the actual primaries.
Delegates on the Democratic side are awarded in most states on some complex proportional basis. This means that Edwards never has to win a single state, and could still end up with a good deal of delegates pledged to him. With Hillary and Obama in a tight race for first, and if it stays this way, we could realistically end up with a brokered convention on the Democratic side. The reason for this is that one candidate needs to secure a majority of the delegates in order to win the nomination. If Edwards gets 15/20/25% of the delegates, and Hillary and Obama essentially split the remaining delegates, it means we will go to the convention without a nominee.
This puts Edwards in a position of unique power. He can have very strong influence with his pledged delegates and broker a deal with someone. Stay tuned, ladies and gents. If you like politics, this little situation could get really fun to watch.
It seems less likely that this would happen on the Republican side, because many more of their states are “winner take all” states. In these states, the second and third place finishers don’t get squat. It looked like there was the potential for three or four guys to be battling for the nomination early on, but Huckabee has faded, Thompson never established anything and has since dropped out, and Giuliani has run possibly the worst campaign in history (unless he actually pulls off Florida, in which case I take it back). Paul has an avid base of supporters, but it’s just not widespread enough at this point to look viable. If this is truly a two-man race, then one of those two will secure the majority of the delegates and receive the nomination.
Reason #1,437 to avoid Public Universities
In a sad commentary about the gutless administrators at today’s college campuses, William and Mary President Gene Nichol is allowing students to have a Sex Workers’ Art Show on campus after they failed to find another venue.
The reason? The First Amendment. More importantly, we learn, that it “traditions of openness that sustain Universities.” Can I please have a “give me a break” emoticon.
When a University Administrator hides behind the First Amendment to justify a show with public nudity, demonstrations from strippers, and talks by prostitutes and “other sex workers” in order to “dispel the myth that are anything short of artists, innovators, and geniuses,” all I can say is that the Administrator is either (1) a spineless jellyfish who is unable or unwilling to deal with the protests of the few who actually will protest the intolerance of a decision to disallow, or (2) an immoral person willing to push the religion of sexuality onto an ever-weary populace trying to withstand the tide of paganism that never stops rising, or (3) an idiot in the first degree.
Let the reader decide.
Political Diatribes 