So I’m watching C-Span, the closing ceremonies of the reform party convention. I sit through Pat Buchannans. . . .um interesting speech, and as he leaves the podium what music should start blaring out of my set.
First “Real American”, the theme music used by Hulk Hogan during his days in Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation.
Then, once my brain has sort of calmed down the song dies down and what starts up?
“American Made”, Hulk Hogan’s theme music from his days in Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling.
And while I am embarassed to know the titles and origins of both those songs I have to ask.
How ironic is it that Jesse Ventura could now make a speech including the lines:
“I knew Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan was a friend of mine, and you sir, are no Hulk Hogan.”
I only liked Jesse Ventura, mostly 'cuz of his WWF days, but he was also in a couple of nifty ‘80s movies (Predator and Running Man), AND he was a Navy freakin’ Seal, t’boot.
Everyone else in the Reform party is a pansy ass. And, in at least one case, a Mike-Tyson-bait pansy ass.
First, they started out with some quality ideas, even though the shebang funked out with Ross Perot. (Who, btw, is a Mad Magazine fantasy.)
The whole idea of a Reform Party convention is too blissful to be ignored. Tacky, ridiculous…but hey, they’re just the Big Two with better spin-meisters.
Is there a problem here? So they’re ludicrous and pathetic. They’re just more up-front than the main choices.
In reality, the feuding between factions within the party has been going on since '95. I won’t go into the whole history of it, but the end result is that Russ Verney and the Dallas crew turned out to be the “bad guys” and the party was not intended to actually be a viable third party, but a temperature gage for the Republicrats. (Overheard statement made by Pat Choate.)
The two factions of the party were those mentioned above, and those who really wanted a viable party and kept trying to build one. (I’ll call them the “good guys”.) It was the “good guys” who worked to get Ventura elected, with no help whatsoever from Dallas.
The “good guys” managed some victories at the Dearborn convention electing top officers who were not part of the original Dallas crew.
Pat Choate (who was Buchanan’s campaign manager and was formerly Perot VP candidate), Russ Verney, et. al., invited Buchanan and his crew into the party, using them to overturn the results from the Dearborn convention. They did accomplish that, but now they had Buchanan to deal with. They lacked the foresight that the “good guys” wouldn’t align with them against Buchanan and instead left the party in droves. They also underestimated Buchanan’s strategic ability to actually to seat enough of his delegates to take over the party and win the nomination.
So, now Verney and crew are backing Haglen’s run for the nomination and held their “own” little convention down the street from Buchanan’s convention.
Trust me, Verney’s group will file for the campaign funds just like Buchanan will surely do. When Verney does this, it’ll tie up the funds so that no one will get them.
Yessiree, quite a party they have there. One leading light once won 25% of the NH primary and wants all US troops home so he can deploy them on the Mexican border. The other is an ex-prof at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa and is also the candidate of the Natural Law Party (see).
Time to throw this mailing list away and start on a new one.
I like Craig Kilborn’s line the other night about the Reform Party and their divided factions. He said “it’s all a part of their ongoing difficulty to define themselves as a party: are we freaks or merely kooks?”
For a humorous look at the candidates involved in Campaign 2000, go to http://www.angelfire.com/indie/brainingdamage. The site takes delight in lampooning politicians of every stripe. Bush, Gore and Buchanan are all featured.
Has anyone has been following Doonesebury, with the story line about Duke trying to crash the reform party convention but being muscled out in a putsch by Buchanan’s brown shirted goons. Is life imitating art?
Wow, all I have to say is that Jesse Ventura is the big winner in the Reform Party fiasco. He has demonstrated more political insight and savvy than the pundits granted him by getting out of this fight, and the party altogether, before it totally fractured.
