That’s “completely unnamed and uncorroborated REPUBLICAN sources.” A declaration against interests, in other words, which makes ordinarily objectionable statements more credible.
I love this defense, btw: you imply (but don’t state outright) some strong, perhaps libelous comments about the ethical practices of the press. Are you saying that they’ve manufactured this story? Are you claiming that they don’t care about their professional credibility if should turn out that these sources don’t exist? Are you claiming they don’t care if their editors fire them for inventing shit, as long as it’s shit about Republicans? (or Palin, personally–I’m not sure where exactly you find their bias to be focused).
Don’t know about Coleman, but except for his support of Bush & McCain mainly on military-foreign policy issues, where has Lieberman parted ways with or vacillated from his previous stances as a Democrat?
I’d gladly welcome him into the GOP Sukkot, but AFAIK he has not at all adopted GOP social conservatism nor has changed his positions on economic or national security/foreign policy issues, which were always more conservative than the mainline Democratic Party?
Btw, I think what hampered Romney with religious/social conservatives was not so much his Mormonism but his lack of social conservative bona fides’ (I think I’m using that term correctly). He becomes pro-life & against gay marriage now that he’s out of office. Let’s wait a while to see if the Damascus experience sticks.
He’s pro-tort reform, pro-school vouchers, pro-entertainment censorship*, pro-free trade and pro-detention without trial.
I suppose the last two could be considered foreign policy issues.
*While this is traditionally a conservative position, there are plenty of Democrats who support entertainment censorship, notably Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore.
Are these new positions or one’s he’s always held, even while a Democrat in good standing? Of course, the detention thing probably even hadn’t come up before the past eight years.
As far as free trade, I think NAFTA was a bi-partisan effort, and also has bi-partisan opposition.
The problem isn’t that he came out for McCain, but that me made certain promises about not attacking Obama that he reneged on. Say Obama put party ahead of country was out of line. I say keep him as a Dem but make him chair of the toilet policing subcommittee.
In fact, Lieberman has always been a hawk on foreign policy - he got elected in the first place partly by running to Republican Lowell Weicker’s right on FP.
Lieberman’s a snake with zero loyalty to anything but the greater glory of Joe Lieberman, but he can’t match Multiple-Choice Mitt in his flexibility on the issues.
Those are pretty consistently his positions, although as you note the detention thing is presumably new. I presume the voucher thing is relatively new, too, since (IIRC) the idea didn’t really exist prior to 1998 or so.
NAFTA was a bipartisan effort, but mostly because Clinton was in favor of it. Free trade is traditionally a conservative ideal.
Hmmm…I haven’t been around in a day or two. I expected this thread to die. I’m happy to see it hasn’t.
To address Der Trihs’s point, in my perfect American political world, I’d love to see the Republicans ditch the hyper-religious nutsacks and drift back to the middle, and rebuild their platform on traditional Republican ideals (i.e. small government (whatever that means in this modern world), fiscal conservatism, etc.) I don’t believe we need to have the Democrats on the other side of the aisle from a largely powerless, discombobulated Republican party. To lay too much power in the hands of either side could be disastrous. I’m a big fan of checks and balances, and near-parity of national power. This forces people to talk and compromise. Granted, the pendulum has swung WAY too far right in the last decade. I just hope that it doesn’t swing too far left now, or else there will be an even bigger backlash in another decade or so. I’d like to see us remain nice and moderate.
That’s what the subject line says. Even within this thread though, you have people treating these “heavy volleys” as gospel truth. I’m talking about comments like “She didn’t know what countries make up NAFTA. She didn’t know that Africa is a continent. Shockingly stupid person,” to name just a few.
Don’t be so naive. The election is over, which means that they no longer have any reason to curry Governor Palin’s favor. If anything, they could be acting out a vendetta or simply looking for a scapegoat. The fact that they belong to the same party doesn’t automatically make their accusations credible – ESPECIALLY under these circumstances.
Actually, that fact has been acknowledged in this thread.
…and that’s the entire point. It doesn’t matter if the accusations are accurate. In fact, it would only make the GOP look worse if they were fabricated out of whole cloth.
But I doubt seriously that they were. I mean, you saw the Couric interview, right? Yikes.
Well, we have been* told *they are Repub sources. We know nothing.
How could anyone verify this dude was not told that by secret sources? Go to every possible source and have then swear “It wasn’t me”?
This dude is getting lots of press over these little stories, and it’s impossible to prove he has no source.
It also possible that the source is making this up, or it’s so wildly out of context to be worthless. Palin is known to joke around, maybe she was clearly joking, or it was a miss-speak. We know nothing.
Exactly. I personally don’t care if Palin’s lying or the Republican Party is engaged in a filthy smear campaign to persecute sweet innocent Mensa-member Sarah. It will all come out in the wash.
I just want none of it to get swept under the rug. Let’s keep track of all the expensive clothing she received, and make sure that the campaign-financing laws that her running mate sponsored are followed, that all taxes are paid on goods or income received, that all liars and slanderers are exposed, even that any malicious journalists publishing knowingly false stories are fired and that everyone breaking the law gets prosecuted.
Charlie “pickmeee, pickmeee” Crist’s fiancee is Carole Rome, a businesswoman and socialite with a taste for Dolce & Gabana, red carpet charity balls with two daughters aged 9 and 11.
Unless i miss my guess he should be up for reelection in 2010.
The stuff about NAFTA and Africa was reported by Carl Cameron of Fox News as having come from multiple sources within the McCain/Palin campaign. Is it your contention that Cameron (a loyal, Republican, Fox News toady who spent the entire election embedded with the McCain camp) is just making it all up and that he either doesn’t really have any sources or he’s lying when he says they’re from within the McCain camp?
That is much more implausible and requires a much greater degree of credulity than just accepting that Cameron is reporting what people told him. If Cameron says people within the McCain camp told him this stuff, then people within the McCain camp told him this stuff. You may wish to believe that Cameron’s sources are lying or distorting. You might even call them cowards or jerks or sexists, but implying that Carl Cameron made it all up out of thin air is not a credible defense.
I would also add that the evidence we’ve seen and heard with our own eyes and ears shows that Palin is not a well educated or knowledgeable person. We already SAW her come up blank when asked to name a Supreme Court case besides Roe or to name a newspaper or magazine which exists in the world. I see nothing inherently implausible about anything that’s been said about Palin by her own staffers. It comports with everything we already know. She’s an egotist and an idiot. We already know that. We’ve seen it on camera and in her public behavior. Why should we be skeptical when multiple sources from within her own campaign allege that she has said and done other stupid and egotistical things off camera?
And just imagine how well we’d understand her egotism and idiocy if she had, say, given a single press conference or did a few more followup interviews with reporters even more intrepid and persistent than Katie Couric?
We got only the smallest taste of Sarah Palin, smaller than I would have thought possible for a VP candidate, and it made us throw up in our mouths.