Funny, for a retard that has to hyperanalyze A FUCKING JOKE.
I’m not a Democrat and never have been. I’ve been a registered Independent since 1984 when I turned 18 and voted for Reagan.
When I say character doesn’t matter, I mean it doesn’t matter ever for any legislator, no matter what the affiliation. Their job is not to have character, their job is to draft and pass legislation. Good character doesn’t help me a bit if they don’t draft and vote the way I want. Bad character doesn’t hurt me if they do. I assume as a matter of course that most politicians at the national level are crooked, narcissistic scumbags and am surprised if they are not. If they’re not doing anything criminally violent or larcenous I don’t care.
That doesn’t mean I don’t think Blumenthal is an asshole and an idiot for for lying about his service, but it’s not a good enough reason to surrender a Senate seat to people who won’t vote the way I want.
First of all, I think it’s a crock to think that one two-year-old quote, which was apparently all that Linda McMahon’s oppo research team could find to stick on Blumenthal after a pretty enormous effort, is the summation of Blumenthal’s ‘character.’
Second, I think it’s quite reasonable to look at the potential repercussions of this character lapse if he should win the position he seeks. Does it mean his vote can be bought? Does it mean that he’ll take showy, publicity-hogging positions rather than figuring out what a bill really means, and voting accordingly? Does it mean that he’ll be the sort to sympathize with the difficulties of the well-off but not those struggling to get by? I’m not seeing any connection between the weakness of character that brought on this dishonest statement, and the weaknesses of character that would be genuinely problematic in a U.S. Senator.
Third, by elevating this incident above everything, and insisting that Blumenthal step down even if it means a Republican wins, does that mean I’d be putting my personal standards of character above the well-being of millions of Americans who would benefit from legislation passed by a larger Democratic majority? There’s something less than morally awesome about expecting others to pay the price for my rectitude.
So I rather think I’m putting things in their proper perspective. Maybe it does equate, in this environment, to putting “party affiliation above character” as Bricker puts it, but phraseology aside, I think I’m taking the better, more moral stance here.
Diogenes, what motivated Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act? Was that done just to please most voters and gain reelection?
That’s what Diogenes believes. I guess that works out if the voters have a little character. But I don’t count on it. I had rather vote for a candidate that I believe will “do the right thing.” It has to be someone with character that I trust to make informed decisions after careful consideration of the consequences.
Otherwise, we just have someone who reads the polls and goes with the crowd. That’s not a leader.
BTW, news headline: Specter is out.
18 USC § 704:
As far as we are aware, Blumenthal said nothing about medals. He said he’d done something for which he might be presumed to have received a medal, but no reasonable reading of the Stolen Valor Act could result in him being accused of violating it.
Apparently just a couple months ago during a TV debate he clearly stated that he did not serve in Vietnam. Given that it’s hard to see some kind of campaign to deceive. It sucks that he was ever unclear. On the other hand, the origins of the times story and the fact that CT vets and the Democratic establishment are still behind him make it seem likely that he’ll come out of this just fine.
It should be. He should have given a short statement to express abject shame and announce his immediate resignation, and then slunk away, never to be seen in the public arena again.
Cynical as I usually feel myself to be, I am still a little boggled that this is not what is happening. Is there no shame? None?
I guess I’m old-fashioned, or something. I believe in choosing candidates on policy from among the candidates with some discernible shred of character.
I can forgive the Democratic Party, and their candidates in other jurisdictions, Blumenthal’s lies. I don’t know that I can forgive them their party’s partisans’ indifference to the lies.
If he’s still on the party ticket when the time comes, I believe it will hurt the party nationally–even if he wins. Maybe even more so if he does.
I don’t know. I haven’t studied the poitical motivations of the time, but I didn’t say their motivations had to be purely voter driven. My guess is that those who voted for it were probably doing the will of their own constituents. It also doesn’t mean anyone has good character just because they voted for a good law.
LBJ, the guy who signed the Civil Rights Act, certainly had some character flaws. Does it matter?
They don’t do what the polls say, anyways. As all of us know, there are lobbyists for most commercial entities. The congressperson tries to appease them first, as they have a more direct consequence on that persons. Especially now that they don’t have caps to what they can contribute. Piss enough of them off, and you may not have any funds to actually run.
Ultimately, getting elected has little to do with doing what the people want, and more to do with telling them what they want to hear. The better you are at making your actions seem like they are what everybody wants, the more likely you get reelected.
Do you think John Ensign’s affair and attempt to pay off the husband of his mistress has hurt the Republican Party?
Please. This is ridiculous overdramatising. What Blumenthal did was undeniably wrong. But if current politicians were ranked by the wrongs they’ve committed, he wouldn’t even enter the top one hundred.
When I heard about what he’d done and didn’t know what party he was a part of, I sighed and said to myself “You moron. You ‘misspeak’, whether you were trying to mislead or not, and you dig your own grave. You’re a politician giving speeches. Pay attention to what you’re saying.” But I didn’t really think he was being intentionally misleading. I just didn’t get that read. I don’t expect politicians to be any smarter than I am.
But saying it more than once in more than one speech, implying it that way… sigh. I still don’t think making a boneheaded mistake should destroy a man’s career outside of gross misconduct or incompetence, but lying about military service gets under my skin. My daddy didn’t serve in the US Armed Forces for thirty years to have some asshole paper-pusher say ‘Me too, me too!’
Oh. And the Bush comment was obviously a joke, if a somewhat lame one. I would have chuckled at a barbecue if someone’d said it. I’m biased as hell against the man and considering the war he’d gotten us into by 2002 I would have probably been pissed when he said it, but it’s a damn joke. It’s not like he said “If I’d known what I was getting into, I would have turned around and hopped back on the flight to Vietnam and gone back to that war I was in.”
Usually I hear it as “all anti-gay campaigners/politicians are closeted hypocrites”. And given that it seems like there’s another one every few weeks, it’s getting to be a very well-supported argument.
George W Bush was a one man Elite force in Nam. He single handedly cleared out enemy camps in both *Chung King *and La choy. No official records exist.
Actually, the charge was: “that’s what they said on MSNBC that morning.”
Chrissakes, the story broke about 2 minutes after I got up that morning, and I flicked past Morning Joe while I was brushing my teeth. I saw this thread and thought I’d impart what I heard on the TeeVee. Sorry my vetting didn’t come up to snuff.
You got caught in another lazy, stupid, partisan falsehood. Just accept it and try harder in the future, Hoss.
The key word is “campaigners”. It probably doesn’t mean much of anything if somebody gets squicked out when they stumble upon the sight of two guys making out or catch a glimpse of some flamboyant Gay Pride display, but doesn’t give much thought to the matter the rest of the time. When somebody puts significant effort into making an issue of being anti-gay, on the other hand… yeah, they’re probably either 1)a cynical panderer to bigotry or 2)a self-loathing closet case.
Getting back to the subject of this thread – as long as I have the amateur shrink couch unfolded, I might as well comment on Blumenthal. I think that he let the distinction between “I served during the Vietnam era” and “I served in Vietnam” blur, first by not correcting other people’s misleading statements and ultimately by making misleading statements of his own, until he convinced himself that the distinction didn’t really matter.
It’s not well known that he worked closely with General Tso on those campaigns.
No, it only proves he worked for Nixon. 