I ascribe a wide range of very powerful human emotions to my opponents. In many cases, their positions and actions would be impossible to explain otherwise.
Are “greed” and “thirst for power” emotions?
That’s so vague and mushy as to be applicable to pretty much any large group of people concering any issue.
Which does not make it any less a fair criticism of post #68 on the latter’s terms.
Wouldn’t that actually simplify things? (And right now we’re talking increasingly hypothetically.) The Dems wouldn’t want to have to declare the seat vacant; Rounds wants the seat to be open in 2008, rather than have to battle an incumbent for the seat. The Dems want Johnson to recover, but if that doesn’t happen, they’ll want the same thing. All he’s got to do is say that as long as there’s the chance his good friend and fellow South Dakotan Tim Johnson might eventually recover and be able to finish out his term, far be it from him to ask anyone to declare the seat vacant.
First, the Dems don’t have to deal at all; as long as they do nothing, they’ve still got a one-vote Senate majority.
If the Dems show no inclination to do anything, then the question is, what can the GOP offer that gives the Dems a reason to give them anything in return?
Second, there’s a big difference between national politics and state politics, with different reward structures. Each state has only a handful of offices that confer statewide visibility, and each state has a lot of state legislators who would love to get into one of those statewide offices. But it can often be hard to get one of those offices to open up, and a deal that opens up Herseth’s seat will win Rounds a lot of friends.
For the national party, it may be simply a wash, unless they can make a burning national issue out of the Dems’ refusal to declare Johnson’s seat vacant. Otherwise, the Dems have all the leverage, because they don’t have to deal - so anything they can get is better than nothing, too.
But if Jonathan Chance is right and Rounds wants that Senate seat for himself, then he wants it to remain open, or effectively so. One option he’d have, IF the Dems declared the seat vacant, would be to appoint some octogenarian to the seat who hadn’t been politically active in 15 years, and promised not to seek election in 2008. But even given that, the Dems would have no reason to declare the seat vacant unless Rounds promised to appoint a Dem.
I assume you mean #64.
I would disagree with that post, too. “Nobdy here or anywhere” is at least a bit overly broad in scope.
Putting this all in perspective, if Dick Cheney were lying in that hospital bed I’m sure I wouldn’t be hoping or praying for his recovery. Nor should I.
OTOH, I would be if it were some random Pub senator who was not clearly and obviously an evil bastard (there just might be one or two of that description in there somewhere), and balance of the Senate be damned.
It was only forum rules that kept me from implying your assumption that Republicans are praying for Johnson’s death was projection of your own desires. Glad to see you admit it fully.
[shrug] In this business, projection is usually right on the money.
Though I didn’t open this thread for a sympathy discussion, neither did I open it for a wishing death discussion. As the point of the thread appears increasingly moot, and as the serious discussion appears to have ended, I’ll ask it to be closed.
Yeeesh,
Per the OP: closed.
[ /Moderating ]