More Bow Tie Boy weirdness

by: Carnacki

Thu Jun 14, 2007 at 14:15:00 PM EDT

The only period of uncertainty would be if the vacancy occurred soon, giving all interested parties the chance to queue up for the big job.

All three of our members of the House of Representatives would fancy themselves, with Shelley Moore Capito looking the most viable, being without a federal investigation or a southern accent.

Which just goes to prove: even though rightwingers can be articulate they can still write idiocy.

Put aside for a moment the fact that the investigation of Rep. Alan Mollohan has gone no where and the hearings on Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have shown the Justice Department has been made into a partisan tool of the Republicans to use against Democrats.

Put aside too Bow Tie Boy completely ignores that both Rahall and Mollohan have been extremely effective legislators (Rahall ranked 22nd, Mollohan 64)
while the vulnerable, ineffectual Capito is among the least influential (421 overall and 38 of 38 of class of 2000).

Put aside too the most important issue facing the country, the Iraq war, and that Capito remains for keeping the  U.S. troops occuping Iraq in the middle of that country's civil war -- a view that puts her squarely in opposition to the vast majority of the American people and four of the five members of our Congressional caucus.

Put all of those valid arguments aside for a second and think about this.

What fantasy world does Bow Tie Boy live in that if the question ever arose that he thinks a Democratic governor in a Democratic state would replace a Democratic senator with a Republican representative?
For a political editor, Bow Tie Boy showed a remarkable naiveness. He completely discredited what otherwise was a reasonable column by him. But rightwingers can't help themselves.
Their sense of entitlement for Republicans is delusional.

A short preview:

Republicans tend to be authoritarians. Their leaders take a position and the base is expected to follow in blind support. The RNC faxes out their talking points and Republican bloggers and columnists duly repeat them.

Democrats don't march in lockstep with their leaders. Democrats often can hold vastly different opinions from each other. Instead of being pulled from the top down like Republicans, Democrats tend to push from the grassroots up. Yet even though we disagree on some issues, we can find common ground and work together on other issues.

I know a base disagreeing with the party leaders is shocking to Republicans (hence the surprise of many rightwingers on immigration debate), but Democrats do it all the time. Republicans are a top-down organization. Democrats are a big messy family. That's why we can argue a different position on C-to-L from our elected officials and still love them.

One last point, despite Bow Tie Boy's oversimplification of our view (either out of deception or an inability to grasp complex views) and I'm sure Clem will address more on this later, we're not opposed to coal mining. We're opposed to certain types of mining methods (mountain top removal in particular) and we're opposed to coal mine owners operating unsafe mines (that's also a reason why we're for union mines too). The threat of global warming is real and a high-level report prepared by the top retired generals and admirals for the Pentagon called global warming a national security threat. (I know Republicans have touted so many false threats it's hard for them to see real ones.)

Bow Tie Boy's time would be better spent addressing the legitimate issues raised by Clem and others on C-to-L instead of battling strawmen (valiant though his fight against straw might be).