The pending retirement of Senator Jeff Flake has set off a flurry of speculation as to whose hands the seat will wind up in. Governor Doug Ducey already ruled out running as that he'd rather be a governor than a Senator. There's some talk that my own Congresswoman, Martha McSally, will make a run for it. McSally is a favorite of the Establishment, and I'm thinking......if they really want her in there, then why are they failing to make use of an opportunity before them?
In other words, why doesn't Jeff Snake (oops!) step down right now, and allow Governor Ducey to appoint a replacement? He could name Martha McSally to the seat, and the Establishment could entrench her there and better position her against any potential primary challengers.
There are a number of reasons for this.
One. The governor doesn't want to get involved in national politics at this time. He's very likely going to sit back and let the primary process sort itself out.
Two. The Establishment doesn't yet know whether to keep McSally where she is for a while, and then have her run for McCain's seat.
Three. Martha McSally may feel the need to stay where she is to keep her seat in Establishment hands. She narrowly defeated Ron Barber to get the seat in the first place, and she might stay where she is as that eventually McCain's seat will open up.
Four. The Establishment is waiting to see what the Trump faction is going to do. Right now I'm sure most of the Trumpites will be supporting Kelli Ward for this. The thinking is that she would have gotten 53% of the primary vote in a matchup against Jeff Snake, (dang it, another typographical error!), but now that that is out the window the latest poll suggests she's not going to get that percentage against other candidates.
Five. Jeff Flake (this time I got it right) hasn't yet gotten his next job lined up. I'm sure he'd like to go work for CNN or MSNBC, but the catch here is that they have to make him an offer and until they do he might as well continue basking in his power. This gives him more time to weigh his options. I wouldn't suggest a book deal as that I'm not sure he sold more than 2000 copies of his book, and it doesn't look good for him if he can't outsell Hillary.
I think in this case, there is a rationale for this wait and see mentality, if that's what they're really doing here.
But I can't help but wonder why, though I think donor money has a lot to do with it right now, and the big donors themselves haven't yet figured out where to go from here.
Monday, October 30, 2017
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Good Riddance, Senator Flake
Senator Jeff Flake, as of this writing, is Arizona's junior Senator. He hails from a rural part of eastern Arizona, where a lot of good Americans live. When he ran for, and won a seat in, Congress, he pledged he would only serve three terms and then step down. Of course he went on to break that promise, ran for two more terms, and then ran for Senator in 2012 and won.
Senator Flake immediately got in good with the Republican Establishment. Among his first actions was to join Senator Benedict McCain in the so-called "Gang of Eight" to force a largely unwanted piece of immigration legislation down our throats. I didn't vote for him for Senate because I didn't trust him, and so it wasn't a situation where I personally was suffering from buyer's remorse here. However, some others did.
Phoenix-area radio talk show host Bruce Jacobs, who is heard here in Tucson when Garret Lewis goes on vacation, immediately took to calling him "Jeff Snake" (it does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?). Bruce Jacobs went on so far to say this summer that if "Jeff Snake" won the primary, then he would vote for his Democrat opponent........even though "Jeff Snake" would win.
There was every indication that Jeff Flake would run for re-election. He started getting himself on national TV more often. He wrote a book, shamelessly lifting the title from one of Barry Goldwater's books. Garret Lewis and his gang would give us daily morning updates as to how many copies of his book were being sold..........the numbers weren't pretty. Polls started showing that he was in trouble....which I guess would be good if you could trust them, which I don't. I personally thought Arizona had elected a career politician for a lifetime in office, who would have had the longevity of Fidel Castro.
But then something happened. His book wasn't selling. His approval rating plummeted down to 17%. His only announced primary challenger, Dr. Kelli Ward, was gaining traction. "Jeff Snake" doubled down on his attacks on President Trump. Then this week, he announced he would be retiring from the Senate.
My first reaction to his announcement was that this was the greatest news I've heard in six months. But I found myself disgusted at the parting shots he took on the Senate floor, and I'm thinking, we've still got a year and a half of his "I know what you want but here's what you need" attitude towards us. I'm not buying his phony argument that he's doing this out of honor. I can tell exactly why he is leaving, and that's because he had reliable intelligence that there was no way he was going to win re-election.
Now on those occasions of a fatass politician finding himself sailing on that kind of boat, what are your options?
One: you can do what Arlen Specter did. You can jump over to the Democrats and join them. Arlen Specter did exactly that when he learned he was going to be defeated by his primary challenger. He went over to the Democrats, and then found that the Democrats don't exactly like turncoats either. He was no longer a committee chairman or a ranking member. He went down to the lowest possible seniority in the Democratic heirarchy. Harry Reid would not permit him to occupy a higher position. An up and coming Democratic candidate was bumped off the ballot in Pennsylvania to make room for Arlen Specter. And Arlen Specter still lost.
Two: "Jeff Snake", upon seeing what happened to Arlen Specter, isn't going to jump ship. He's not quite the level of backstabber that the senior Senator from Arizona is, but he's a backstabber nonetheless. He's "Jeff Snake" after all. He's got a primary challenger. Now he could run in the primary, but what does that make you look like if you lose? He saw what happened to Richard Lugar. The Arlen Specter option is out. And now the Richard Lugar option doesn't look good either.
Three: you do what Bob Corker is doing. You say you've had enough, your party has been hijacked, you don't fit in anymore (which you don't, Senator), and you have your temper tantrum designed to elicit the maximum amount of praise from Organized Media. This option is preferable since you get to do damage to your voters who are too stupid to realize that they need your mastery over them.
There is the fourth, and that's to resign outright, and go home. That would be the honorable way to go, but I'm not going to even jokingly suggest that your average fatass politician is capable of this kind of honor.
The bottom line: the base has been emboldened by last year's victory of The Donald. We're mad as hell at the long list of broken promises. We're not sending you, Senator, to Washington so that you can play "Let's Make A Deal". We want Obamacare overturned, The Great Wall of Trump, tax reform, and domestic job creation as opposed to "free trade".
In short Senator, we don't want the Republicans to be the party that they defeated in 1994.
Now please have the decency to resign.
Senator Flake immediately got in good with the Republican Establishment. Among his first actions was to join Senator Benedict McCain in the so-called "Gang of Eight" to force a largely unwanted piece of immigration legislation down our throats. I didn't vote for him for Senate because I didn't trust him, and so it wasn't a situation where I personally was suffering from buyer's remorse here. However, some others did.
Phoenix-area radio talk show host Bruce Jacobs, who is heard here in Tucson when Garret Lewis goes on vacation, immediately took to calling him "Jeff Snake" (it does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?). Bruce Jacobs went on so far to say this summer that if "Jeff Snake" won the primary, then he would vote for his Democrat opponent........even though "Jeff Snake" would win.
There was every indication that Jeff Flake would run for re-election. He started getting himself on national TV more often. He wrote a book, shamelessly lifting the title from one of Barry Goldwater's books. Garret Lewis and his gang would give us daily morning updates as to how many copies of his book were being sold..........the numbers weren't pretty. Polls started showing that he was in trouble....which I guess would be good if you could trust them, which I don't. I personally thought Arizona had elected a career politician for a lifetime in office, who would have had the longevity of Fidel Castro.
But then something happened. His book wasn't selling. His approval rating plummeted down to 17%. His only announced primary challenger, Dr. Kelli Ward, was gaining traction. "Jeff Snake" doubled down on his attacks on President Trump. Then this week, he announced he would be retiring from the Senate.
My first reaction to his announcement was that this was the greatest news I've heard in six months. But I found myself disgusted at the parting shots he took on the Senate floor, and I'm thinking, we've still got a year and a half of his "I know what you want but here's what you need" attitude towards us. I'm not buying his phony argument that he's doing this out of honor. I can tell exactly why he is leaving, and that's because he had reliable intelligence that there was no way he was going to win re-election.
Now on those occasions of a fatass politician finding himself sailing on that kind of boat, what are your options?
One: you can do what Arlen Specter did. You can jump over to the Democrats and join them. Arlen Specter did exactly that when he learned he was going to be defeated by his primary challenger. He went over to the Democrats, and then found that the Democrats don't exactly like turncoats either. He was no longer a committee chairman or a ranking member. He went down to the lowest possible seniority in the Democratic heirarchy. Harry Reid would not permit him to occupy a higher position. An up and coming Democratic candidate was bumped off the ballot in Pennsylvania to make room for Arlen Specter. And Arlen Specter still lost.
Two: "Jeff Snake", upon seeing what happened to Arlen Specter, isn't going to jump ship. He's not quite the level of backstabber that the senior Senator from Arizona is, but he's a backstabber nonetheless. He's "Jeff Snake" after all. He's got a primary challenger. Now he could run in the primary, but what does that make you look like if you lose? He saw what happened to Richard Lugar. The Arlen Specter option is out. And now the Richard Lugar option doesn't look good either.
Three: you do what Bob Corker is doing. You say you've had enough, your party has been hijacked, you don't fit in anymore (which you don't, Senator), and you have your temper tantrum designed to elicit the maximum amount of praise from Organized Media. This option is preferable since you get to do damage to your voters who are too stupid to realize that they need your mastery over them.
There is the fourth, and that's to resign outright, and go home. That would be the honorable way to go, but I'm not going to even jokingly suggest that your average fatass politician is capable of this kind of honor.
The bottom line: the base has been emboldened by last year's victory of The Donald. We're mad as hell at the long list of broken promises. We're not sending you, Senator, to Washington so that you can play "Let's Make A Deal". We want Obamacare overturned, The Great Wall of Trump, tax reform, and domestic job creation as opposed to "free trade".
In short Senator, we don't want the Republicans to be the party that they defeated in 1994.
Now please have the decency to resign.
Monday, October 23, 2017
Monday, 10/23/17
I haven't exactly been a prolific poster here. Not on this blog anyway. I am much more likely to post on my ham radio blog. I'm not sure anyone reads that either, but ham radio has been proving to be a great deal more fun than I thought it would be given the sunspot lull (that translates into poor band conditions).
I could have posted about Las Vegas and the shooter. I almost did. I quickly realized that anything I would have wanted to say about that would have been covered elsewhere. Was the shooter a part of ISIS? I can't rule that out any more than I could rule it in. I lean towards him being an ISIS sympathizer, but if he was the government isn't going to tell us that as that they don't want to be stoking panic. If that is the case, then I'm good with it for the time being, but eventually they're going to have to tell us what they know.
I could also post about work. Trouble is, I don't like to talk about work here. What happens at work stays at work. I may or may not witness some interesting situations, but if I do I'm not immediately going to talk about it. I may tell you some stories about my time at Pay Less Drugs in San Jose, or my time at Radio Shack in San Jose.
I guess what I can post about is that I'm aware that I am a very blessed person. I'm still not 100% healed from the surgery, but the surgery was 100% succsessful. It's given me some things to think about and a reason to be grateful for my blessings. I'm not going to go into what happened just yet. I may not ever. All I'm going to say is that resting up from surgery is the most tiring thing I've ever done in my life. It was nearly three weeks before I got my energy back.
Anyway, I came here tonight to check in, and let you know that I am alive and well.
Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.
I could have posted about Las Vegas and the shooter. I almost did. I quickly realized that anything I would have wanted to say about that would have been covered elsewhere. Was the shooter a part of ISIS? I can't rule that out any more than I could rule it in. I lean towards him being an ISIS sympathizer, but if he was the government isn't going to tell us that as that they don't want to be stoking panic. If that is the case, then I'm good with it for the time being, but eventually they're going to have to tell us what they know.
I could also post about work. Trouble is, I don't like to talk about work here. What happens at work stays at work. I may or may not witness some interesting situations, but if I do I'm not immediately going to talk about it. I may tell you some stories about my time at Pay Less Drugs in San Jose, or my time at Radio Shack in San Jose.
I guess what I can post about is that I'm aware that I am a very blessed person. I'm still not 100% healed from the surgery, but the surgery was 100% succsessful. It's given me some things to think about and a reason to be grateful for my blessings. I'm not going to go into what happened just yet. I may not ever. All I'm going to say is that resting up from surgery is the most tiring thing I've ever done in my life. It was nearly three weeks before I got my energy back.
Anyway, I came here tonight to check in, and let you know that I am alive and well.
Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)