The Republicrats in Minny

Since we were in ABQ last week, I didn't watch a ton of the demopublicans in Denver. I don't know how much I'll watch of this week's convention because, well, I just get appalled by the shit that comes out of the republicrats' mouths. I can see it now: "Look how great things are in Iraq. We didn't need that $1.2 trillion [yes, that's with a T]". "18 more months and the economy is going to be fine." "Hey, we didn't fuck up this hurricane as badly as the last one."

To get a look at what the Liberatarian wing of the party is thinking, click here. No word as to whether the RNC will have their little protest party busted.

In the 80's, the republicrats ran on the family values and kill commies platform. Note that giving money and arms to Islamic radicals was a-OK back then cuz they hated the Russians. And us. But they were fighting the Russians at the time. Their standard bearer, Ronald Reagan, was divorced and some of his kids were way into drugs (so much for "Just Say No") and wouldn't speak to him. But, he claimed to be into family values and that's what counted.

McCain got the nomination without the family values crowd (dumping his ex-model wife after she got hurt in a traffic accident for a rich pretty woman who gets her money from the beer industry will do that), yet somehow believes he can only win the White House with them. So, a light bulb goes off in his head and he selects Sarah Palin. The drip, drip, drip of things coming out (pregnant under aged daughter, needing an attorney to fight abuse of power allegations) leads me to believe that he was a bit...umb....quick on the trigger on this one.

Tonight we heard from Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman (!) what kind of maverick John McCain is. Granted, when it comes to campaign finance reform, he got a lot of the right-wing special interest groups in an uproar. But, the data is pretty interesting (you can access all congresspeople vote counts compared to W and their parties here).

As you would imagine, the demopublicans picked the year that McCain agreed with Bush the most (last year) when saying how much he voted with the prez (95%) when the White House took a position on the bill (not something that is always clear). For the 7.5 years he's voted with Shrub 90% of the time and with the republicrat majority 81% of the time when a majority of both parties voted for or against a bill/nomination (which is 58% of the votes). So, he's even more of a Bush lackey than the other republicrats. Though, my sense is that at least some of those bills were probably on immigration, where Bush differed from his party bretheren.

In contrast, Obama voted with Bush 40% of the time, but with the majority of the demopublicans 96% of the time. Man, when you are voting with your party almost 100% of the time, you just are not thinking for yourself. Shit, even Harry Reid, the majority leader only voted with the demopublicans 93% of the time (though, this may have been for procedural reasons in some cases). Again, this doesn't represent votes where there wasn't a clear party split, so it's possible that Obama (and McCain) voted against majorities in their party when both majorities were on the same side of an issue (now THAT's being a maverick). But, my sense is that a fair number of issues that come before the Senate are unanimous votes (e.g., Apple pie is good! Congratulate the Super Bowl Champions).

What this tells me is that (no surprise), McCain is not nearly as independent of Bush or the republicans as he'd like you to believe. So, except on immigration and campaing finance, if you like the republicans, you'll love McCain.

It also means that if your kind of change is going ahead with the current democratic orthodoxy, Obama's your man. Post-partisan working together to fix problems? Eh, not so much.

Ya want some change?

http://www.ronpaul.com/

http://www.lp.org/