So, some 10,000 prigs, sexual repressives, bluenoses, brownnoses, nudges, cranks, Savonarolas, reality show actors, and singers who wrap themselves in the flag so as to mask their utter lack of creativity are gathering this weekend just outside Washington, DC. The annual CPAC conference will feature speakers like Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Milwaukee’s Vlad the Impaler-wannabe Sheriff David Clarke, and President Gag.
Clarke Salutes The New Order
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The Conservative Political Action Conference takes place every year around this time. It’s sponsored by the American Conservative Union. And every year some 10,000 of the aforementioned scourges and snake-oil salesmen flock to the event.
Fair enough, right? Even antediluvian know-nothings, anti-intellectuals, and yearners for strongmen have the right to gather, rally the troops, strategize for upcoming elections, and scare each the bejesus out of each other with tall tales about rapist Mexicans and cross-dressing child molesters sneaking into elementary school girls’ washrooms to ply their nefarious trade. I mean, after all, thousands and thousands of liberals, progressives, union supporters, human rights advocates, environmentalists, feminists, and the like gather together every year in….
In….
Um, yeah, that’s right. There’s no such gathering. In any year. Ever.
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It Takes Two
My guest this afternoon on Big Talk: practitioner and teacher of the sizzling art of tango, Thuy (pronounced TWEE) Bogart.
Bogart (L) Shows Some Steps
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Tune in at 5:00pm for the Daily Local News on WFHB, 93.1. My Big Talk feature runs at 5:15 or so. Big Talk is a regular Thursday feature of WFHB’s DLN.
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Dirt
I’m reading the book, The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons.
The first chapter covers the cut-throat world of Arkansas politics from which the Clintons emerged in 1991 to become America’s power couple. The book ends with Clinton’s impeachment.
Just Kids
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[BTW: Remember, President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about whether or not he got a blowjob. BTW II: The term impeachment is being thrown around promiscuously these days. Scads o’folks think if a president is impeached, it means he’s thrown out of office. Not so. Impeachment is simply a call by the House of Representatives for a Senate trial of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” And then, even if the Senate convicts, removal from office does not necessarily follow. The Senate can vote simply to censure — read: shake its finger at — the president.]
Anyway, the book. Conason and Lyons tell the tale of a fellow named Tom McRae, who ran against Clinton in the 1990 state Democratic primary for governor. Right wing operatives for years had been marshaling their forces to destroy Clinton because, in the view of Republican satanic figure Lee Atwater, as a moderate, charismatic Southerner, Clinton was a grave threat to the reelection of George H.W. Bush. One day, one of those operatives visited McRae in his office and offered him “a generous check and a file of smutty opposition research on Clinton. The main topics were women and drugs.”
McRae told the guy he didn’t want the dirt.
“Then you don’t want to win,” said this would-be benefactor. Angrily, McRae asked, “Has it ever occurred to you that there might be something more important than winning?”
“That’s why I can’t work with you,” the man replied as he stood up and left McRae’s office. The check left with him
It’s a story designed to make the reader want to retch. Sadly, the guy with the check and the big file of shit to smear on the incumbent represents the American political figure who has become ascendent in the quarter century since the incident.
Yeah, this view of the American political process is sickening but — guess what — it seems to work. Leading to the question: How far should my side go to win elections?
Frankly, I don’t have an answer just yet.
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