-
Let Syria Play Out
May 7, 2013 | 6 comments
-
Happy Birthday, Willie
April 30, 2013 | 10 comments
-
George Jones RIP
April 26, 2013 | 7 comments
-
Two-by-Four Did It for the Mule
April 17, 2013 | 2 comments
-
Obama AWOL
April 17, 2013 | 8 comments
The Spectacle Blog
Incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson leads conservative challenger, Ft. Myers area Congressman Connie Mack IV, by double digits in most polls. This is more a function of Mack’s weakness as a candidate than Nelson’s strengths.
Predictably, the mainstream media in Florida are doing what they can to help the liberal candidate out, in this case by insisting on referring to Nelson as a “moderate” or a “centrist.” Florida journalists usually source national outfits like Congressional Quarterly or Cook Political Report for Nelson’s middle-of-the-road bona fides.
Cook, for example, listed Nelson as one of the 19 senators closest to the center in 2011 (center of what, they don’t say) with votes that broke down 63.5 percent liberal and 36.5 percent conservative. Here we have another clear case of liberal arithmetic. In a nation whose citizens self-identify as conservative over liberal by two to one, a two to one liberal voting record puts you in the “center.” If this is “middle-of-the-road,” where the hell is this road taking us?
So let’s look at what Nelson has voted for and done while still managing to be labeled a centrist: Obama’s “stimulus” slush fund, Obamacare, open gays in the military, cap and trade, and Dodd-Frank. He attacks all efforts to get non-citizens and felons off the voting rolls as racist. He’s voted with the Obama administration north of 97 percent of the time while our rookie president has tried to fundamentally change our country.
There’s an old showbiz maxim, attributed to various actors and comedians over the years: “Dying is easy — comedy is hard.” There’s at least one thing even harder than comedy — to get labeled a liberal by the mainstream media.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 10.8.12 @ 6:37PM
A liberal to another liberal is a centrist. In their warped worldview, they are the elite standard, and the rest of the world is off center.
This is why it didn't occur to Obama that Bill Ayers wasn't just "a guy in his neighborhood" who had bombed the Pentagon, or Jeremiah Wright wasn't mainstream "old time religion". Up until the time a pollster told him that acknowledging them as mentors was a political risk, he figured everyone saw them the same way that he did, as fellow travelers in the same cause to "fundamentally transform" America (or AmeriKKKa, as either Wright or Ayers might prefer).
JD| 10.8.12 @ 7:47PM
They say the same thing, though - that the right sees the center as far-left.
For the truth, we should look at policies and history:
Our tax code is larger, more complex, more "progressive" than ever, and more redistributive than ever. Our government spends more in relation to our private sector than ever, and is larger than ever. We have more rules than ever. In every measurable way, we are further left than we have ever been, and continue moving left.
Even the so-called "far right" no longer talks about ending big entitlement programs, which were considered too left-wing for many liberals in FDR's day. Now you have the "far right" trying to save entitlements. No wonder the election of "moderate" Republicans grew deficits and the government in 2001-2008 almost as quickly as Democrats have grown them since!
Despite all this, today's Democrats have the audacity to suggest that the reason we're worse off than before is a move to the right, and that some Republicans are "further right than ever". Have they no perspective at all?
Quartermaster| 10.9.12 @ 12:37PM
The problem is the country has shifted left politically over the last 80 years. The founders, true centrists, would be viewed as extreme loony right wingers today.
C Bowen | 10.8.12 @ 6:42PM
"Obama’s "stimulus" slush fund, Obamacare, open gays in the military, cap and trade, and Dodd-Frank"
Sounds like a passable neocon--Frum Forum, even AEI has chaps like this. Granted, a moderate in American politics is really a radical, but by the present lexicon, it's not crazy any crazier then David Frum, John Bolton, or McAmnesty.
Stumpy Pepys| 10.8.12 @ 8:25PM
I'm a Floridian and follow this issue closely...Nelson is no centrist, he votes right down the Democrat line with Corrine Brown and Debbie whats-her-name in the other house. At least the other two are proud to admit they're liberal...er, progressive...er, Democrat! Would that we had a stronger candidate!
fmm| 10.8.12 @ 10:31PM
That Mack is the GOP establishment candidate says it all. Mack is a loser of the first order without any saving graces. This battle was lost by the GOP establishment.
Bob K| 10.9.12 @ 4:13AM
Could it be that Florida isn't ready to make elective office an inheritance yet? How curious? Maybe it's time for the Republican establishment to widen the talent pool of potential candidates beyond those with family connections.