Make sure to read the excellent article in the Boston Globe by Michael Kranish on the failure of the Senate to ratify The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on December 4th, 2012. John McCain says it was the worst day of his entire career. Bob Dole is devastated and thinks the whole Republican Party needs to be closed for repairs. I don’t want to spoil the article for you, but it turns out that the fevered imaginations of paranoid home-schoolers is what sunk the treaty. But no one saw it coming until it was too late.
You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of this.
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don’t think I do, sir, no.
General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
It wasn’t entirely farce back then, unfortunately. I am afraid it is true today. We are dealing with maniacs.
The entire party is ruled by Bircher/birthers. I don’t know how anyone can admit even belonging to the party, let alone vote for them.
The insane emails I get from them would be amusing if they only didn’t believe them, but they do. Total nutters.
They are total nutters. I had the unfortunate experience of interacting recently with an Agenda 21 nutter. Did you know that the UN recommendations on sustainability from 1992 are actually a massive plot to force people to move to cities, take away their land, and override our sovereignty?
John McCain says it was the worst day of his entire career. Bob Dole is devastated and thinks the whole Republican Party needs to be closed for repairs.
I don’t have one bit of sympathy for these two clowns. The same people that fund, and funded, their campaigns are the same people funding these paranoid home-schoolers and their delusions.
Their fond memories of “bipartisanship” include all the wretched rightwing legislation passed while Clinton was in the WH — and the GOP killed healthcare reform in 1994 and later impeached Clinton for a dalliance with a woman not his wife.
It’s possible that if members of Congress spent more time socializing with each other, the fights might be less ugly — but they have as little time for that as they have for their jobs as fundraising is now their primary occupation.
Dole may have been a productive, even principled Senator. And it is sad that this treaty didn’t pass.
But let us not forget that Dole played a big role in the creation of the modern Republican party. This is the man who invented the 60-vote Senate after all. He also embraced the right-wing in his 1996 presidential campaign, among other things choosing the king of the supply-siders (and Paul Ryan’s mentor) Jack Kemp as his running mate.
John McCain’s contributions to the current madness are even worse, and need no recounting here.
My memories of Bob Dole are his responses to Clinton’s SOTU speeches. Clinton would make speeches of unprecedented length, and while he wasn’t as liberal as I would have liked, he was a fantastic orator. Dole would then follow with a lackluster performance full of petty exceptions to Clinton’s list of achievements. Then Dole got the nomination and took his act on the road.
That being said, I appreciated Dole because he was one of the few politicians who acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. (He was treated by an Armenian doctor for his war injuries and never forgot the kindness, and many Armenians (myself included) have never forgotten his gratitude).
Ah, remember your point about the know-nothings and the GOP a while back?
The Republicans have always opposed international agreements. No matter how stupid that have to be to do it.
It’s all about the rhetoric and posturing for the GOP.
In 1996 the GOP, and Dole in particular, held up ratification of the Chemical Weapons Treaty, just to not give Clinton a ‘win’ before the election.
But why should the GOP even care? They’re perfectly okay with withdrawing from or violating any treaties they don’t like.
Like the Geneva Conventions. Or the Convention Against Torture. Or the ABM treaty. All they have to do is utter the magic word: “Quaint”, and get John Yoo to put some random mumbles on paper, and they’re good to go.
“maniacs?”
I think the contextually correct term would be ‘preverts’
in ancient TeaBonics.
I stand 100% corrected.