Posted on 02/08/2005 7:46:08 PM PST by CHARLITE
The Northwest corner of the country is doing it's bit to contribute to the problem. We have Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, plus "Bagdad Jim McDermott." We can thank the "flyover states" for overcoming the influence of the Northeast and the West Coast in this past election.
And yes, there's an investigation going on to find out just how truly liberal this state is. The governor's race was decided on the basis of 129 votes following a manual recount. The election revealed the tremendous effect stemming from Seattle and King County. The governor's race is being contested in the courts with some 8500 questionable ballots statewide, many of which cannot be matched with a voter.
It's sad if Bostonians choose to elect the likes of Kerry and Kennedy; it's something else if the results of an election are due to manipulating the outcome.
The Italians did the smart thing and joined the Yankees in the Republican party, which is what kept Mass a Republican state until the 1950s. Italians and Poles never had the chip on the shoulder towards those who founded this country like the Oi-Rish did. ;-)
The Irish in Boston had become a major political force in the late 1880s - well before the 1950s. The first Irish Mayor was elected in 1885. I have never heard about the Italians allying themselves with the Republicans ( read Yankee / Brahmins / Protestants). I can't imagine why they ever would. They were looked upon as a source of cheap labor by the Yanks and thats about it. The Italians were often pitted against the Irish as a source of cheap labor and both groups had more in common being poor and Catholic. I'm certain there were far more Italian Democrats than Italian Republicans. As for the Poles they were never here in Boston with the numbers like the Irish and Italians.
As for the Irish having a chip on the shoulder. During that time period, why shouldn't they? Sure, come to America after roughly 600 years of oppression and still be treated like garbage? Its no surpirse that after so many generations of living ' cap in hand ' for the English on Irish lands they were more than a little pissed off to face similar attitudes in their new land. The attitude of ' Dont take crap from anyone ' was one thats taught from generation to generation.
Years ago I had a crew of recent Irish arrivals walk off a moving job we were doing. Why? Because the idiot we were moving noticed they were Irish and said with a smile to me ' Irish ? All back and no brains eh? '
One of the crew spoke for all of them when he told me ' We left our country to escape that type of crap and you expect us to take it here too? '. Some things dont change.
Maybe we should resurrect the "CSA" by seceding from these left-wing goofballs, both Northeast and West Coast loonies - only this time, we'd be the "Conservative States of America".
We could ship our inner-city left-wingers to them, and we could get their conservative suburban and rural folks.
It'll never happen, but it's a nice thought anyway.
What the likes of James McDermott point to is the problem of "safe districts." He's only the worst example of a group of members of the House of Representatives who run in districts where whoever is put on the ticket will be elected.
Those who favor term limits need to look more closely at the problem of incumbents and the redistricting that protects incompetent and otherwise disgraceful smucks who hold office, re-elected term after term.
For statewide offices of Senate, the explanation is more difficult to find. We can hope that an aroused electorate will finally wake up and choose differently. As with Tom Daschle though, the problem is one of being able to spend a lot of money telling people what they want to hear at election time and attacking your opponent with largely false charges that neither the press or the voting public has time or interest in refuting. Challengers have an uphill battle in any case. An apathetic, uninformed public and a press biased, in this case toward Democrats, is what keeps them in office.
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