Posted on 10/14/2004 10:42:46 PM PDT by kattracks
Sen. Mark Dayton is being mocked back home for closing his Capitol Hill office because of his professed fear of a terrorist strike, with his state's largest newspaper calling him a "Cassandra," a "flake" and a "little chicken."
The Minnesota Democrat's action has "been the talk of talk radio around here," said Randy Wanke, communications director for the Minnesota Republican Party.
A frequent topic on the airwaves last month was the senator's boycott of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's address to Congress.Republicans say Mr. Dayton is merely living up to his 90 percent lifetime rating by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and his opposition to President Bush's war on terror — at least in Iraq.
The editorial board of the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis — a consistently liberal page that endorsed Mr. Dayton in his U.S. Senate race in 2000 — wrote yesterday that they were "scratching their heads at Mark Dayton's pre-emptive shuttering of his Senate office."
"In staking out this Cassandra position, Dayton has added considerably to unfortunate aspects of his reputation: loner, loose cannon, flake," the editorial said.
Although the paper noted that those common criticisms of Mr. Dayton are "often overboard," this was not one of those times because "it's simply impossible to take Dayton's alarm seriously."
Dayton spokeswoman Chris Lisi said the senator "doesn't have any reaction" to the way the story is playing in Minnesota.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Too bad he's not up for election this year. By 2006, this will be forgotten.
You can bet if he was up for election this year, he wouldn't do this. If he did, he'd be laughingstock-ed out of office.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/election_2004.htm
"Too bad he's not up for election this year. By 2006, this will be forgotten."
Guess again!
;-)
Not to be a pedant, but "Cassandra" doesn't really fit in with the rest. Cassandra predicted a true future, but no one believed her. Chicken Little predicted a false future, and everyone believed her.
Polar opposites.
I wish I weren't serious. It seems half the country has fogotten about 9/11. We lost more people on that day than at Pearl Harbor.
I view the Dayton seat as the top target for the '06 Senate races. He barely won in '00 utilizing his massive fortune to purchase the seat out from under Sen. Rod Grams (who had been hammered constantly by the MN Red Rags), and has been a thoroughly dreadful Senator since. His voting record was/is identical to the late Paul Wellstone, but unlike Wellstone, he doesn't seem to have the zest for the office (he similarly bought the State Auditor job back in 1990, but grew so bored with it, he didn't bother to run for a 2nd term). The MN DFL'ers have urged Dayton to step into Wellstone's shoes, but he has failed to do so. I have said that I would not be surprised if Dayton declines to even run for a 2nd term, it seems all he likes about his job is the title. I believe Rep. Mark Kennedy is warming up in the bullpen to take him on.
Right you are. Too many have short memories. Not me. Those who deal with me on a daily basis know the score.
What will you do?
I watched one of early beheading videos. At the time, I wasn't sure why I did.
Now, I know why.
I needed the extra...
I'm back on track.
You??
When terror reared its ugly head
He bravely turned around and fled
Brave, brave, brave Brave Sir Dayton...
"I have said that I would not be surprised if Dayton declines to even run for a 2nd term, it seems all he likes about his job is the title. I believe Rep. Mark Kennedy is warming up in the bullpen to take him on."
Remember in 1994-95, everyone thought that Paul Wellstone would lose a rematch to Rudy Boschwitz. We all know how that turned out.
The problem is with the MN DFL, they've nominated nothing but whackjobs in the past dozen years that are far to the left of the mainstream. Even the late Gov. Perpich would be considered too rightist (he was pro-life) by the party today. They could probably nominate Skip Humphrey and he'd lose to Kennedy. The only DFL Congressman who comes to mind as a potentially strong candidate would be Collin Peterson, but he's probably too rightist to survive a radical nominating convention.
Wellstone should've lost, but he so relished campaigning for office (and his ads were frustratingly (to us) funny and made him hard to dislike -- as long as you paid no attention to his ghastly voting record). Boschwitz looked like a tired old corpse in the '96 rematch compared to the ebullient Wellstone (and those sorts of grudge rematches often never turn out well for us, we'd have been better off letting either Jim Ramstad or Arne Carlson take a thwack at Wellstone that year). What was sad for Wellstone is that had he not broken his word in 2002, he'd not have been campaigning for a 3rd term which caused his and his wife and kid's death, he'd now be back teaching at his old college.
Please go back to DU, son.
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