Posted on 12/17/2012 3:07:18 PM PST by Perdogg
Of course, I echo everyone else’s admiration for him as a young hero.
Whoever the longest serving Senator of the majority [DEM] party of the Senate is now ...
Kerry was last re-elected in 2008...so his seat, whoever would fill it, would be up in 2 years, same as DeMint/Scott. Inouye was last elected in 2010 so his replacement will probably be by special election, since it has 4 more years. Not certain of the last...but I know one of these three would require a SE.
I heard earlier today that the PPT would be Patrick “Leaky” Leahy, aka Senator Depends (H/T Mark Levin)
How’s this for a nightmare presidential succession field - Joe Biteme, John Boehner, Leaky Leahy, John Kerry (who served in Vietnam), Chuck Hagel (if he ends up SecDef)
I need a drink...
Leaky Leahy of VT. All we need to know about him was VP Cheney’s suggestion that Leahy go make love to himself after Leahy tried to be all buddy-buddy with the VP after viciously attacking him. Leahy is among the worst of the worst in the senate.
You should be glad Gifford’s wasn’t around voting for a year. Especially since the rats went on the hold that seat, and went on to steal it last month for a full term.
Better no Rep than a rat, by far.
Darn, too bad he didn’t croak (I almost put “quack”) while Lingle was Governor setting up the ole appoint yourself trick.
Tulsi would be a SILF. Maybe as you say the first SILF in US Senate history. Come on baby, switch back to RINO.
Too bad she’s not in the first CD.
Do you think Djou could win a Senate race? He’d be preferable to Lingle but I’m thinking Jerry Moran should get his kneepads out and camp out on Lingle’s doorstep.
As with MA the Governorship is almost useless to us other than setting up a future run for Congress.
Patrick Leahy becomes President Pro-Tempore.
I praise his service to our country as an awarded, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient (who deserved that award).
after that? all bets are off.
RIP.
From what I understand, Gabbard is extremely left-wing and jettisoned any of those reasonable positions of her father. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it many times, I believe Hawaii should be granted independence. An island with a one-party Communist-statist government thousands of miles from the mainland should have zero business influencing our politics. Cut a deal for the bases and let them go.
Socialist out, socialist in.
So it will go for the left-wing ‘state’ of Hawaii.
Agree! I just don’t understand saveing your country in WWII and then working to destroy it in the 80’s,90’s and 2000’s.
I agree but I’d replace “cut a deal” with “impose a deal”. And by “deal” I mean the bases remain US sovereign territory like the UK bases on Cyprus and they get no say in the matter and nothing in return.
Alas this isn’t happening anytime soon so we have to try and win this seat.
To think it was a tropical GOP paradise until 1954. Damn unions.
Interesting to note that Inouye was a key player in that 1954 revolution that displaced the GOP majority in Hawaiian government. That’s when he was first elected to the Territorial House and he was then immediately made Majority Leader. There has never been a GOP majority since, and he served continuously in office for 58 years (Terr. House, 1954-58; Terr. Sen., 1958-59; U.S. House, 1959-63; U.S. Senate, 1963-2012).
Did the Democrat takeover of the Hawaiian government help persuade the Democrats in Congress that it would be OK for Hawaii to become a state?
It says we have a permanent, fossilized political class that that is ruling the country. They stay in office for life blocking any useful changes that might upset their own political support. They hold their seats like titles of nobility conferred by some monarch. It's long past time for term limits on all of these would be overlords.
Any thing new in all that?
Not really. I don’t think anyone knew in the mid to late ‘50s that Hawaii was on track to being a solid one-party Dem state. While it had gone Democrat in 1954 for the legislature, the GOP still reelected their House Delegate (the widow of its former occupant), though she lost it in 1956.
At the time of the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, it was Alaska that was considered a Democrat bastion (it had not elected a GOP Delegate since 1930). Hawaii was still competitive for the GOP with its admission in 1959 that it elected the Haole GOP Governor Eisenhower had appointed (Bill Quinn), elected a Chinese GOP Senator (Hiram Fong) and almost elected a Japanese GOP Senator (Wilfred Tsukiyama), the latter losing by less than 3% to an elderly former Haole Territorial Governor (Oren Long, a native of Kansas). Inouye ran against a Haole for the sole House seat and won in a landslide (he was essentially coronated for both offices, both in 1959 and 1962 when Long stepped down).
Conversely, Alaska would take until 1966 to elect a House member and Governor and not until one of its Democrat Senators died in late 1968 did a Republican (Ted Stevens) get appointed (and for the other Senate seat, not until 1980 would a Republican win, Frank Murkowski). So again, the betting back in 1959 is that Hawaii would be a GOP state and Alaska a Democrat one.
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