Regards, Ivan
Posted on 10/31/2002 1:00:52 AM PST by MadIvan
A UNIQUE six-day election campaign that will help to decide President Bush’s political future roared into life yesterday amid bitter claims that the Democrats were exploiting a senator’s death to cling to power.
All hope that Paul Wellstone’s sudden death in an air crash last week would ease the usual campaign hostilities evaporated after Minnesota Democrats staged a highly partisan memorial service, broadcast across the swing state. Incensed Republicans said that the political tone broke agreements for a campaigning moratorium and immediately responded in kind.
Promising an unstinting critique of Walter Mondale, the former Vice-President and the eleventh-hour Democrat candidate, Republican chiefs said that at 74 he was an obsolete relic who belonged in the past.
Mr Bush is expected in the state on Sunday to boost the stalled Republicans in a race that they must win to have a chance of overturning the Democrats’ one-vote majority in the Senate. But Mr Mondale has opened up a lead in the polls even before his official endorsement by Minnesota’s Democratic party.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune put Mr Mondale on 47 per cent, against 39 per cent for Norm Coleman, the 53-year-old Republican candidate, a slightly wider margin than the 47-41 lead that Mr Wellstone had before his death.
The campaign remains a difficult one for Republicans. Mr Wellstone, a passionate and unapologetic liberal, was hugely popular even among political opponents, and his death has shaken the state.
Elsewhere in America, Mr Mondale is remembered as the man who led the Democrats to their worst presidential defeat, losing every state but his own to Ronald Reagan in 1984. But he is Minnesota’s most famous living political son and is widely respected.
However, the Republicans have been handed an opening after Tuesday night’s memorial service turned from a deeply emotional occasion into a sharply political end-of-campaign rally.
More than 20,000 turned up to University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena, with thousands more locked out. But the sometimes raucous three-hour eulogy may have backfired on its wider audience. Trent Lott, leader of the Senate’s minority Republican group, was jeered and left early, as did Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler and outgoing Governor.
Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, said: “What a complete, total, absolute sham. The DFL (the Democrat- Farmer-Labour organisation, Minnesota’s name for its Democrat party) clearly intends to exploit Wellstone’s memory totally, completely and shamelessly for political gain. To them, Wellstone’s death, apparently, was just another campaign event.”
Embarrassed television chiefs said yesterday that they would compensate by giving Mr Bush a free run of the airwaves on Sunday after being bombarded with dozens of complaints from the public.
The memorial service saw an unrestrained celebration of liberal values — rare in an age when the parties scrap over the centre ground. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were greeted with vast cheers, but the welcome for Ted Kennedy eclipsed them both. Mr Mondale — an equal rights champion and the only presidential candidate to select a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, as his running-mate — received the loudest ovation, repeated every time that his face was captured on screen by the roving camera.
Such an outpouring has prompted Democrats to use the tragedy of Mr Wellstone’s death to begin a subtler campaign to try to mobilise their base in other states. Party chiefs are hoping that Mr Wellstone’s passing will remind apathetic supporters of why they are Democrats.
Tom Daschle, leader of the Senate’s majority Democrats, used Mr Wellstone’s name 20 times as he campaigned in neighbouring Iowa, scene of another critical Senate race. Democrats are also hoping for a boost in next-door North Dakota, where the majority of voters would have seen coverage of Mr Wellstone’s memorial service, and in Missouri, where Jean Carnahan is defending a Democrat seat that she inherited after her husband, Mel, was killed in an air crash three weeks before polling day in 2000.
John Zogby, an independent pollster, said that some Senate races were so close that even a few hundred votes from old liberals stunned back into political activism could mean the difference between the Senate being controlled by Democrats or Republicans.
To underline their stand-off, both parties filed lawsuits in Minnesota yesterday. Democrats want the authorities to stop sending out absentee ballots bearing Mr Wellstone’s name. Such votes will not be transferred to Mr Mondale.
Republicans, however, filed a rival suit to ensure that they keep going out. Absentee votes for Mr Coleman will be counted.
Regards, Ivan
They are basically socialists who are anti-American, anti-religion, anti-business, and want to have the United Nations run the country. But that can't happen till they confiscate our guns, so they are also for gun registration and eventual confiscation.
And so predictable.
The biggest threat to the existence of a democratic America based on European ancestory are the Democratic party leadership and operatives - yet, the American people naively continue to vote for that despicable party. Death Wish?
Thus, I am not surprised that the Democratic Party leadership and operatives turned the Memorial into a Circus Hystericus. What else could one expect from these folks?
Registered's photo says it all.
95 senators condemned Clinton for pardoning terrorists for his wife to get votes just a few years ago. And he's still their hero. They take terrorism so seriously.
Like Sam Nunn.
And so few of them have seen that the fall of communism has by inference impugned the viability of socialism. These systems just don't work as well as regulated capitalism to provide material wealth to most people while still leaving them a spiritual belief system to sustain them and their children in times of trial and challenge and a military and militia which which they can defend themselves against irrational enemies.
Socialism is a loser. Jobs come from small businesses and socialism chokes off all incentive to start small businesses.
I responded to a push poll once by a Democrat opponent of Gray Davis in his run in the gubernatorial primary four years ago. The primary was open and the opponent was trolling for Republicans who would vote against Davis.
I just kept saying I thought Dan Lundgren was the best candidate and didn't bite when they tried to get me to invade the Dem primary.
They had some interesting dirt on Davis. Wish I'd taken notes.
Our socialist enemies have no sense of respect, or decency, or honour.
Love, Ivan
Two words. NO CLASS. People with wealth often lack breeding.
Worse, the Democrats in the audience were cheering. Class was shown by Jesse Ventura of all people, who said he found it repulsive.
Love, Ivan
THE OTHER CORPSE...
As it was.
Or Scoop Jackson.
His death in an accident will remind them why they are Democrats?? Why, is this a plank in the campaign or something?
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