[fatguy]

What are the odds that liberal would be a good man?

[El Sordo]

It's amazing how cordial people can be towards you when you've just bought the farm.

[kcar]

I am sick of these eulogies. This guy was (and was advocating) sucking at the teat of the great tax-funded state, right? And all I hear is what "passion" he had for the role he played. Sorry to be callous - I am sure their are grief-stricken family and friends that were "innocent"-but I too have a passion - to keep as much of my paystub out of the hands of people like him as is possible. Sorry to be non-PC, but news cycles are fast these days, and those who want to avoid being future prey should keep apace. He was a public figure - we should move on.

[Jonathon Spectre]

Conservatives don't appreciate liberals enough either.

This is because liberals are working to destroy America root and branch and replace it with something that looks a lot like Bosnia-Herzegovina. To say I don't "appreciate" liberals is like saying I don't "appreciate" cancer.

Most of the puking "oh-he-was-a-good-guy" pablum I've read about Wellstone focuses on the fact that "at least he was a flat-out liberal who was honest in his beliefs." Stalin was pretty unrepentant and honest about his beliefs too, does that make him "good"?

Most of Paul Wellstone's ideas were antithetical to the idea of freedom. It's a shame he's dead, but certainly not a shame he no longer has his leftist claws wrapped around a Senator's power.

[E=MC²]

Funny how wellstone gets praise upon praise for being sincere and yet any conservative who would dare sincerely criticize his socialistic bent is scalded by the "genteel" amongst us.

[wardaddy]

He was sincere and appeared personable....that's it in a nutshell. Yes he was indeed an unreconstructed 60s radical.

Let's now say our amens and work to get that seat for our side.

An even more bizarre case would be Ted Kennedy. He is pure anathema to most of us here but I have been told by more than one conservative Senator and Congressman that he is very well liked in the capital even by his foes.

Sometimes, personality reaches over dogma or even obvious serious character flaws as in the case of Ted.

I'm only relaying what I've been told. I don't much care for him or the now departed Wellstone but I will refrain from pissing on Wellstone and his family's grave. Game over for them.

[Nogbad]

He was a nice guy.
If his time had come,
there would have been tears in his eyes
when he voted to send you to a 're-education camp'.

[Brimack34]

Wellstone stuck too his core beliefs when it suited him.
For war when a democrat is president. For guns when his but is on the line. Against pack money accept for him. For term limits unless for him. Lies about people he runs against. against money for the military unless he needs the support from voters. Rest his soul, but these people are making him into Elvis.

[john in missouri]

Perhaps I can sum up this thread in a way that will be satisfactory to most of us.

Basic human integrity and decency have gotten to be so damn rare in the Democratic Party that if you find even one liberal that seems to actually have it, it's hard for many of us not to feel appreciation and extend hearty congratulations.

[jackbill]

I take Novak as kinda damning Wellstone with faint praise. His mentioning of the breaking of the term limits pledge and his proving that he's capable of hypocrisy, as with the CEO's.

[repub32]

I realize that if they where to say "Oh well, Just another dead liberal" what most of us are probably thinking, they would have a problem but I have no problem saying it Because I do not believe we are all Just friends in the end and that we are all Americans I see the Liberal movement as a true threat to my secure,safe and free future. I really wish conservatives mostly the Public ones would start getting some balls and stand up and attack liberals just as they do conservatives and stop believing these people(dems)are our friends.

[Doc Savage]

In the same manner that people fail to see Islam as the enemy of the United States, they fail to see liberals as social and legal terrorists bent on the destruction of the Constitution and our country.

Wellestone was a far left-wing socialist. Such ilk are anti-capitalism, anti-freedom bigots who want to impose their politically-correct values on Americans.

They support America's enemies, believe Castro is a brilliant communist leader who has made Cuba a shining example of what our country COULD BE LIKE if only they they had total power to implement their communist policies.

Terrorists come in many guises. Some point a gun at you. Some sit in Washington as liberal Senators and attempt to dismantle the U.S. Constitution. Some fly airplanes into buildings. Some prevent a President from filling Federal judgeships. Some live in caves in Afghanistan. Some live Hyannis and sip champagne while spouting tritisms about conservatives wanting to kill old people and poison the water and the air, of killing social security.

Paul Wellstone was a terrorist, as certainly as if he had been driving around Washington in a two-toned blue Caprice and murdering people. He just did it in front TV cameras in $2,000 suits, to a fawning socialist public who are too craven to take personal responsibility for their miserable lives and want people like Wellstone and Leahy and Kennedy to be their government sugar-daddies from the cradle to the grave.

My only regret? That Daschle wasn't with him. The only people who will miss Wellestone's politics are the people who want to destroy this country and build their own Peoples Republic of the United Socialist States of Amerika!

[unixfox]

Wellstone may have been a good person and all, but I still think he was a traitor. Anybody that belongs to the socialist party is a traitor in my eyes.

[x]

When you're old or dead, you do start to look good to people. Old liberals are the main beneficiaries of this. Their faults are forgotten and only their "good intentions" remain. But it's probably even true of Thurmond and Helms. Think what the media said about them when they were in their prime.

And to be willing to lose is something else that wins elder statesmen respect. Wellstone, like McGovern or Jerry Brown or Goldwater or Taft, seems to have been willing to lose rather than to change his tune. Mondale couldn't have won in 1984. Possibly he might have taken any unfair advantages that he could, but those advantages just weren't there. Whether he was really tested, whether he had the temptation to lie or cheat and rejected it or the temptation just wasn't there is a complicated question. Maybe Mondale wanted to do anything to win, but just didn't have it in him either to win or to really go into dirt that wasn't there. So by default, he comes off looking like a noble Quixote or happy warrior.

When Washingtonians and prominent Republicans praise Wellstone or Mondale, you have to understand that there using a sliding scale. At one extreme are those who are hell to work with and who have screwed over everone they've ever known. At the other extreme are saints, who are rare in Washington. In between is a vast area of shades of grey.

Wellstone on abortion or Mondale on race may have been demagogues, liars, cheats, or manipulators, but they didn't fit into that first category of people who would do anything to win or advance themselves, so they win some praise in Washington. And it's not wholly the partisan praise for their positions and partisan passions, but respect for the path not taken. But if you feel strongly against some of those positions and some of their actions in the grey areas, it's inevitable that you'll be angry at them and resent the eulogies.

It may also be that Washington draws a line between attacks on the opposition in general, and actual dirty dealing to individuals. Of course, the Washington media does tend to deal more harshly with Republican attacks on Democrats than Democrat attacks on Republicans. So someone like Wellstone or Mondale does have an advantage with the media. But no one has yet tried to canonize Torricelli, so there are some distinctions made in behavior, rather than simply ideology.

[GreatOne]

Just to offer my two cents (being a Minnesotan and having my brother work for Boschwitz) - Wellstone WAS a good man. I really do find it hard to believe that there was a more compassionate, caring man in either chamber, for that matter. Now, he was 1000% wrong in his way of thinking, but he truly was one of those people who acted in accordance with what he thought would make life better for people, not solely just to keep getting himself re-elected and stay in power. That's why he would have won again, had he lived (and I can't help but wonder if he thought of his breaking his pledge not to run again on the way down).

[Arch-Conservative]

Apparently a few "conservatives" on this board could heed a bit of their own advice. When Rush Limbaugh announced that he had gone deaf, there was a chorus of extreme-left rhetoric that said, basically, that he deserved it. I recall the outrage that emanated from this board that liberals would actually wish physical harm on their political opponents.

However, there is apparently a strain of so-called "conservatives" (though I would severely question the depth of their belief in true conservatism) that celebrate the loss of an avowed leftist. Wellstone was compared, in this very thread, to the likes of Stalin. This is not representative of the inherent decency of conservatism.

I am no fan of Paul Wellstone, and I sincerely wished him political defeat - but to celebrate the death of a political opponent is the most dispicable display of inhumanity I can fathom. He was a liberal - but a principled liberal. He was wrong - but he fought valiantly for what he thought best for the nation. He made no political calulations, and surrendered his principles to no one. There are conservatives - in office, and on this board - that could learn a great many things from Wellstone.

The truly conservative would mourn the death of a worthy adversary, not trample on his grave as if his death is some sort of victory for conservatism. No such victory occurred. No liberal mind has been swayed, and no heart changed. The nation has exactly the same ratio of conservatives to liberals. But, this conservative has lost a lot of respect for the "conservatives" on this board. I always thought the liberal stereotype of rank-and-file conservatives as "mean spirited" was just a method of casting dispersions on a political opponent. Now I see that their observations may have some merit.

Conservatism is, at its root, about a common decency toward mankind (in morality, economics, work-ethic, and foreign policy). It is about promoting good over evil in society. This board is populated by far fewer true conservatives than I had once suspected.

Cordially,
ADE