What Did Mr. Meek Stand to Inherit?
What do Pennsylvania and Florida have in common, aside from the fact that both are poised to send conservative, Tea-flavored Republicans to the Senate next week? Both states may be crime scenes, with the same suspect at work. And that suspect is none other than Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States. Clinton’s respect for the law is famously weak: the former president bears the distinction of having had his law license suspended for five years in Arkansas, and was later disbarred by the U.S. Supreme Court for perjury and suborning the perjury of others in the Lewinsky case.
This week we all learned that Bill Clinton and Kendrick Meek, the Democrats’ hapless nominee for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring Republican Mel Martinez, discussed the possibility of Meek dropping out of the race to make way for Charlie Crist. Crist is of course the current governor, a former Republican who hugged the Obama program when it appeared to be popular, and then dropped out of the GOP to run as a independent when Marco Rubio was about to shellac him in the GOP primary.
Before we get to the potential crime here, it’s worth pausing for a second to consider why Clinton is even involved in all of this. The former POTUS’ involvement suggests to me something different from his involvement in the Pennsylvania fiasco. In Pennsylvania, the Democrats were trying to protect a newly minted Democratic Senate seat. Florida’s is a GOP seat that, if Rubio wins, stays GOP. Meek has never been a particularly strong candidate, and Crist has enough of his own issues to make him very questionable for anyone looking for any kind of loyal or even consistent behavior once in office. Clinton’s involvement in PA looked like nothing more than a quid pro quo for Arlen Specter’s party switch from GOP to Dem: his new party was rewarding him for his lack of loyalty to his former party.
But Clinton’s involvement in Florida suggests, to me, that the Democrats are wildly threatened by Rubio’s looming victory, to the point that they’ll try to get their nominee, a black candidate, out of the race in favor of Governor Orange, who is white, to prevent a Hispanic Republican from winning. Why would that be? I think it has a lot to do with what Rubio represents: A young, conservative, dynamic, Hispanic senator who may be around and in power for decades to come if he wins this race. This is what they don’t want to have to deal with.
I’m going to use the R-word … that video is Reaganesque. Marco Rubio is Reaganesque. And he’s young. The Democrats scuttled Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the bench by Bush 43 “because he is Latino” and never paid for that bit of bigotry, so why wouldn’t they figure they could get away with it again? The Democrats are banking their future power on locking up the Hispanic vote, and Rubio is a major threat to that. So Clinton and Meek had this odd conversation, in which Meek says they merely discussed a rumor of him dropping out to make way for Crist, and Clinton and Crist say discussions took place over the course of about a week.
From my experience with Hispanics (Cuban-American sister-in-law, ex a Dominican-American), I’ve always thought that Hispanics were a more natural fit with republicans than Democrats. Culturally, many of them are pretty conservative.
Don’t confuse one genre of “Hispanic” to another. Yes, Cubans are generally conservative because their ancestors fled Castro. But Puerto Ricans, who have invaded central Florida in droves the last ~15 years, are effectively Spanish-speaking blacks, with the same social pathologies and entitlement mentality. If PR ever became a state, it would instantly mean two more liberal welfare-state Democrats in the Senate and perhaps 4-7 more (depending on apportionment) in the House.
As for the Mexicans, take it from someone who grew up on the banks of the Rio Grande — they will vote GOP when Auburn University unveils a 10-foot-tall statue of Bear Bryant on campus. They are behind California’s transformation from Reagan conservative to bluer than the Dodgers in fewer than 10 years. You can also blame them — along with the Bushes and other traitors — if states like Texas and Arizona go blue.
Marco Rubio is the legislative version of Miguel Estrada, a brilliant lawyer who terrified the Dems and who managed to block his appointment to a circuit judgeship.
What if Meek has a tape or a witness? Bill Clinton in jail, that’s what! Maybe Meek too.
Now we know the Republican they fear the most.
I saw an interesting article about Bill Clinton the other day. It suggested that he has reasons to want Obama to fail, not succeed. The worse the Democrats do in the midterms, the worse it looks for Obama since his policies and actions will (rightly) be seen as the main reason for Democratic losses. Assuming Bill Clinton still has loyalties to his wife and assuming she still harbours presidential aspirations, Obama doing poorly would seem to augur well for Hillary. Many people will see her as the “antidote” to Obama and a better candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2012. By that reasoning, Bill Clinton should be doing everything possible to hurt Obama, not help him.
Then again, if Bill Clinton’s main loyalty is to the Democratic Party, the party bosses may convince him that helping the Party is the best thing to do, even if Hillary’s aspirations are frustrated….
Bill Clinton’s main loyalty is to Bill Clinton. He’s probably thinking that W’s long term reputation is a bit diminished because of over spending(compared to his own fiscal discipline — a hundred years from now people won’t remember that it was due to Republican Congresses) and the wars (compared to the peace during the Clinton years). Obama was set to be more important historically than Clinton, but by kneecapping The Whine, Clinton’s legacy, viewed through the haze of history, will look like a great time in American history, due to the wonderful President Clinton.
IMHO the only “loyalty” Bill & Hillary have to each other is their mutual “get out of jail free” cards. As long as they stay married, neither of them can be compelled to testify against the other in a court of law.
A related issue is the extent to which Charlie Crist is proving that he is an unscrupulous, unprincipled, opportunistic weasel who will say or do whatever it takes for him to continue to live like royalty with all of the perks which go with it.
He has neither Democratic, nor Republican principles, and certainly not any loyalty to anyone. He is out strictly for his own self-aggrandizement. He is an accomplished, compulsive and pathological LIAR. He has been running the dirtiest and most vile campaign that I have ever witnessed here in Florida. He keeps telling lie after lie after life about Marco Rubio, who is a class act and who has taken the high ground, standing on his outstanding record record in the Florida Legislature and refusing to get into a pissing contest with the slimy low-life, Charlie Crist, who has a history od being a sleaze and a spoiler in Florida politics, going back 20 years.
In fact, Crist has been so slimy that Meeks outperformed Crist in the debates by a huge margin, making Meeks a much more worthy opponed for Rubio. Charlie Crist and Bill Clinton are two of kind, as immoral as any two politicians can be.
Don’t you just love it? Five parties to this issue and six explanations and none match. I’m amazed at how the power brokers get lost in their own egos. Then, there must be a thousand leaks in these buckets. They deserve whatever they lose and I just hope it spreads and they get the ultimate surprise on election day. Now they’re speculating that the losers quit. I hope they take Obama and Biden with them and and we end up with a Republican president when the Republican Speaker of the House takes over.
If you’ll pardon the non-sequitur, this is why I tend to disbelieve conspiracy theories… leaks are just too darned common.
The sleaze is so thick that I finally found where I can vote for the “Sleaziest Politician” of 2010 in a Poll.
I found some of my favorites listed and I am sure everyone can find theirs.
Results by Nov. 1. Vote at http://www.robbingamerica.com
I’ll bet my next paycheck you are right in your assumption about Slick Willie.
But, Meek thinks he just has to hang around long enough, like a mildew you clean up, but keeps returning, to inherit his momma’s position.
We all know he has the mental capacity for it! Color doesn’t mean anything.
Try to imagine the opposite scenario and resulting media firestorm if former President George Bush went to Florida to convince a minority candidate, who legitimately won the Republican Party nomination for the US Senate, to drop out of an election so an independent candidate could win instead of the Republican.
I can’t – not without my head exploding.
If the Dems had managed to push Meek out of the race it would have doomed their party here in Florida. All the early votes that went to him would have automatically gone to Crist, who nobody trusts, and that would have enraged the democrat base. Meek may be political royalty relying on nepotism (his mom was a congresswoman), but he is still admired and respected by the local black community. Just as Marco Rubio was admired and respected by the Cuban community long before anybody else knew his name. As for our bright-orange governor, he shouldn’t have quit his day job. He left us with two lousy choices: a conservative crook and a clueless liberal dingbat.
Well put, Jessica.
The race is a tragedy of missed chances. And now we’re going to have to watch the spectacle of Rubio being celebrated by the right for something he is not and getting away with behavior that would be fiercely condemned — absolute grounds for opposing him — if he were a Democrat. This type of selective outrage is never healthy.
It’s also why the Republican Party in Florida needs to pay attention. We’re still watching. And their behavior — from cushy set-aside jobs and contracts for themselves, to the Taj Mahal courthouse, to no real spine on issues like immigration and welfare fraud and government waste (heck, here they are the perps) — must not be papered over by national sources. It’s too important.
The Rubio race is particularly important because he has long held a comfortable enough lead to be called out to apologize and re-commit to the principles he claims as his own. Instead, we get this spectacle of conservatives celebrating him for his “identity.”
I get that Cuban-Americans are a voting bloc, and one with an important cultural memory of the real consequences of fascism. I get that there are realpolitik reasons to pander to voting blocs. But if the tea party stands for anything, it stands for people outside the political process protesting the many ways such pandering — to a variety of groups, by a variety of insiders — has warped our job markets, economic opportunities, educational systems, cultural contracts, and our very sense of citizenship. So Rubio — particularly the image of Rubio being promoted here — actually stands more for the betrayal of our cause than its principles.
I agree that Clinton and Crist ooze slime. The reason the Meek story has legs is that it involves Clinton, Crist and Obama. In other words, it fits.
There are a couple more reason for it’s mobility. 1. Clinton has admitted to the dropping out conversation. 2. A Clinton aid gave us the content and just who was suggesting what. Meek may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the one with the most integrity.
I know very little about mr. meeks; I do know that he’s running for public office as a democrat so, I can only speculate how he would perform as a US senator, i would expect the worst case political scenario from him. BUT, i do appreciate the way he has exposed crist, and to a lesser degree, clinton. for that he earns kudos! he has probably enhanced his political career by making a stand. he should have taken it one step further and exposed clinton’s role in greater detail. Is he jockeying for a prime position in the “bride of clintonstein’s” run for the WH in ’12?
Reaganesque?
Rubio presides over a state party with serious ethical problems that extend to his own behavior and inner circle. Special-interest misappropriation of public funds occurred repeatedly during his state reign. Once he ran into personal financial problems, he engineered a no-compete, taxpayer-funded position for himself at a state college that was seeking influence over the budget process . . . a budget that Rubio controlled.
He should have been unseated for this (Mrs.) Obama-like quid pro quo employment, or even prosecuted alongside his crony, Ray Sansom (R), who did the same thing at another state school. How, precisely, is any of this like Reagan?
How does it reflect the tea party principles Rubio claims to embody?
Worse, with all their excited talk about Rubio’s telegenic appearance (teleprompters, anyone?) and Cuban ethnicity, the national conservative media is abandoning those principles pell mell. Whatever happened to fiscal integrity with the public dime and principled color-blindness?
The Republican leadership in Florida is still a clown circus (Crist and Meek and now Clinton lend their own bizarro act, but that’s besides the point). Meanwhile, instead of asking for accountability and pressuring Rubio to transparently commit to tea party priorities, the national conservative media is painting Rubio as the next Reagan while talking up his ethnicity in precisely the same way the liberal press trumpeted Obama’s skin color. What a shame. Rubio will win easily next week, but for people who actually believe in the tea party agenda, this race was lost as soon as it started.
Rubio’s parents emigrated from Cuba. Did they ever become U.S. citizens? If they did not become U.S. citizens until after Marco’s birth, he is not a natural born citizen and cannot serve as president or vice president. Obama has to keep Rubio out of the national spotlight. If Rubio were to become senator and be spoken of as a possible GOP vice presidential candidate in 2012, questions may arise about his status and his parents’ citizenship – and that would spark more questions about Obama’s status. That may be what Obama fears – in addition to Rubio attracting Hispanic voters to the GOP. (Obama would have the same problem with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose Indian parents were possibly in the United States on student visas when he was born. He would therefore not be a natural born citizen.)
On November 3 – conveniently after the election – the Supreme Court will decide whether it will hear the Obama eligibilty case Kerchner v. Obama. If the Court agrees to hear the case, all bets are off as to Obama’s future. If the Court decides not to hear the case, we may as well consider the U.S. Constitution irrelevant (as do most legislators already do). If four of the nine Justices agree to hear the case – it does not require five – the sparks will fly. And the mainstream media will finally have to start reporting on the what the Founding Fathers meant by the term natural born citizen.
It is my understanding that at the time that Marco Rubio was born his parents were not NBC, although he falls under the definition of a citizen.
Also, it is my understanding that Bobby Jindal’s parents were immigrants to the USA (not students) and that he was born shortly after they arrived meaning he is not NBC even though he falls under the definition of a citizen.
Not sure that you are aware, but Kagen would not be able to hear the case and would have to recuse herself. This is because of her involvement as the Solicitor-General in the case as it has wound itself through the courts.
There is a law here in Florida called “Wet Foot, Dry Foot”. In essence it states that if you can make it to the USA from Cuba without drowning or being eaten by sharks, then you are automatically a naturalized citizen. A lot of Cubans risked their lives to escape the nightmare of Socialism, and many of them had relatives who didn’t make it. And they will never let their spoiled, American-born kids and grandkids forget it. Why do you think Cuban-Americans always vote conservative?
…. (the predatory, recidivist, felonious, treasonous, lying, looting, thieving, mass-murdering, impeached, disbarred, co-serial rapist) Bill Blythe (“Cli’ton”) is on an interstate political and racially motivated crime spree ….
…. and the Pope is Catholic, there’s gambling at Ric’s, bears poop in the woods and “Democrats” steal elections!
Yawn.
Next?
Time To Fire The Political Harlots Of Florida
http://www.practicalstate.com/?p=3065
Cheers
Sleazy back-biters and bitchy gossips, Jessica and Tina, don’t have ANY of their facts straight, and with good reason: Those two vicious yentas made them up as they went along.
But it doesn’t matter. A superbly qualified Marco Rubio will be seated in the U.S. Senate and he will roll back the Obama agenda, while those two losers and invisible nobodies, Jessica and Tina, will be crying in their beer and accomplishing nothing worthwhile, as they’ve been doing all of their pathetic and useless lives.
Mr. Floridian,
I think you’re violating the terms of this website.
I’ve made some considerable contributions to the politics you’re accusing me of denouncing. Furthermore, you don’t know me, so personal attacks are out of line.
I expect the editors to do something about this sort of attack. Such as revealing this person’s name, so we can engage in actual debate.
Debate, Tina? You don’t want a “debate”. You don’t have sufficient hardcore, irrefutable facts at your disposal to debate me effectively or even rationally. All that I’ve ever read here were your fanciful fabrications, your screwy assumptions, your even screwier conjectures, your bizzare accusations and your goofy and extremely irresponsible opinions – NONE of which are were supported by the facts.
For example, Marco Rubio did NOT seek out the support of Sarah Palin or Tea Partiers. He was already so far ahead in the polls and he already had such an exemplary record in the Florida State Legislature and he was already so admired and so respected by hardcore conservatives and other Republicans in this state that he didn’t need or request the support of Tea Partiers or Palin.
In fact, sweety, Sarah Palin approached him!!! NOT visa versa.
You see, as with so many other Republican Candidates, little Miss Cutesy, Sarah Palin, needs Marco Rubio a helluvalot more than Rubio needs her or the Tea Partiers. As is the case with, to name a few, Rand Paul and with Michelle Bachman, also.
Tea Party principles, huh? LOL!!!! Yeah, right, Tea Partiers adopted principles which were alien to Republicans and which they had never had before? Is that what you’re clueless enough to be implying? Get real. You don’t know squat about the Republican Party’s long-standing platform, or its history either. You’re too full of yourself, sweety. Don’t let the shaky successes of the Tea Parties or Sarah Palin go to your head. Sarah Palin and Tea Partiers are nothing new. They’re just receiving more publicity, presumably because the MSM is hard up for stories.
I’ve got news for you, babe. The Republicans will win big time with or without Palin and the Tea Partiers. But watch: Palin will steal credit for the Republican Party’s successes, even though she has done more harm than good.
If you’re going to debate me, sweety, you better have some facts and substance, ’cause smoke, mirrors and bullsh*t just ain’t going to cut it with me.
Now, y’all have a nice day, ya hear?
BTW, Tina, I’ve watched you and I’m familiar with your sleazy antics. You are a sly, immoral, unscrupulous and sneaky liberal Democrat, who has a half dozen sock puppets, all of whom masquerade as Republicans or as Independents and try to orchestrate the removal of knowledgible and effective Republicans on phony pretexts from both conservative and liberal websites, ’cause you know that you just can’t win without lying and silencing your most effective opposition. Bring it on, babe.
Okay, Tina, I apologize. I had you confused with another airhead.
Aw, boo hoo hoo, whining crybaby Tina can dish it out, but she can’t take it; a typical liberal.
And this sort of reflexive misogynist crap is the reason why you haven’t touched a woman since 1997.
Except, of course, I can’t know that. Because I have no idea who you are.
Shoo shoo scat. Scurry back into your hole, you smarmy, little cockroach.