This is Going to End Well
Blue on Blue: 43-year old New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker needs “a spanking” because he’s being “disrespectful,” according to 89-year old New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg. Why? Because Booker has stated that he’s running for Lautenberg’s Senate seat the people’s Senate seat that’s currently being held by the Jurassic Lautenberg after swapping places in 2002 with disgraced fellow NJ Democrat Bob Torricelli:
Lautenberg aides previously told Politico that Booker, a rising star in the Democratic Party, is “disrespectful” for openly seeking Lautenberg’s seat prior to the 88-year-old senator officially announcing his retirement — which still has not occurred.
“I have four children. I love each one of them. I can’t tell [you] that one of them wasn’t occasionally disrespectful, so I gave them a spanking and everything was OK,” Lautenberg said, after an Inquirer reporter questioned him about his aides’ comments Tuesday.
You run with that position, Frank — run with it all the way until November of 2014. Don’t let anybody talk you out of it.
Our moral and intellectual betters at work. Best. Ruling. Class. Ever.
I imagine that after a hard day’s work in the Senate, Lautenberg and Harry Reid get together over a warm pitcher of Metamucil and swap stories about their days of derring-do at the battle of Hastings.
Interesting conundrum for NJ Dems here — the natural instinct here would be to decide Lautenberg’s outlived his usefulness and to throw a gratuitous race card or two at the old geezer to get him to drop out and free the path to nomination for Booker. But Cory occasionally acts like the black Joe Liebermann in sounding off against the party’s orthodoxy, so the ones who would take Frank down aren’t sure that Booker’s going to be as reliable as a advocate in D.C. for their pet programs.
We haven’t even gotten through the fall gubernatorial race yet, so there’s still plenty of time for Cory to show he learned his lesson from this past year. But doing that would also take away a large part of what makes him an interesting candidate. He might end up deciding he doesn’t need to make the party regulars happy and run on his record, instead of a promise to be a Lautenberg voting clone for the next 10-20 years.
So, will all the folks who hear ‘dog whistles’ start screaming, because it certainly seems Lautenberg called Booker “an uppity boy,” based on their interpretive skills.