Subject: Is Republican leadership brain dead??? (guru)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 063203 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers"
To: emfguru
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.......Is the Republican Leadership (in the Senate) brain dead???
What Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott regard as a great victory (below)
... history is likely to count (for them) a major calamity.....
What they have done is forever give their opponents (the Democrats)
a huge club that can and will surely be used against them every time
they seek (or appear) to legislate on behalf of their big $$$$$$$
constituents...... Who are their $$$$$$ constituents? You name 'em --
the big names in the firmament of the American economy: names like General
Motors, General Electric, AT and T, Boeing, R.J. Reynolds (tobacco),
Monsanto, etc....
Henceforth, it will not be possible for the Republicans to escape the
"Wall Street" label. That may not sound like such a bad fate at the
moment, but just wait until "normalcy" returns to the U.S. electorate.
(That could be next November!!)
They have hurt the prospects of their "favorite" -- George Bush -- as
well. He already faces an enormous task in the November election, trying
to "live down" his $$$$$$$ identification..... The Republican Senate has
just sealed that label beyond any cure..... The Republicans no longer (as
Ronald Reagan had done) may lay claim to the great, historic, swing-vote
of the U.S. political center -- the middle class..... The Republican
Senate leadership has forfeited that right....
There are a few hundred thousand voters (oh, this is prosperity, maybe a
couple million) really committed to the upper-class millionaire political
agenda in America, to which Trent Lott and McConnell have tied their
party's political fate. There area a few HUNDRED million voters who define
their political aspirations and agenda in "we the people" terms --
not Wall street.
It will be many years before the Republicans will now be able to duplicate
the feat accomplished by Ronald Reagan. He brought the masses (Joe
Six-pack and his buddies) back to the Republican party, making them a
majority party. That's over.....
Stand by for the era of Democratic dominance in American politics....
The brain dead Republican (Senate) leadership has handed the Democrats at
least a decade, perhaps a generation, of easy sailing ... with the full
wind of popular resentment -- against the $$$$$$ favoritism on behalf of
big money contributors -- providing the air that will fill their sails....
(John McCain will understand that metaphor.....)
(So, too, would Theodore Roosevelt....)
Now, the Republicans are even going to have to pass an increase in the
minimum wage -- their phony championing of Social Security, alone, won't
exonerate them..... Too many of the "old folks" remember how they were
before Reagan.....
Cheerio.....
P.S. The new website address is now in effect.....
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org
.....It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.....
..................PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFITS..................
NEW!!! WEBSITE -- emfguru.com
............Do you know of others who should be on this list???...........
_________________________________________________________________
01:24 AM ET 10/20/99
GOP Kills Campaign Finance Overhaul
GOP Kills Campaign Finance Overhaul
By DAVID ESPO=
Associated Press Writer=
WASHINGTON (AP) _ For Republican presidential candidate John
McCain, the Senate's latest debate on campaign finance legislation
may turn out to be a something of a mixed blessing.
McCain's signature issue _ a bill to curtail the role of money
in campaigns _ is dead for the fourth straight year at the hands of
a filibuster by fellow Senate Republicans.
But the spokesman for the Arizona senator's presidential
campaign claims the four-day debate coincided with a surge in
interest, judged, at least, by his campaign Web site.
``Our hits went from a trickle basically ... up to about 22,000
in one day,'' said Howard Opinsky, McCain's spokesman. ``Literally
thousands and thousands of Americans who are now accessing our Web
site ... learning about the impact of soft money.''
The legislation receives a formal burial today with a final
Senate vote to move on to other business. The doomed measure would
have banned soft money _ the unlimited campaign contributions that
unions, corporations and individuals give to political parties. It
also would have curtailed organized labor's ability to use nonunion
members' mandatory dues money for political purposes.
Opponents said the soft money ban amounted to an
unconstitutional infringement on the freedom of speech. ``It's a
horrible piece of legislation,'' said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
``It deserves to be defeated and the Senate did the country a
favor.''
McCain is hardly the first to use his Senate seat to advance a
presidential bid _ Republican Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas and Bob
Dole of Kansas both tried at various stages of the 1996 campaign,
for example.
And as is the custom, McCain never referred explicitly to his
political ambitions during occasionally barbed debate. But he drew
a connection in comments to reporters Tuesday just off the Senate
floor.
``I'm at 21 (percent) in New Hampshire and what am I campaigning
on? I'm campaigning on reform,'' he said, referring to recent
polling in the nation's first primary state that put him a distant
second behind front-runner George W. Bush, but ahead of other
rivals.
It fell to other senators to refer to McCain's use of the issue
in his presidential bid.
McConnell and others complained that McCain's Web site drew a
link between soft money donations and corruption. Repeatedly, they
demanded McCain provide evidence by naming senators who had been
corrupted by the receipt of soft money donations.
McCain turned aside those calls, insisting only that the
appearance of corruption had been created.
But his latest bid for campaign finance changes effectively
ended Tuesday when supporters failed on two separate test votes to
get the 60 needed to overcome the Republican-led filibuster.
``It's dead for the year,'' said Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott, R-Miss.
Democrats objected, and spent several hours arguing for the
legislation.
But there was irony in their plans for the evening _ a Senate
Democratic fund-raiser at the home of Sen. Jay Rockefeller,
D-W.Va., with President Clinton on the guest list.
For his part, Clinton issued a statement saying that, ``Once
again, a minority in the Senate has blocked bipartisan campaign
finance reform.'' Filibusters killed campaign finance legislation
in 1996, 1997 and last year.
In remarks on the Senate floor, McCain vowed, ``we will
persevere,'' and laid blame for the setback at the feet of both
political parties.
Of the two votes cast Tuesday, the first was on a broad set of
campaign finance changes the House passed last month and that
McCain and Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold had backed a
year ago.
That vote was 52-48, eight short of the 60 needed. Voting in
favor were all 45 Democrats, as well as McCain and Republicans John
Chafee of Rhode Island; Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine;
James Jeffords of Vermont; Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Fred
Thompson of Tennessee.
The second vote came on a slimmed down bill that McCain and
Feingold brought to the floor in hopes of thwarting the filibuster.
On that 53-47 vote, Republican Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas;
Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas and William Roth of Delaware joined
Collins, Jeffords, Snowe and Thompson to vote with McCain and all
45 Democrats. Specter and Chafee sided with GOP opponents.
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Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com