Day: September 4, 2007

Big Daddy DNC Doles Out Discipline

Buck Banks

In a rare demonstration of forthrightness, the Democratic National Committee’s spokeswoman let slip how the DNC actually perceives its state counterparts while she explained why the committee was whupping up on Florida for moving its primary to Jan. 29:

‘If you don’t enact the punishment, it also sends a signal to other children that they can get away with it, too.’

Stacie Paxton, press secretary for the DNC, said Florida’s penalty is meant in part as a lesson to other states weighing earlier primary dates, and she likened the measure to schoolyard discipline. “You can say to a child, ‘You’re going to receive a punishment,’ ” she says. “But if you don’t enact the punishment, it also sends a signal to other children that they can get away with it, too.”

Of course, one could argue that the “leadership” of the Florida Democratic Party is indeed a pretty bratty bunch and about as effective as a group of third-graders. Here they are responding to the punishment news:

Florida Democrats have gone on the offensive, with top leaders denouncing the national party and threatening legal action. “We cannot go along with anything but the state-run primary set for next January,” Florida’s 10 congressional Democrats, led by Sen. Bill Nelson, said in a statement last week. “We strongly encourage all Democrats to vote for their preferred nominee in that primary, regardless of whatever penalties the DNC might enact.”

That doesn’t sound much like offense, does it? Instead, it sounds like the Fla Dems just punted.

Four More Top GOP Outings Could Be in the Offing

Jon Ponder

In the wake of closeted Sen. Larry Craig’s self-outing in an airport men’s room this summer, word from Washington says more revelations are coming about the secret sexual identities of two leading GOP senators, while two allegedly gay Republican congressmen are making headlines and drawing unwelcome attention to themselves, the timing of which could not be worse.

The senators are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, from Kentucky. More about them below but first let’s look at two allegedly closeted members of the House, representatives Patrick McHenry and David Drier, who have been in the news lately.

[…]

State, National Democratic Party Doing Their Best to Swing Florida Republican

Trish

FCD home page, showing the “news” from as recently as Aug. 29

The news for Florida Democrats gets worse by the minute — in addition to taking away our delegates, the DNC forced most candidates to sign a pledge that they will not campaign in Florida.

Anyone who says we have effective leadership at the top of the Florida Democratic party is just plain wrong

The DNC, in short, is doing everything it can think of to ensure that Florida’s electoral votes go to the Republican candidate for president in 2008.

And what is our state party doing about it?

I don’t know. The FDP’s* web site hasn’t been updated since Aug. 29 — the day before party chair Karen Thurman and her crew unsuccessfully pleaded our case in Washington. An escalating tactical war, intended to bring Florida Democrats to our knees, has been waged since with daily headlines detailing more bad news.

But instead of helping us stay on top of the situation, offering lights at ends of tunnels, and suggesting tactics Florida Democrats like me can take to help, we get stale silence.

Anyone who says we have effective leadership at the top of the Florida Democratic party is just plain wrong.

* Thanks, Anonymous, for pointing out my original acronym was wrong. If only you’d contribute something more meaningful than minutiae and uninformed jabs about me being a novice, we’d really be in business.

Update: Almost as if they read Pensito Review, the Florida Democratic Party has at last updated its web site, so we can find out almost anything we ever wanted to know about how Florida Democrats enjoyed their Labor Day picnics. Now if only they’d address our dire situation in regard to the 2008 elections…

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Long experience has taught us that it is dangerous in the interest of truth to suppress opinions and ideas; it has further taught us that it is foolish to imagine that we can do so. It is far easier to meet an evil in the open and defeat it in fair combat in people’s minds than to drive it underground and have no hold on it or proper approach to it. Evil flourishes far more in the shadows than in the light of day.

— Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), Prime Minister of India