WA AG Rob McKenna and FL AG Bill McCollum: Two of a kind?
It wasn’t so long ago that Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum was the overwhelming favorite to win this year’s gubernatorial election, but now it looks like he might not even get out of the Republican primary:
It is a stunning shift for a seasoned politician who seemed to have a lock on the race just two months ago…Supporters fault McCollum’s TV message, his inability to connect with an angry electorate, fundraising shortcomings and a dated campaign style, emphasizing endorsements from establishment figures such as Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney at a time when voters feel alienated.
Sounds a bit like Washington AG Rob McKenna, who appears to have a lot in common with his Florida counterpart. Both are stiff, spectacled, Republican establishment type attorney generals with gubernatorial ambitions, and both have prominently placed themselves in opposition to health care reform, McCollum taking the lead on the lawsuit challenging it, and McKenna quickly signing on. McKenna and McCollum both kinda look alike, too.
So perhaps there’s a lesson for McKenna to learn from McCollum, who didn’t get much right-wing traction from his blatant teabagger pandering on health care reform. Perhaps if you empower the teabaggers by legitimizing them, they can come back and bite you in the ass? You know, especially if they learn you’ve risked a constitutional crisis in defense of broadening the powers of eminent domain?
McKenna is gonna have to make a decision about the Tea Party: he’s either with them or against them. And unless he’s with them 100 percent of the time, he sure can’t count on them being with him come election time.
The Tea Bag party has gotten some swelled heads, encouraged by the likes of Sarah Palin, who kisses their rear ends, and feeds their beliefs about how important they have become.
In their minds, they are already the leaders of the nation, and the conservative politicians are merely servants of their interests. They don’t want to be told what is possible and what is not, they want to be told how important they are, that they are the leaders of the new America, and that they are just an election away from being kingmakers in the next election.
It’s the same spiel which works for all sorts of scams and multi-level marketing schemes, appealing to those felt left out as others pass them by. They have visions of leaving their trailor behind and moving up to the “big house” up on the hill.
Doofuses (Doofi?), both of them.
Hey, we don’t even know that Dino Rossi can get through a primary, let alone McKenna.
But, latest head to head from Elway:
Sen. Patty Murray (D) leads Dino Rossi (R) by seven points, 47% to 40%. Murray’s lead over the lesser-known GOP candidates is about twice as big.
When Democrats go TEH KRAZEE!
http://politisite.com/2010/02/.....s-in-1986/
of course this crazy nut was charged today with the 1986 murder.
She is also described as “obsessed with barack obama”. LOL, why am I not suprised…I wonder if the obama campaign hired her to faint at one his koolaid rallies?
Good thing we have democrats like Jim Delahunt pulling the strings.
…AND they both have a complete set of ears, part their hair on the same side, AND they both have thier “power gold” ties on!
Republicans all look the same to me.
@4, That ain’t power gold. It’s banana slug yellow.
I watched his speech to the Republican state convention on the tube this morning. Rob’s such a weiner.
Funny. Why no side-by-side of Governor Sea-Hag…ahem…I mean Greggie next to Janet Reno? Dude looks like a lady! ( a double-bagger that is….) :)
@8
Isn’t Mark just a wonderful breath of fresh air! I bet you are your female coworkers favorite person.
Re 3
If I want a poll of no value made up by partisan hacks I’ll watch MSNBC. Elway particularly, but most other polls too, have more to do with massaging egos or misrepresenting voter feeling to sway the undecided than anything else.
There are lies, damn lies, and polls.
“There are lies, damn lies, and polls.”
You might want to hurry and edit that comment. Klynical’s head will explode if you don’t make an exception for his daily Rasmussen fix.
Steve, you’ll get no quarrel from me about Rasmussen either. Rasmussen biases to the right, Elway to the left, with the voter in the middle no wiser for reading either.
gregoire and skeletor? twins?
discuss.
Re 13
It pains me to say this, but it speaks poorly of Rossi to have lost to Gregoire.
I can’t look at that woman or hear her speak without thinking of a teacher in my long ago high school nicknamed ‘the wicked witch of the West Wing.’ (The school had an east and west wing.) She is almost entirely off putting personally and not particularly eloquent as a speaker.
At least with Obama you get good presentation with a lack of substance. With Gregoire you get neither sytle nor substance.
# 14: Actually, Gregoire does very well in personal communications and small groups. Even a Colorado state trooper, assigned to driver her and provide security during the 2008 Democratic Convention, wrote about what a good impression she made on him.
Apparantly she shares this trait with Rossi – he is said to be very good at “working the room”. But in public speaking, they both come off a bit on the cold side.
Lost @ 12: Why should the voter care what the polls say? Shouldn’t they make up their minds on their own?
It’s only the candidates, their campaign staffs, contributors, political hacks, pundits, and “us” who get tied up in the polling.
The news organizations like to report on polling, and spend endless hours discussing it, because they are too lazy or scared to really address the complicated issues and the merits of the candidates. Polling makes for a “horse race” which keeps readers/viewers passivily involved for weeks or months at a time.
Candidates release their own polling, selectively, to use “peer pressure” on the undecideds – they know that some people prefer to vote for the eventual winner, like it’s a test where the eventual vote will determine if they were correct or not. They also release it to encourage fund-raising – nobody wants to send money to a candidate that is expected to lose, as the money will be deemed to have been “wasted”.
By the way, the proper quote is “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
RHP
“By the way, the proper quote is “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.” I know, and it is in every way a better quote. But I paraphrased for personal convenience. Suppose that makes me a heretic. Damn.
The voter shouldn’t, and I’ll bet largely doesn’t, care what polls say. Particularly several months ahead of an election. The politicians do, the policy wonks do, and the press does. And as you say, “us.”
Address complicated issues? Now you’re the heretic. Shame on you for asking of the press an honest and indepth analysis of anything other than sex, blood or, better, some combination of the two!
@9:
Ah Michael, don’t get your panties all in a wad. Just injecting some humor.
McKenna (and WA State), would be way better off if he would just do his job instead of running for Governor.
In the Farrakhan vs. Gregoire case, McKenna dismissed the proven systemic racial bias in our criminal justice system and instead set his sights on protecting disenfranchisement of felons. He then joined the Florida AG in a lawsuit to overturn the health care bill, defying not only the Governor, but the will and interests of Washington State residents. Now he is defying the law and the Commissioner of Public Lands by refusing to represent the DNR.
Meanwhile, Washington ranks at the top in cyber and credit card crime.
Stop the demagoguery and get to work please, Mr. AG!
These two have a strong facial resemblance to Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. I doubt that is a coincidence.
@12
Yep!
Keep bangin’ that drum, Goldy. Sooner or later, someone is going to hear it.
The other guy is much much better looking than McKenna.