Month: April 2010

The Mystery Of Ron Paul And The Republican Party

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Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has long been a problem to the Republican party.

A member of the House for more than two decades, and a Presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in the past, as well as having been a candidate for the GOP nomination for President in 2008, Paul is much admired by many libertarians and young people of college age who find his views fascinating.

Paul has been a strong critic of many federal government agencies, and would love to wipe out the Federal Reserve System.

Paul is also a critic of any violations of civil liberties, and was opposed to the Patriot Act, passed after September 11 in a fit of patriotism and hysteria.

He also is a critic of our military interventions overseas, and calls for bringing home our troops from all of the many nations we have military and naval bases, arguing that we should not be an “Empire”.

All this is very appealing to many, even though at times, Ron Paul comes across as a bit weird and whacky on a personal level. 🙂

The problem for the GOP is that Ron Paul appeals to many in the base, but not to the leadership of the party, who try to ignore him. He was ridiculed by both Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney during the Presidential debate season in 2007-2008.

But Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll recently, and now has ended up just one vote behind Mitt Romney in a similar straw poll at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference this past week.

So what does the GOP do about Ron Paul? He is totally against the typical Republican attitude toward big business, civil liberties, and foreign policy. He is a mosquito who bites the Republican body politic, and is seen as a pest.

So one wonders if Ron Paul has any chance to be a serious factor in the Presidential Election of 2012. It would have to be said that is highly doubtful, and the fact that Ron Paul will be 77 years old in 2012 also rules against any influence, other than being an annoyance.

The one hope that Ron Paul could have an influence on the future of the GOP is the fact that his son, Rand Paul, is running in the GOP primary for the Senate in Kentucky. Were Rand Paul, who sounds very much like his father, to win the nomination and triumph in the Senate race in November, we might very well have not heard the last of the Paul “dynasty”! 🙂

Minnesota Embarrassment: Michele Bachmann And Tim Pawlenty!

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The state of Minnesota has had many distinguished public figures serve in its state government and in Congress.

Among famous Minnesotans in politics have been Harold Stassen, Henrik Shipstead, Orville Freeman, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Paul Wellstone.

Now, unfortunately, we have a Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, only in Congress since 2007, but already notorious for outrageous, divisive, and often crazy public statements and actions, including reasserting this week that President Barack Obama is “anti American”!

We also have outgoing Governor Tim Pawlenty, a likely seeker of the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012, who is wasting taxpayer money by signing on to a federal lawsuit being brought by at least a dozen Attorneys Generals, to prevent enforcement of the new Health Care reform legislation. Pawlenty is exploiting the situation, therefore presenting himself as a hard line conservative, joining mostly with southern leaders who want to promote “states rights”, an image that reminds one of slavery and segregation and nullification, terms that should be only referred to as part of our history’s sad record. Pawlenty has, apparently, no concern for people with pre-existing conditions, or for those dropped by their insurance companies, or those who receive a tremendous jump in premium costs, or for young people who will have no coverage after college, or for many others, altogether 32 million Americans, who do not seem to matter, as long as others have health care!

Minnesota cannot be proud of either Bachmann or Pawlenty, and hopefully, Bachmann can be removed from office as not being concerned that her district in Minnesota is the poorest, most deprived when it comes to health care and employment and foreclosures! And it seems highly unlikely that Tim Pawlenty will make very much progress in his quest to become our President! Certainly, Minnesota and the nation can do much better!

Michael Steele’s Negative Effect On The Republican Party Fortunes

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Republican National Chairman Michael Steele has been a lightning rod, due to his comments and actions. He has become an albatross around the Republican Party’s neck, but despite discontent by many, he is unlikely to be removed as head of the RNC before his two year term ends in January, 2011. It seems obvious, however, that he will not have an opportunity to serve another two year term, simply because of his ability to blunder in major ways!

Fund raising has not been going well under his leadership, and he has become the center of controversy by the fact that money was authorized to be paid to an aide who went to a lesbian bondage nightclub in Los Angeles, and also by his publication of a book without any notice to party leaders, and seemingly making bad judgments on a regular basis beyond these examples.

Instead of promoting the party, he has become a problem, and this has led religious conservatives to move away from supporting the party financially. Also, such Republican campaign operatives as Alex Castellanos, Ed Rollins, and David Frum have called for his resignation, as a necessity so as not to harm the party message, and its opportunity to gain the maximum number of seats in Congress and the governorships in the upcoming elections of 2010.

But Michael Steele clearly will not budge, and the fact he is African American makes it difficult for the mainstream of the GOP to call for his ouster. So Michael Steele will be a major factor, probably bad, for Republican fortunes this fall!

One cannot recall any national chairman becoming the center of such controversy as Steele has become, with maybe the exception of Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont, who was Democratic National Chairman in the second Bush term. While he sometimes said what should have been left unsaid, he was very successful in raising funds and electing Democrats nationally, so can be forgiven for his verbal slippages. Will the same be said about Michael Steele after the midterm elections? We shall see, but highly doubtful!

The Debate Over The Supreme Court Nominee: Elena Kagan Most Likely Choice!

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Even before Barack Obama chooses a Supreme Court nominee to replace Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, a furious debate is beginning over what should be the credentials of that individual.

One issue is whether we need religious balance, as when Stevens leaves, there will be no Protestant nominees, despite the fact that half the country is Protestant! In the past, the thought was that there should be a Jewish seat, a Catholic seat, an African American seat, and a woman’s seat. Now we have two Jews, six Catholics, one African American, two women, and even an Hispanic on the Court! So should the nominee be Protestant, as one of the leading candidates, Diane Wood, happens to be?

Then there is the issue of how liberal the nominee should be, as certainly the Supreme Court has become much more conservative over the years, and with a liberal President, one would assume he would choose a liberal nominee. If this is the major factor, then Diane Wood comes across as the most liberal nominee, more than Elena Kagan or Merrick Garland, the other two most mentioned!

Then, there is the issue of whether the nominee should be from outside the judiciary, with Elena Kagan being the one of the top three in speculation who has been a professor, Harvard Law School Dean, and now Solicitor General of the United States, the government’s lawyer before the Supreme Court!

Also, however, there are some who think what is needed is an elected political official, which has put Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri into the speculation! Notice all of these elected officials past or present are women!

So that brings up the idea that with two women on the Court, maybe it should be a man who is selected, but only Judge Merrick Garland is mentioned very much, and he would be regarded as more moderate than Kagan or Wood, at least by reputation!

So what it comes down to is that President Obama must decide what matters most to him. He has made it clear that he wants a person who can make coalitions with others on the Court, as Justice Stevens often did with Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy. That would seem to make Diane Wood or Elena Kagan the best choices! He also wants someone who would make decisions, taking into account the struggles of everyday ordinary Americans. Again, the indications are that Kagan or Wood would be the best choices in that regard!

My prediction is that he will select Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General, a Jewish woman who is liberal but not as controversial as Diane Wood, and who has already been voted upon by the Senate Judiciary Committee for her nomination to be Solicitor General, and who is a person who has not served as a judge, bringing some outside experience from her position now, and her years as a professor and Harvard Law School Dean.

Kagan’s nomination would cause fewer problems in the Senate, and put a woman not yet 50 on the Court, allowing for the possibility of a long term on the bench. She would be an excellent choice, and that is more important than having an elected official, or a Protestant or even a man! 🙂

Historic Nuclear Arms Limitation Treaty Signed Between Russia and US!

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This past Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed an historic treaty with President Medvedev of Russia, cutting back nuclear arsenals by one third, and working to limit the access to nuclear weapons of rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea.

Obama wants this to be the first step toward the achievement of the elimination of nuclear weapons over a generation, in order to make the world safer than it has been since the dawn of the nuclear age.

Earlier nuclear arms agreements were signed by Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan and the first President Bush, so this is just another step toward the ultimate goal of saving the world from nuclear annihilation. This should be applauded, but instead, conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel and Republicans in Congress are attacking the treaty as unwise and counterproductive.

This is not some left wing “radical” move, as the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen have endorsed what Obama has done. Would anyone say either man is “soft” on our national defenses? Of course not! It is just part of the same, old, hysterical, irresponsible rhetoric that has been promoted by the opposition throughout this administration’s short history, with the opposition forgetting that President Reagan made it a major goal, publicly, to work toward the end of nuclear weapons. So Obama is fulfilling part of the goal of a President very different than he was in his direction and tone in office!

But try to tell that to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who criticized and ridiculed the President’s ability and knowledge in the area of nuclear weapons, as if she has any expertise at all on ANYTHING in international affairs, let alone domestic affairs! 🙁

President Obama’s reaction was to say that he would more likely listen to his military advisers than to Sarah Palin! 🙂 Well said, Mr. President! 🙂

“The Progressive Professor” Reaches The Milestone of 20 Months And 1,000 Entries!

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Today, April 11, marks 20 months of this political blog, and this entry is the 1,000th I have placed since August 11, 2008!

Exactly 8 months ago, August 11, 2009, the name “The Progressive Professor” was born, and it has, both in the year before the new name, and in the eight months since, been an absolute delight to express my thoughts on the political issues of the difficult times we live in!

I have been very appreciative of all of the participants in this blog, some of whom I know, and many who I do not personally know, for their interest and willingness to express their views on the controversies at hand!

Many have been supportive, while some have been critical, and I have tried, when necessary, to respond to the criticisms in an appropriate manner! The number of participants have increased as time has passed, and I hope there will be much more interaction in the future, but I appreciate every one of the 413 comments (so far) that have been made!

My pace of entries has increased so that since the new name was adopted eight months ago, I have ranged from approximately 70-80 entries per month. I intend to keep up this pace, except that when I go on vacation, there will be gaps where I will be unable to respond to events on a timely basis. Otherwise, I intend to continue the trend of having at least one entry every calendar day!

I wish to remind readers of this blog that I have a convenient list of more than 100 links that will be of great use to you, as they are to me! So this blog can be useful to you in more ways than one!

So continue your reading, and your reactions to my blog entries, and I hope there will be many more participants as time goes by! 🙂 Thank you very much for reading! 🙂

Newt Gingrich Calls Barack Obama A “Radical”! Really, Newt? :(

Ronald 5 Comments

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is giving broad hints of his intention to seek the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012, and part of his strategy is to declare, at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, that President Obama is a “radical”, in fact the most radical leader of the nation in its history!

Newt does not seem to realize how ridiculous he looks by making such a silly assertion! Because the President managed to get through, after a long battle, a moderate health care plan that does not fully please liberals and was seen as a compromise, that makes him a “radical”? The fact that he wants to promote financial reform of a banking and stock market system that ran amuck for years makes him a “radical”? His attempt to promote a program that allows some oil drilling, but seeks to diversify our energy future by moving away from too much dependence on oil, makes him “radical”? The fact that he worked to preserve our banking, insurance and auto industries and prevent a worse loss of jobs makes him “radical”? His determination to make progress toward a nuclear free world by making agreements to cut the number of nuclear weapons and scale down the danger of nuclear war makes him “radical”?

Any sane person would see that Barack Obama has been working night and day to insure the return of prosperity and to secure our safety and security, both of which are the main responsibilities of any American President!

If Barack Obama is indeed ” radical”, then so are Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and even Ronald Reagan!

In reality, Newt Gingrich KNOWS that Barack Obama is within the mainstream, and has even been willing to work with the President on education reform. It is very clear that Gingrich respects the President, despite his rhetoric!

Newt Gingrich is simply displaying his ambition for the White House, and is therefore willing to lie to himself, fellow Republicans, and the American people! He is a very intelligent, articulate man, who has shown great speaking and writing ability, as he is the author of many books, including Civil War novels which utilize his historical training, all the way to the Ph. D.

At the same time, Newt Gingrich has been very willing to divide and create confrontation, as demonstrated by his years in the House, working against Speaker of the House Jim Wright, and being an extremely controversial Speaker from 1995-1999! It could be argued that he was more of a lighting rod than Nancy Pelosi has ever been in the past three plus yearrs as Speaker!

If Newt expects to seek the Presidency, he will have major liabilities which include: his scandalous private behavior, including cheating on two wives, and telling his first wife of an impending divorce while she lay ill in the hospital; his often corrupt behavior as Speaker, bordering on illegality; his willingness to use character assassination to the extreme against the opposition party; and his lack of any public office for what would be fourteen years by the time of the Presidential Election of 2012.

An election between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich would be, certainly, one of the most exciting, dynamic and clear choices that the American people would ever witness. But the thought of a President Gingrich brings up thoughts of a time of conflict and divisiveness that would be greater than anything we have yet seen! A Newt Gingrich Presidency would be a truly “radical” Presidency, far greater than anything that Barack Obama could even imagine!

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens Retires: His Major Impact On The Supreme Court!

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Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has announced his retirement after nearly 35 years on the Supreme Court. He leaves as the second oldest Justice at his retirement, only surpassed by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Stevens also will be leaving the Court with the second longest tenure, only surpassed by the person he replaced, Justice William O. Douglas. He is, at the moment, fourth longest serving, but will pass Chief Justice John Marshall in May, and later, Associate Justice Stephen J. Field in June.

Stevens was appointed by President Gerald Ford, in his only opportunity to select a Supreme Court Justice, and it still stands out as the most lasting contribution that Ford made to the history of the country during his two years and five months as President!

Stevens turned out, as often is the case, to be more liberal than anyone, including Ford, could ever have imagined, and yet, Ford did not, unlike Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and George H. W. Bush, criticize his Court appointment in public for having turned toward the liberal side of constitutional law. Eisenhower criticized Chief Justice Earl Warren; Nixon criticized Harry Blackmun; and Bush was critical of David Souter.

This fact adds to the growing image of Gerald Ford as a moderate Republican who deserves more credit than he usually gains from historical scholars, as Stevens has had a dramatic impact in so many areas and will be missed!

Stevens led on such issues as gay rights, abortion, affirmative action and limitations on Bush administration policy toward prisoners held as terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

He was also a major critic of Bush v. Gore as wrongheaded intervention in a state’s count of presidential election votes, and he condemned the Citizens United case that now allows corporations unlimited rights to spend money on political campaigns, on the basis that corporations are “persons” protected under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Stevens is a very fine person as an individual, highly respected, even by his conservative Court colleagues who disagree with his view of constitutional law. He is a true example of the finest who have been privileged to serve on the Supreme Court, and he will be seen as one of the very best, the top 25, who have served on the Court in its 221 year history!

The Civil War Revives Again! Virginia’s Governor Stirs A Controversy! :(

Ronald 2 Comments

A year from now, the country will be commemorating the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, which cost the lives of about 620,000 Americans.

The scars of that war, the most significant single event in American history, have never been healed, as many white Southerners, descendants of the Confederate side of the war, continue to wave the Confederate flag on their cars and homes, and still look at the North as the “Yankees” and Abraham Lincoln as the devil personified.

Some Southern states still fly the Confederate flag on their public buildings, and the most amazing development of all is that many Southerners, who once despised the Republican party for their prosecution of the war, their Reconstruction of the South, and for Lincoln being the first Republican President, now are loyal Republicans, with a complete switch around evident, as Republicans reign in much of the South, and now embrace the view that they once fought and died for a century and a half ago!

To many Southerners, it is not the “Civil War”, but rather the “War Between the States”, or “The War for Southern Independence”, or “The War of Northern Aggression”. Slavery as the major factor in the coming of the war is ignored, as states rights and the movement to be independent are emphasized.

This is exactly what the newly elected Republican governor of Virginia has now declared, as he decided to issue an official proclamation making April a month to commemorate as “Confederate History Month”.

This has stirred old passions on both sides of the war controversy, and it has led to Governor Bob McDonnell belatedly apologizing for failing to mention slavery as a reason for the war, instead emphasizing states rights and independence desires as the factors that led to war.

It is good that McDonnell has at least acknowledged one day late that slavery was a terrible institution that should be seen as the major reason for the outbreak of the war. But it does not make up for the reality that many white Southerners wish to ignore that reality, and some fail to see how African Americans feel insulted by any display publicly of the Confederate flag.

Virginia has come a long way from the days of slavery and segregation, and with the growth of the northern suburbs outside Washington, D.C., it has become much more “mainstream” and has been seen as a progressive oriented state, more than probably any other Southern state. But the Republican party of Virginia is conducting itself in recent years to look more like Republicans in South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas and other states where governors and other public officials have been shameful in their advocacy of “secession”, “interposition”, “states rights” and other bad memories of the years preceding the Civil War, and the long degradation of racial segregation for a century beyond the Civil War.

It is one thing to say that students should know the history of the Civil War, and know what the Confederacy was all about. It is fine to learn about it, and to have museums devoted to study of the topic, such as the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, a fascinating place that left a very strong impression on the author when he visited it on vacation in Virginia in 2007.

However, it is not justified to glorify the Confederacy and to propagandize for a lost cause that was evil to begin with–to defend slavery and to wish to break up a nation created by the Founding Fathers to last for the duration of time! It is not appropriate for the governor of Virginia to encourage a distortion of history, and to use the Civil War to promote a political agenda designed to divide the races and the nation at large!

So despite his belated apology for the omission of the subject of slavery, what the Virginia governor has done shows lack of sensitivity and good judgment, and must be used as an example of what should not be done next year on the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of war! Instead, we all need to unite in understanding the great tragedy of that war, that Americans had to fight Americans to promote the basic purpose of the founding of the nation–freedom, liberty, and equality!

The New Face Of The GOP : Sarah Palin And Michele Bachmann Together In Minneapolis! :(

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The Republican Party has become a party more and more image driven by two women, who have become highly controversial by their words and actions.

Sarah Palin, former Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential nominee, and Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Congresswoman, have both contributed to an atmosphere of deceit, lies, fear mongering, confrontation, and extreme right wing propaganda!

Sarah Palin talked about “death panels”, and Michele Bachmann conjured up images of “internment camps”. Both women have done everything possible in the past two years to divide America, and to distort and destroy the Presidency of Barack Obama by any means necessary, showing an amazing lack of ethics in their false attacks, and showing no concern or solutions for the many domestic problems we face!

Both women also have shown an unbelievable lack of understanding of our basic civil liberties, and a belligerent attitude toward other nations. It could be said that what both have advocated borders on fascism and nativism, marking them as being as dangerous as other fringe spokesmen have been in past periods of American history!

Neither one contributes anything positive in public affairs, but rather sets out to confuse and obstruct!

Seeing pictures and video of the two women together, it makes one think that this is a great opportunity for the Democrats to promote commercials designed to defeat Bachmann for her congressional seat and to undermine the GOP for congressional races and the Presidential campaign of 2012.

While it is great to see more women in American politics, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are NOT an asset to the Republican Party. Rather, they are an albatross around the Republicans’ necks, but they will offer a great opportunity to the Democratic party nationally, as well as locally.

We will see many commercials starring Sarah and Michelle, and hopefully, we will soon see both disappear on the horizon of American politics! We deserve better than this!