Say Anything Blog

I didn’t vote for him.

1% of Americans pay 40% of the income tax.
5% of Americans pay 60% of the income tax.
10% of Americans pay 70% of the income tax.

..I guess the party saw they probably weren’t going to woo African Americans with Michael Steele (though I think he would have made a better Senator than Cardin, Steele only got ~23% of the African American vote in his failed bid for the Senator ..i.e. Ben Cardin got ~87% of the AFrican American vote) ....so they are now going for the fastest growing sector of the electorate, the Hispanic American vote. ..it can be done with a nice mix of social consevatism and.. ...populism.

...social conservatism = those pro-tradicional family and ‘values’ stuff.

This just in…

The Republican Party apparently didn’t learn a damn thing last Tuesday.

*sigh*

It did ‘learn’ something: our base showed up but independent voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats, ...Our base will never abandon, so lets try and get more of those independents;  LETS MOVE TO THE CENTER!

..I guest it learned the wrong lesson.

The folk over at Redstate are going absolutely bananas over this. Commenters are calling for the impeachment of the President over it! Seriously, can we get a grip?  If Mel makes stupid mistakes, judge him on that.  So far he hasn’t even been put in the office, let alone done anything.  If he turns out to be a loser, call for him to resign and be replaced… Why rush to judge someone who’s not done anything in his job yet?  I really don’t get it….

This person puts it nicely:

The Harriet Miers of RNC chairs

Can he multi-task, lol?

Mel Martinez will probably end up been the Elizabeth Dole of the coming election cycle.

Why rush to judge someone who’s not done anything in his job yet?  I really don’t get it….

You really don’t get it.

The GOP got absolutely thumped this last election.  That means major changes are needed going forward, and that starts with the leaders we’re going to pick to go forward.

Mel Martinez is like the 20th most conservative guy in the Senate.  Picking him to lead the RNC going forward means that Republicans aren’t really to change.  They aren’t going back to their conservative roots, they’re sticking to the pseudo “dressed up” conservatism that has led them to a minority.

The RNC chairman isn’t a position you can just move someone out of if they’re doing a bad job.  If Martinez sucks, Republicans are going to be out of power even longer.

This was a bad move.

The purpose of government shouldn’t be to do good, but simply to refrain from doing evil.

Mel Martinez is like the 20th most conservative guy in the Senate.

Based on the Club for Growth assessment, which could mean nothing, depending on how the ranking was done.

But I would have thought competence would also count for something.

The problem with your former leadership wasn’t so much that they were not conservative enough, but that they were idiots.  Bill Frist has as much skill at consensus building (a requirement in a divided congress) as Genghis Khan.

Getting good leaders is a must of course.  How can anybody take you seriously if your leaders are floundering buffoons?  I don’t have any opinion on Mel by the way, regarding how he would do at the job.  Somedays it’s about ideology.  Most of the rest, it’s just getting the job done and done well that matters.

Based on the Club for Growth assessment, which could mean nothing, depending on how the ranking was done.

The Club’s ranking is something I’ve looked at before.  From the way they rank politicians I know, I’m pretty confident in the way they rank politicians I don’t know.

I think it’s a good indicator.

And point taken on the ineptitude of the GOP’s current congressional leadership, but I still think the biggest reason the GOP loss was an abandonment of principle rather than any sort of ineptitude.

There was a poll I’ve linked to a couple of times which indicated that a big chunk of voters no longer identify the GOP as the small government, low taxes party.  And it’s true.  Look at Medicare prescription drugs.  Look at entitlement spending.  Look at pork spending.  Look at the failure of Social Security reform, and the attempted trampling of federalism with the Terry Schiavo mess.

The GOP is still better at a lot of that stuff then the Dems overall, but I think Americans were just getting tired of the Republicans saying one thing and doing another.

The purpose of government shouldn’t be to do good, but simply to refrain from doing evil.

You know I don’t think that the pork-barrel spending is much of an issue, other than how it influences corruption.

Some of the others are genuine failures of the narrow Republican majorities, others more indicative of the lack of a substantial enough majority to get some of the more controversial aspects passed.

Note that this ties directly into my charge of incompetence on the part of Frist, who I felt was singularly unable to reach across the aisle to recruit enough conservative Democrats to reach the 60-vote majority he needed to get tough reform measures passed.

Hell, the man made the Democrats look good!  One of my reality checks is if somebody is looking particularly impressive (like say a ball team on the field), starting asking what their opposition is doing wrong.

Finally, I also blame the Republican Party itself for not putting enough focus on fixing core issues like entitlement spending and social security. Too much divisiveness led to stalemate on issues that would have prevented them from passing, likely, even if there had been more than 60 Republican Senators in the last session!

Hastert is very much conservative, but I doubt many here would like to see him in a leadership role within the incoming Congress. It’s not about been conservative, but about having the management skill for the particular job for which appointed. Steele would have been a way better pick.

Mel Martinez is like the 20th most conservative guy in the Senate.  Picking him to lead the RNC going forward means that Republicans aren’t really to change.  They aren’t going back to their conservative roots, they’re sticking to the pseudo “dressed up” conservatism that has led them to a minority.

The RNC, from my understanding, doesn’t have anything to do with policy making. Just like Howard Dean isn’t in charge of making policy for the Democrats… Mel’s job is going to be strictly financial, isn’t it?  His job is to raise money and be a spokesmen for the Republicans just as Tony Snow is a spokesman for the President, right?

First of all, I have some serious questions about the advisability of Martinez trying to take on both jobs at once.  He has no business short-changing the Florida voters who elected him to the Senate, and the idea that the chairmanship of either political party can be handled as a part-time endeavor is simple ludicrous.

That said, I question how much of this decision comes down to racial politics and the notion that putting someone of latino heritage in the front job would encourage further inroads among Hispanics.  A cynic might suggest that the choice of Michael Steele would amount to the same thing, but Steele’s experience is executive, not legislative as is Martinez’.  And in any event, Steele would have taken the job on a full time basis.

I don’t know enough about Mel Martinez to question his ability, but the circumstances here don’t smell right.

One more update:

http://www.redstate.com/stories/the_parties/republicans/general_chairman_mel_martinez_will_not_run_the_dnc