A DEATH IN THE GOP

I have begun to wonder if the loneliest person in Minneapolis-St. Paul this Labor Day is not going to be “Mike” Duncan, Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The elephants start their 39th nominating convention on September 1st, post Olympics and pre-World Series, in the Xcel Energy Center. They intend to drag the action out for four action-packed reinventing-the-brand-name days. Beyond the 2,380 delegates and 2,227 alternates, the Repubs say they are expecting 15,000 journalists, which would make this the best attended funeral since Princes Diana’s. But I have my doubts. If anybody outside of Fox Spews and “The Daily Show” bother covering this Gopher State right-wing wing-ding I will be greatly surprised. There are bad omens scattered about like the first coughs from Laura Ingalls in the Little House on the Prairie. Chairman Duncan’s first political campaign experience came when he helped his uncle run for school superintendent. The uncle lost by eight votes. And can you guess who picked Mike to be RNC chair? If you said George Bush you win first prize. And if you voted for George Bush you’ve already won the booby prize: here’s your booby.

The last time the Grand Old Party held their convention in Minneapolis was in 1898, when they nominated the incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison; a guy so cold the only person who actually liked him was his wife, and she died of tuberculosis two weeks before the election. Harrison didn’t even get the sympathy vote: he lost to Grover Cleveland, who four years previously had failed in his own Presidential re-election bid, to Harrison: Presidential musical chairs was a popular sport in the late nineteenth century. After his defeat Harrison told family and friends he felt as if he had just been released from prison. This election will release America from prison. And Minnesota has not gone Republican since 1972 when Richard Nixon won every state except Massachusetts, including Minnesota, which was the home state of Democratic candidate Walter Mondale. And look how well that Republican landslide worked out for America. Well, what more could you expect from a place whose state bird is the Common Loon?

I bring this all up because this year the road to Main Street in Gopher Prairie seems to run right past the grave yard. I am speaking here specifically of 67 year old Frank Powers, the retired Wall Street maven who wanted to run for the Staten Island Congressional seat currently occupied by embarrassed and embarrassment Repulsive-an Representative Vito Fossella. Vito got pulled over in Northern Virginia for drunk driving, and in what must have been the best road side confession since Mel Gibson unburdened himself to the Malibu P.D., Vito explained that he was on his way to see his infant daughter, she not being his and his wife’s daughter but his and his mistresses’ daughter. The Grand Old Party turned on Vito with all the compassion of cannibals at a pot luck picnic, and in response Vito has checked out of Republican Party politics. And Frank Powers seemed the perfect choice to replace the only Republican left from New York City in Congress. Frank had committed to spend $500,000 of his own cash on the election, and that made him the favorite son of the Grand Old Party: emphasis on the “Old” part, because over the weekend Frank dropped dead from a heart attack, which says something about the best laid plans of grumpy old men, I guess.
Fossella joined LaHood of Illinois, Ramstad of Minnesota, Rebula of Ohio and Walsh of New York, all retiring Republicans, and in the face of Republican disciplinarians they voted with the Democrats to extend unemployment insurance past the standard cut-off date. Said the frustrated Minority Whip, Roy Blunt, about these mass defections by defectors “It’s not helpful”, meaning it was not helpful to party discipline, even if it was helpful to the voters and tax payers who are out of work. It was just such arguments for unity above individual self interest that has led the Repubs so far from the American mainstream that three out of four Americans say they now prefer a Democrat representing them in Congress. And come late August, as we head off to “Greater Minnesota”, land of ten thousand lakes, birthplace of the Mississippi River, tuna hot dish casseroles, the Lake Wobegon Chatterbox Cafe and the most famous airport men’s room in the free world, Republicans will be asking themselves (such as Governor Tim Pawlenty, Lieutenant Governor Carol Malnau and Senator Norm Coleman – Republicans all!) why the hell the party is coming to a state they stand very little chance of winning, unless it is to highlight the party’s bankruptcy – moral and monetary.

Charles Black, lobbyist for Ferdinand Marcos and Mobuto Sese Seko, and a close advisor to Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, told Fortune Magazine this month that a new terrorist attack against the United States would be good news for McCain. If he get's really lucky maybe we'll all come down with malaria. He later apologized for saying that but it raises the question of just what might be good news for John McCain? Short of a signed photo of Barak Obama shoving Hillary Clinton into a shredder I don’t think such an event is possible. The American people know almost nothing about Obama and almost everything about McCain, and yet the USA Today – Gallup Poll, the Rasmussen Poll, and the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll all have Obama out in front by six points. And the mask poll at BuyCostumes-dot-com, which has never been wrong, has the Obama mask out in front of the McCain mask by 5%. It’s a long pull till November 4th, and a lot can happen, but McCain’s flip-flopping over energy policy (yesterday he was for drilling and today he is for conserving) did not help the jet jockey convince anybody he’s got the answer to anything. The Republican Party of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, the party of “Republican-In-Name-Only” labels: these lunatics have never accepted the “big tent” theory that dilutes their ratings and their power. Their party should be holding their convention in some out of the mainstream corner of America, like Jenna, Louisiana or Crawford, Texas. Because in Minneapolis the “RINO Party” will be out in broad daylight, a very inhospitable place for its convention. Minnasota is a progressive state where “the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”. Can you say, "Oh, yah, sure"?

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FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT

I couldn't help wondering, when Senator Barak Obama first called for a “new” politics, why the politics we’ve been using for the last 2,500 years needs to be replaced. Okay, Shrub has sanctioned a "disconnect" with the American people over the last four years, the natural result of "wedge" politics.But maybe the real problem lies not with the lying, two faced, double dealing, back-stabbing, opportunistic, insincere politicians but with the idiots who vote for them: i.e. us. Check my math, please: politicians lie, politicians get elected; could there be a connection? Let me give you a little example from ancient history, so nobody feels insulted.
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James K. Polk was our eleventh President, serving from 1845 to 1849. He was, until Richard Nixon, our most secretive President. He didn’t even tell his own cabinet members what he was thinking. He was a Jackson Democrat and no matter what your history book tells you he did not campaign on the Fifty-Four Forty or Fight platform – that came up later. During the campaign, what Polk was most famous for was for not branding his slaves. And trust me, this smear was so good they still haven’t figured out who did it.
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The story was first published in the August 21, 1844 edition of the Ithaca New York Chronicle, (a Whig newspaper) and claimed to be a 3 paragraph extract from an unpublished book, “Roorback’s Tour Through the Western and Southern States…” It claimed to detail the author's (Baron Von Roorback) conversations with a group of slave traders on the Duck River in Tennessee. “Forty of these unfortunate beings had been purchased, I was informed, of the Honorable J.K. Polk…; the mark of a branding iron, with the initials of his name on their shoulders, distinguishing them from the rest.” Even in 1844 the idea of branding human beings, even those treated as slaves, was appalling to many people...in places where the economy hadn't been built on slavery.

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Which was why the story was picked up by the Albany Evening Journal, and other Whig newspapers, particularly in the 1844 “battleground states” of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some voters in those three states were outraged that a man standing for President would do something so despicable as to brand human beings. To Whig politicians that story was almost too good to be true. And almost as quick as Republican Bloggers caught Dan Rather, the Democratic press found out there was no such book and no such Baron. The details about Polk had been inserted into a story from a real travel book, of a run in with some slave traders on Virginia’s New River. Polk’s farm was in Tennessee. And it was not common practice to brand slaves since, like whipping scars, they tended to reduce their price, like a car door a different shade than the other three. Slaves were certainly whipped and branded because it wasn’t illegal. Most people in 1844 America still believed slaves were property and would have been equally offended if some government offical tried to tell them how to treat their horses or how to slaughter their hogs.
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Still, embarrassed at being caught repeating what was so obviously a fabrication the Whigs pinned the whole thing on William Linn, a lawyer and a Democratic operative in Ithaca. But why would a Democrat smear his own candidate? Well, if I were a believer in conspiracy theories – and this may be one – an allegation that Polk branded his slaves was actually a fairly safe charge to make. Polk did own slaves, but his Whig opponent, Henry Clay, owned more. And it has been suggested by some historians that the “Roorback” story was a case of nineteenth century “wedge” politics. Abolitionism was still a minor issue in 1844, but abolitionists formed a solid voting block in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, those key battleground states. Convince enough abolitionists in at least two of those states that the Whigs were pulling a dirty trick on them and abolitionists voters might just choose Polk over Clay as the lesser of two evils. And the letter to the Ithaca Chronicle had been signed, “An Abolitionist”, thus adding insult to the injury.
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Well, maybe: the theory implies a level of sophisticated conspiracy that may not have existed in the simpler culture and times of 1844 – and probably didn’t exist in Athens in 415 B.C. when Alcibiades was accused of vandalizing statues of the God Hermes. Politicians have been gaming voters since voting was invented. And voters have been playing along, else the game would not have remained so popular for so long. And that is why, with all due respect to Senator Obama, when a politician tells me he is selling something new, my reaction is, “Pull the other one,” because when the American political system works (which it did not do in the last two presidential elections) it is been based upon pragmatism, as it was in the 1844 election results: Polk won 49.5% of the popular vote to Clay’s 48.1 %, and part of that razor thin margin was victories in New York and Pennsylvania - by less than 6,000 votes each. Those two states gave Polk 62 Electoral Votes, out of his sixty-five vote margin of victory (170 to 105). It seems that if the Roorback was a trick, it worked.
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Oh,... and “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!” was actually invented by Ohio Senator William “Earthquake” Allen, well after the election. It was the Southern border (54 degrees & 40 minutes of latitude) claimed by Russia when they owned Alaska. A simple glance at a modern map will confirm that the actual border agreed upon by President Polk is at the 49th parallel. So much for the “…Or fight!” part of the slogan. Have you noticed how often politicians don’t actually mean what they seem to say? You might say they make a career out of it. And if Obama proves to be any good as a politician and a President, he will have to be good at it too.

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