SCENE: Bill GUNKEL, former Republican and now chairman of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, is driving down a Saint Paul street when he notices Mitch BERG walking his dog. GUNKEL pulls over and rolls down his window.
GUNKEL: Hey, Berg!
BERG: (Choking back mild annoyance, ordering the dog to sit) Hey, Bill.
GUNKEL: Boy, Donald Trump sure showed those squishy RINOs in the GOP presidential field how it’s done!
BERG: Huh. How so?
GUNKEL: He told it like it was! He said the things that no Republican would dare to say! He said what needed to be said on immigration!
BERG: OK. And that means what?
GUNKEL: That means he really pissed off the Establishment!
BERG: Huh. And that, then, means what?
GUNKEL: He might be a Republican I could vote for again!
BERG: Because he “tells it like it is”, and “pisses off the Establishment”?
GUNKEL: Yep! (grins like a toddler who just made a big pants)
BERG: Yeah, let me show you something. (Clears throat, takes deep breath) “We need to complete the border fence, enforce existing laws on immigration, and crack down on hiring illegal workers. And Karl Rove is wrong, and the Tea Party is right. And I think Scarlett Johannson would dig me”.
There. I just told it like it was on immigration, and pissed off the establishment.
GUNKEL: (blinks, puzzled)
BERG: I just did everything Donald Trump did. I said a couple of things that pander to a voter bloc, but that I’ll never have to try to convince a single legislator to pass, or a single taxpayer to fund. In other words, I just said stuff.
GUNKEL: (blinks, puzzled)
BERG: Talk is cheap.
GUNKEL: (blinks, puzzled)
BERG: The only thing I lack is a media to lavishly publicize what I’m saying, by way of trying to discredit the GOP, and especially to draw the conversation away from the likes of people like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, who are actually saying things the American people need to hear.
GUNKEL: (Shakes it off) You’re a RINO.
BERG: Clearly.
(And SCENE).
Talk is cheap.
And if you haven’t learned that over the past 16 years, I don’t think you ever will.
I also like how he makes all the other candidates screw up their mouths and go tut tut.
Trump is a phony and a classless jerk:
http://www.examiner.com/article/trump-questions-sen-mccain-s-patriotism
http://www.examiner.com/article/sen-mccain-vs-donald-trump
Good riddance.
Sometimes when a political type says something that sounds stupid….you hear/read the entire quote and you understand what he was trying to say. And it makes sense, even if worded awkwardly. Romney and the 47%, and Scott Walker supposedly saying that minimum wage is lame.
But Trump’s comment about McCain getting captured during the Vietnam war…..
From 2000 Salon article (via Althouse): http://www.salon.com/2000/01/10/voices/
“I doubt I could cross the line and vote Republican. I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don’t buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I’m concerned he sat out the war.” – Al Franken
Wow, crazy Al…..stay classy, you old coke snorting clown.
You’re a RINO.
I take that as a badge of honor, personally. I’m a libertarian/conservative who currently more identifies with the Republican party. Back when I was very young I remember the Democrats being more in line with my philosophy, e.g. before the Humphrey wing of the party pushed out all others. I don’t think I’ve changed much, but the political parties have.
The people some of us call RINOs really are the only Republicans who matter in that party. They should really be called RIPOs Republicans in power (only).
Trump-Ventura 2016!
If Ventura hadn’t been elected then Skip Humphrey would have been governor. By the current rules for republicans shouldn’t we be praising him?
Although Skip came in third that year. It’s amazing how far to the left Minnesota has moved in 17 years. Geesh, 17 years is a long time.
Trump is smart enough to have come up with a better rejoinder, but McCain started the spittle fest.
Personally, I’m much more offended by McCain than Trump.
I read an economics article once, about hookers (not stratosphere class Pretty Women – they’ll always have a job – but ordinary street-walker class hookers). Seems that when the economy is strong, women prefer to work standing up so street-walkers are those with no other skills. If the economy falters, younger and prettier women are forced into street-walking to make ends meet which creates competition for ordinary sex and that forces older, uglier street-walkers to perform more outrageous sex acts to attract customers, even if those customers are the deviants, perverts and screwballs.
American politicans appear to operate on the same principle.
Chuck, In the Red Star poll the week before the election they had Skip in first place, Normy second, and Ventura third.
Agree or disagree with McCain (or Franken for that matter)–I tend towards the latter on a lot of issues–attacking a former resident of the “Hanoi Hilton” that way just shows a complete lack of awareness, not to mention class. McCain did, after all, appear to make it years without breaking under the stress of the torture he endured.
Would be nice if all three of them were out of the public eye soon. :^)
Reminds me of the South Carolina primary in 2000. When McCain had just won a decisive victory over GWB in the New Hampshire primary. The McCain victory lit a fire under Team Bush. Team Bush led by Carl Rove proceeded to enlist conservative Evangelical Ministers and started spreading a rumor that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. Rove went so far as to question McCain’s fitness and mental stability for the White House after being subjected to five years as a POW. Through the use of push polls, rumors and Evangelical Ministers, Bush crushed McCain’s momentum.
Trump is a piker when compared to what Carl Rove did to McCain in the 2000 GOP primary.
“Team Bush led by Carl Rove proceeded to enlist conservative Evangelical Ministers and started spreading a rumor that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child.”
Not true. I read about this years ago and tried to find out what happened. I found an endless loop of articles quoting one another, claiming that Bush was behind the smear. No smoking gun. McCain had made enemies in South Carolina. The smear was anti-McCain, not pro-Bush.
This is where you and I will have to disagree.
I’m looking forward to you presenting your evidence.
The closest I came to an actual accusation was a report by a one-time McCain staffer, long after the fact, hinting that Bush’s team was behind the calls — but even this guy (can’t remember his name) did not make a direct accusation.
I was glad McCain lost in 2000. He had gone out of his way to insult evangelicals in South Carolina just before the primary. This was idiotic. Apparently some people in the group that was insulted (I don’t know who) decided to show McCain who called the shots in SC. McCain’s people blamed it on Bush because it made McCain look better than confessing that McCain was stupid to insult a large portion of GOP primary voters before the primary. In 2000 McCain was the media darling. He played to them by insulting the GOP base (always a winner with the national media).
It didn’t cost him the primary. McCain’s sponsorship of campaign finance reform and his stand on increasing tobacco taxes did him in. It is a conceit of certain people that anonymous robocalls saying that McCain had a mixed race child would cost McCain the votes of . . . who, exactly?
I like your spunk PM: Would any of these things have happened if Bush or Rove didn’t want them to?
We start off with talking trump vs. McCain and end up talking about the 2000 presidential primary in SC. God I love SitD
“Would any of these things have happened if Bush or Rove didn’t want them to?”
Emery, you are retreating.
Ever wonder why no recordings of the push-poll calls were made by the people that received them? Vicious push-polls and rumor mongering is not the weapon of a skilled campaigner. It can backfire. Any of the people who received the calls could have recorded one w/o the knowledge of the caller, yet no one did. It would have been on the news all over SC, and would have given McCain a boost.
They didn’t cost McCain the primary anyhow. I think that we are agreed on that.
Funny no one has physical evidence of the 2000 smear campaign against McCain. Supposedly leaflets were distributed. Try to find one, you won’t.
“McCain’s closest aides were so stunned by the angle of the attack that at first they tried to shield him from it. “We expected one thing, and it was quite the opposite,” said Fletcher, who personally saw the “Negro child” flyers “all over every car” at the debate. ”
Yet he never produced one.
This is what I found years ago when I looked into it. Hearsay, no physical evidence. Lots of people speaking “off the record.” Lots of people linking back and forth to what each other had written about the supposed evil Bush/Rove plan. many people saying the fingerprints of Rove were all over the smear, but curiously no one actually could point to the fingerprints.
McCain campaigned for Bush in 2004.
McCain won the NH primary. NH Republicans are liberal/libertarian. They couldn’t get Rockefeller the nomination in ’68, and that wing of the party was significantly weaker in 2000 than it was in ’68.
But the liberal media love the NE Republicans. So they spin a tale where the republicans finally started to show some sense and support an anti religious right candidate like McCain. McCain loses in SC (as was clear early on), and rather than simply say that McCain was a bad candidate they spin a tale where good, moderate McCain was trounced by the forces evil, aka GW Bush and Carl Rove.
Nice op–ed. ;^)
Hey, shit-for-brains EmeryTheAntisemiticSoci@list, how about answering Blue’s request: I’m looking forward to you presenting your evidence.? Oh, that’s right, you only do smileys…
Give him a minute JPA…Googling a response that doesn’t exist makes plagiarizing a time consuming chore; even for experts.
The quote in my 11:01,
“McCain’s closest aides were so stunned by the angle of the attack that at first they tried to shield him from it. “We expected one thing, and it was quite the opposite,” said Fletcher, who personally saw the “Negro child” flyers “all over every car” at the debate” is from Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/11/mccain200411
I suppose that this is what conservatives mean when they say we are being betrayed by our elites. The author of the VF piece, Richard Gooding, never noticed that a wide spread smear campaign against McCain had actually occurred. You would think the reliance of the story on hearsay would have set off an alarm bell (“personally saw the Negro child flyers all over every car at the debate”).
The term “betrayal of the elites” is not anti-intellectual, it’s a fact. The elites aren’t acting like elites, they are acting like hacks.
Oops!
“The author of the VF piece, Richard Gooding, never noticed that a wide spread smear campaign against McCain had notactually occurred.”
I read it somewhere in the last day or so, I can’t remember where or by whom, but:
(paraphrasing)
“McCain absolutely was a true patriot in his service to this country during the war and is a true war hero. However he has been an absolutely atrocious senator for the conservative movement and ironically, national security; not to mention his involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. How long does he get to ride on the coattails of the former to excuse the latter?
Give him a minute That is one looooong minute…