GOP convention in Cleveland? Credit Democrat FitzGerald

Re-Posted from Plunderbund 



Days in Northern Ohio have become much livelier in the heat of summer.  The past week or so, for example, has produced three tornadic events:  A real tornado in Medina County, LeBron James' epic decision to return to the Cavaliers,  and, of course, the Republican eruptive choice of Cleveland for its 2016 national convention.

So far, the GOP hasn't found a way to blame the tornado nor LeBron's flight from Florida - a key battleground state - on President Obama.   But Marco Rubio is doubtless still working on it  in James' case, including it in a new immigration reform package that will ship him back to Miami in cuffs.

The most interesting  response, however, is how the mainstream media  virtually ignored Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic candidate for governor, in the symbiotic local effort to  lure all of those Republicans to the oft-maligned city on the lake.  The hometown paper, with one major exception, handed out huzzahs for the efforts by the convention bureau, Cleveland companies and the Cleveland 2016 RNC Host Committee, headed by Terry Egger, the PD's former publisher.

The Beacon Journal, on the other hand, delivered to its readers a puffy Page One story from the Washington Post that "affirmed the influence of Sen. Rob. Portman"  in the GOP's decision  under the headline "GOP's choice of Cleveland reflects power of Portman".   The Republican senator, the article said, "pushed for months for the city as the site". Hint:  Portman was again elevated as a potential presidential candidate.  For now, it couldn't hurt. Or could it?

(About presidential politics: The Columbus Dispatch, which appears to be torn between advancing Gov. Kasich or Portman as the paper's choice for the Oval Office, focussed on Kasich, satisfied  that the convention would be a perfect national stage to dramatize  the "revitalization and fiscal turnaround that Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich has managed to pull off in a few short years...")

And as for Kasich himself, he had nothing to say at all to the Dispatch's  Joe Vardon who asked about FitzGerald's role.   Said the governor:  "That's a question - I'm not in the middle of that kind of question.  I have no answer to that right now."

That non-rsponse measures well against one of George W. Bush's when a reporter asked a question about a nominee:  " I would have to ask the questions...I haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning."

And where was FitzGerald in the planning and rollout of the convention site?  It wasn't until veteran writer  Brent Larkin, who retired as the PD's editorial director five years ago, stepped up.

Summing up his column in the subhead over his commentary:  "Credit FitzGerald with leadership, vision in landing 2016 GOP convention."

Larkin noted that FitzGerald, with Positively Cleveland CEO Dave Gilbert as early as two years ago engaged in  planning for a convention proposal.  Wrote Larkin:

"And Republicans may  not like it, but FitzGerald, a Democrat,  deserves far more credit than any other elected official for the city landing  the GOP presidential nominating convention.  Anyone who tries to suggest  a public official other than FitzGerald is the father of this process is simply not telling the  truth."

Well, now.  Larkin's incisive observation certfainly bumps up against the PD's own editorial page think tank that recently devoted a full page to questioning  FitzGerald's  ''leadership".

Having worked  in the field with Larkin for years, I'll take his word for it.

Rubio: Obamacare led to IRS scandal

Sen. Marco Rubio  has his grandiose ambition wrapped so tightly around his yearning to be president that maybe we should forgive him for sounding as dumb as Sarah Palin at times.  The Florida Republican wannabe wunderkind's latest non-sequitur exposed the sort of logic that could leap the Grand Canyon.

 In an email to a constituent, Rubio blamed Obamacare for the IRS controversy.  As you may have heard, Rubio hates Obamacare and hopes to ride it to the Republican nomination for president in 2016.  So, the only answer to things like the IRS keyhole, he says, is to repeal Obamacare". He may yet throw in the Oklahoma tornado as manufactured in the Oval Office,   but you  get my point about Obama-hating.

The May issue of Smithsonian magazine quotes an angry response by a specialist in microbe research to a scientific team's report that changes in gut bacteria could  protect us from strokes.   Jonathan Eisen of the University of California scowled that the team's ideas were "completely absurd, dangerous , and self-serving claims that confuse  the issue of correlation versus causation."

Back to Rubio:  Wish I'd said that.

Dolan owners do fine while Cablevision stock sinks

If you're feeling a little pinched on cash these days, you still might not want to sympathize with the owners of Cablevision, the giant Delaware-based  cable TV provider owned by the Dolan family. We all know of Larry Dolan, the owner of the Cleveland Indians.  But there are others in the family who did quite well for themselves last year at the top of the cable system's ownership pyramid while the stock was diving.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that although the company's shares fell to half of their  previous value during an otherwise  strong year for the market, two of the Dolan chieftains personally ended up far beyond the financial curve.

The Times noted that James Dolan, Cablevision's chief executive, "earned $16.9 million last year and  his father, Charles, earned $16.6 million as chairman - an unusually high amount for a chairman who is  not serving  as chief executive".

Furthermore, the Times said, both men received twice as much as they did the previous year while the company's stock plunged to about $16 from  more than $36. (A company source said  that its sale of Madison Square Garden  and AMC Networks  could add maybe $16 dollars to the share price.)

I guess I should add a few other amenities  for the Dolan brothers such as  a full-time chauffeur and car, and access to a  helicopter and jet for personal use.

For all that, you'd think they'd help out brother Larry and buy a team capable of finishing in the first division.

* * * * *

Considering how short Americans' interest span tends to be, don't you think Marco Rubio is pushing his envelope too far  in his four-year quest for the GOP presidential nomination  in 2016?  He's appearing  more often on TV than the weather reporters   with his advisories on how to guarantee clear skies ahead for the party. Nothing that he says these days is deeply engaging and grows even more boring as he robotically repeats his confusing message on immigration reform  and such.    Talk about overkill:  On Sunday he turned up on seven (!) network news shows, including Univision and Telemundo. If nothing else, thanks to TV's desperation to lamely offer  something politically  new and lively, Rubio may replace John McCain as the Sunday morning news talkers'  darling.

Add another to the GOP list of rising stars

As I continue to explore the bright Republican firmament for "rising stars",  I am happy to report still another one as identified by McClatchy newspapers  in its coverage of the big conservative shindig in Maryland,  a.k.a. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention.  It is Sen.Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was appointed recently to fill the seat of Jim DeMint, who departed to head the Heritage Foundation.

Scott made it to the not-so-exclusive  Rising Star column as the party's first black senator since Reconstruction.  He thus joins other media-designated alleged upwardly mobile luminaries as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, John Kasich and Jeb Bush's son, George Prescott Bush. (I hope I got G.P.'s name right.  There are so many Bushes demanding our attention that I get mixed up at times.)

Missing from the list is  ex-Sen. Scott Brown, who lost in November and is now a lobbyist.  A senator with an ex in front his title is immediately banished from the GOP's distinguished wish list.  Also missing is Tim Tebow, whose stardom was rising until he was flattened a few times with the New York Jets.  Now, he is afforded the backup possibility of a "window of opportunity" by the sports media inasmuch as  the team's starting quarterback is also a falling star.

You can forget Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, too. They have both worked hard at being rising stars and neither ever really  got off the ground. I'll keep you posted,

GOP: Obama socialist, communist, Hitler,Stalin, or what?

There's nothing more effective in advancing the  Republicans toxic mental breakdown than a speech  by President Obama.  An occasion such as the annual  State of the Union address, first administered by Obama in 2009,  has been  the party's proven emetic ever since, although the response  seems to have gotten  even worse this week.  Struggling to find something imaginative to say, Fox News' iconic analysts even questioned the news value of a 102-year-old woman's efforts to vote in Florida.

You sense a pall of desperation over the GOP brood as they resort to their familiar assault weapons as a means of replacing serious policy with quackery.  Even before the speech, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina referred to Hillary Clinton as a murderer and threatened more nastiness on the Benghazi issue.  We should probably excuse this sorrowfully whining  guy because it is being widely reported that he could face a stiff challenge in the Republican primary  from a Ron Paul libertarian loyalist.

Some other expletives  from the Right:

"Dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Obama" (Limbaugh).

"A Castro-like-speech" (Conservative author Mark Levin on Fox)

Obama's gun-control efforts a "disaster":  (Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe)

Obama nominee Chuck Hagel may be on  the payroll of overseas radicals (Texas Sen. Ted Cruz)

Obama is against free enterprise (read: dictator) obsessed with raising taxes (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio)

But none of this rises to a higher intellectual level than Fox News Psychiatrist (honest!) Dr. Keith Ablow,  who unpleasantly accused Obama of being "psychologically predictable".

"He does not surprise." Ablow   opined.  "Having been abandoned as a boy by his father and then his mother, only to then learn that his grandmother feared people of his race, he seems inherently to distrust initiative and intention and to place his trust only in the collective."

Sounds a lot like a reference to a socialist or communist to me.   I wonder how much they pay Ablow to give Fox News such a much-needed soaring sense of panache.  I also wonder whether they'll get around to having him do the 50-minute hour on the  couch for Limbaugh.

Alas, the wackos are breaking out all over

EXCUSE ME, with so much wackiness further degrading the current political scene,  I'm having trouble keeping up with the worst of the worst to give my un-coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award to.  I'm sort of leaning to the fatherly insight of Rep. Blake Farenthold, the Texas Republican, in response to President Obama's humane  initiative on immigration.  That's Farenthold in the photo, a daddy who shared such wisdom that the young folks who  arrived in America with their parents  as illegals didn't really have to come because they could have influenced their elders to stay home.  Right .  "Believe me," the congressman said to CNN's Soledad O'Brien, "my 16-year-old daughter has given me input on everything - pretty much everything the family wants to do."  Moral: Don't make a move on immigration policy until you've talked to your kids!

Hold it right there:  Maybe a group  GALL award should have gone to the Republican legislators in Michigan who banned a Democratic lawmaker - Lisa Brown - from the chamber because she uttered the word v----a   during a debate on abortion.  The seraphim-driven conservatives simply don't appreciate "vulgarity" , which tells you a helluva lot about  their arching manner toward the opposite sex.  One of these days  somebody is going to demand that all male lawmakers disclose whether they had vasectomies.  Sorry, folks.  V---------s.  Jeez.

These are the expressions of nuttiness that may have distracted you from the monumental struggle  in the presidential race in which McMitt Romney has yet to find a way to answer any questions directly.  That is particularly true of his response to the President's move on illegal immigration.  Romney will only say, after first assuring you that he is a successful businessman, not a politician,  that he will work with Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to come up with a new plan in Congress.  Not so fast there, McMitt.  You've lost your crutch.  Rubio just said he is withdrawing any plan to move in a new direction on immigration. That leaves Romney with his only fall-back position  - self-deportation.   Hey, take a breath, McMitt,  and let my grandparents rest in peace.

Tea Partiers: A third party where losing is good

THE WORD from the Tea Party front in Florida is not reassuring to fogies who feel that two parties are more than enough. The rebels down among the sheltering palms have filed papers, not to indict President Obama for treason, but rather to create a third party to oppose Gov. Charlie Crist, who is the GOP's choice to run for the Senate. I'm not sure where they got the idea but the Tea Partiers are outraged that Crist is rumored to have hired a retired liberal to fix a leak in his sink without clearing the guy with Glenn Beck.

Such maneuvering to offer the TP's a seat at the table on Capitol Hill should bring joy to Democrats, who may find a way to contribute to the TP's . As we have all been told, 2010 will not be a vintage year for the D's without outside help. With a civil war under way in the GOP, even President Obama might agree to sit down at Fox News to argue that the TP's are merely proud evidence of democracy in action and should not in any way be discouraged. And in what better place to encourage these rebels than in Florida, where there is precedence for rogue alligators lumbering across the residents' backyards?

Besides, who can blame the TP's for being encouraged by their defeat by a Democrat in New York's 23rd Congressional District after forcing the moderate Republican candidate out of the race. The predatory campaign even brought on what is the formative array of conservative immortals to the scene - Sarah Palin comes to mind - to encourage the execution. For them it's not the loss that matters but rather what you insist you've won by losing. It may sound bizarre, but these folks always think of something.

Down in the Sunshine State, they're going after Crist with a guy named Marco Rubio, Florida's House speaker. Rubio has already attained the Holy Grail with the endorsement of the Club for Growth, a mega-rich collection of self-serving political philosophers who would argue that sea waters are rising because the burden of taxes on the affluent is making the globe flatter with each passing day. The club's president is a former congressman from Indiana, Chris Chocola, who once boasted that his old manufacturing business sold most of its stuff overseas. I'm not sure how that will figure into the blitz against Charlie Crist. But we should look for it in clues posted at Tea Party rallies.

Rubio has also won the endorsement of the usual commandos, transient people we've come to recognize from other right-wing stages. That would include ex-Gov Mike Huckabee, and Sens. Jim DeMint and Jim Inhofe, as well as the folks from the forever purifying Family Research Council. They are framing their crusade on the necessity to avoid sending any old Republican to Washington but rather someone we can all trust not to be the neighborhood grocer with a left thumb on the scale.

So far Charlie Crist has survived the third party's assaults, leading Rubio 50-28 in the polls. But by TP logic that losing is winning, , they will doubtless be more inspired by an earlier poll in which the score was 50-35. With those kind of numbers in their tank, it wouldn't be surprising if they extended their reach into other campaigns. If it worked in a heavily Republican district in New York, even South Chicago could be next.

It's quite confusing, I know. But hang on. It will take a little time to figure out the rules of this revolution.