Skip to main content

I'm not too proud to say this:

I'm actually starting to respect Frank Luntz. Grover Nordquist (kumquat!) is still another matter. But Luntz actually has some good advice in his WaPo editorial today:
Be bold, return to basics, stop telling, start asking, focus on results, abolish "earmarks" and embrace a permanent balanced budget.

As a pollster, I rarely hear voters call for smaller government. They tell me that they want more efficient and more effective government.
He's talking to Republicans, but any politician with a brain should be listening. I was particularly interested in what Florida Republicans had done:

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio challenged his colleagues to create an agenda for the future with "100 Innovative Ideas" from ordinary people around the state. Instead of fundraisers, they held "idea raisers." Republicans, Democrats and independents were all welcome -- any idea that advanced the principles of good government and political accountability was considered.

It wasn't a political ploy. They released their "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future" after the election. And Republican legislators got back in touch with constituents.

But the next two paragraphs are what really got me:

But what did national Republicans do as the new Congress convened and Democrats began pushing through their "Six for '06" proposals in the first 100 hours? They called a news conference not to present counter-proposals to guide the minority over the next two years, but to complain that the Democrats were treating them unfairly. They objected that the committee process was being skirted and members were denied opportunities to offer amendments.

Were Republicans standing up for retirement security, control over health-care decisions or economic freedom? No. They were upset over who was or was not allowed to offer amendments on the floor. (Note to Republicans: Americans don't care.)

"Note to Republicans:..." Hah. Yes, make me laugh, and my respect for you goes up.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Foodies vs. Libertarians, Round Two

Round One wasn't really a fight, but whatever. Caught your attention, right? Elyzabethe posted about Montgomery County's trans fat ban, which inspired my post last week on the Guerrilla Nutrition Labels, which inspired her response . Well, over on my new favorite website, Culinate, there is a review of a --I guess you could call it a debate--between food and agriculture writer Michael Pollen, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Apparently, Mackey impressed the Berkeley crowd with his commitment to reforming the food system. I have no doubt he's genuine, either, but this article points out some of the facts he left out of his (seriously) PowerPoint presentation. What got me especially (no surprise to anyone who heard me ramble on about Spinach and e.coli last semester) was his classification of Earthbound Farm as a group of small organic farms banding together under one brand name, allowing him to say that 78% of Whole Foods produce comes from small farms. I call bull...
Read more

He leaves "apropos" in the dust.

All the H.U. graduates in the audience (hello? anyone?) know to which theater professor I'm referring to above. I've now found a man that puts his verbal stutter to shame. I now have a professor that says "okayyy?" at the end of EVERY SENTENCE. In an unspecified Eastern European accent. Also? "Relatability" does NOT mean "related to." Someone tell the class. (Yes, I am being a bad student and emailing during class. Ahh, wireless campus.)
2 comments
Read more

Something's been bothering me

...since my post last week about the anti-Rove protest on campus. A bit of an identity crisis. Here I am, someone who has had major life-altering experiences (drug-free, thank you) at a May Day protest years ago, putting down activists I agree with. Have I become cold and heartless? Well, no. I realized early on that protests and radical actions were not my thing. But they work for some people, and I was assigned an article for a class that reminded me that even if they don't directly affect change, radical actions do have reasons: Activist organizations use disruptive image events, which are highly charged protests that involve visuals such as people being buried up to their necks in roads and grandparents chaining themselves to trees (DeLuca, 1999). Such events rarely put an immediate stop to the things activist organizations protest; however, according to a Greenpeace campaigner, success is judged by the protestors’ abilities to reduce complex issues to symbols that disrupt pe...
2 comments
Read more