For John, BLUF: Sun Columnist Cheers for Sen Warren going on the offensive. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Sunday Columnist Michael Goldman, writing in The [Lowell] Sun, has a potpourri of things, ending with praise for Senator Elizabeth Warren for not showing Freshman restraint.♠
One final moment to muse, if you please, on the biggest political surprise of 2013, that being the way Massachusetts' new U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is kicking butt and taking names down in D.C.Of course, at the same time we have Texas Freshman Senator Ted Cruz being criticized in the Press for being out there expressing his views and fighting for what he thinks is right.
Is there balance out there? What about down in Boston, where Mr Goldman has his office?
Regards — Cliff
♠ Remember, articles in The Sun go away after a while, to a different place. I will not be updating their links unless I am bedridden and have read every book in the house. And, besides, the Editor tells me the links cost money after a few weeks. It is the new business model.
6 comments:
According to the current political world view.....Sacajawarren is to be praised because even if she is decidedly left/progressive, she is right (as in politically acceptable) and Cruz is....well Right which is wrong. That is about as deep as today's "electorate" wants or is able to go.
Apparently though, "kicking ass and taking names" is the preferred evidence of political action and personal political advancement. Quietly working behind the scene by those who are...well.....less endowed...is well....so pedestrian and inconsequential as to warrant even a off handed comment by the MSM. Only those glorious few are made into icons for the outspoken extreme loyalty to the party screed.
And we wonder why we have so many intractable problems.
My feeds are chock full of "conservative" complaints about Betsy's outspokenness. (The latest twist her words to imply she's favoring a $22 minimum wage). I'm not sure the treatment is any different for Mr. Cruz. One can easily find criticism from D's about R's, and from R's about D's. What is truly missing is cogent discourse about what is actually being said. Betsy has a point--productivity is up, and capital risk is down, (bailouts, etc.), yet wealth has been flowing away from workers and towards owners despite all this. That has to be addressed. If you're suggesting that McCain and Feinstein's rebukes of Cruz are somehow being distorted by the press by printing them, then you are comparing apples to oranges. To my knowledge, Betsy has been scrupulously respectful in her comments, even while she is pointed and unrelenting in her points. Cruz has chosen a few ad hominem issues (his method of critizing Hagel via questioning the source of his back balances comes to mind) and raised hackles as a result. Fair is fair.
I just thought that the MSM was treating Senator Cruz like he was being Upitty while giving praise to Senator Warren for same. Having said that, I do recognize that Professor Warren is being groomed by the [Democratic Party?] Establishment to be the Barack Obama of 2016. I am sure the thought of a hick like Senator Cruz as a possible presidential candidate is just stomach turning for the Intelligentsia.
Regards — Cliff
The difference for me is the opportunities being taken to put words on record. Cruz is, it would appear, prioritizing the lobbing of verbal hand grenades from the peanut gallery whenever the press is putting a microphone in his face. Warren by contrast, and as far as I can tell, and I would welcome information to the contrary, preferring to prioritize her public commentary via her hearing testimony, and those comments are being made with all possible politeness in those venues, which, we can all agree, doesn't dull the partisan edge of those comments as she refuses to be budged from making them. But it's different to repeatedly ask "what steps did you take to..." when being ambiguously told by some banker that steps were taken, than it is to jump up to a microphone to question a nominee about the source of his bank balance to the exclusion of other lines of questioning. I like substance over personality. For now, Cruz errs in one direction while Warren carefully hews to a different line.
Which is to say, I would LOVE if Cruz were to start finding platforms from which to question the administration on the Big Pharma subsidies inherent in Obamacare, rather than pile onto a member of his own party with insinuations that can't be supported. But he doesn't. And that's on HIM, not the media.
Cruz is a very junior hot head trying to "make a name" by being a firebrand. The problem is that you have to earn your stripes before you can wear that mantle...and by then..you learn also how to wear it with appropriate and TIMELY decorum. He won't be around long enough to acquire the necessary experience.
The media is very definitely biased and so sets up its exposure so that the unwary trap themselves...even the wary...or just plain stupid as in John McCain and his angry birds blunder.
Frankly, the GOP is getting what it is setting itself up for. You can score points and win games if all you play is good defense. The "loyal opposition" needs to go on the offensive...but do so with issues that matter and do so without BEING offensive. Beyond that, the GOP needs to refute much of what the liberals are saying and doing.....but in order to do it...you have to put together a salable alternative plan and sell it on the merits rather than on vacuous criticism of what the Dems are doing. So far, in every major forum, the Republicans have failed to use the obvious opportunities presented to them....Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Energy fiascos right and left, foreign policy blunders beyond imagination.....and yet...in every instance....they have reacted like third graders.
One reason IMHO that the Dems are getting a free ride at the moment is that people are so sick and tired of the childish innuendo and the lack of anything resembling progress on IMPORTANT issues...that they have tuned out and turned off.
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