On Corker
It’s no secret that I am no fan of Bob Corker. I’m also not a fan of Harold Ford.
This morning on local talk radio, HHH interviewed ol’ Bob. This was the first time I’ve heard Bob speaking off the cuff. Bob’s message was simple:
My personal opinion is that, while Ford talks the talk, he doesn’t walk the walk. His voting record is inconsistent and opportunistic. I’d like, for example, to think that Ford really is as conservative and pro-gun as he says he is. But his ties with the big government, nanny statists mentioned above means I don’t believe him.
Corker, I’m not a fan of either. He doesn’t have a voting record. His record as Chattanooga mayor is mixed. He’s been caught lying. And I think he’s a pussy.
Ordinarily, backing by Schumer (spit), Kennedy, Clinton, Kerry, etc. would be enough for me to support the opposition. And that’s the case now, but I ain’t happy about it. And, while I’m not happy with Republicans, I damn sure don’t want the Democrats in charge.
Update: And, as Xrlq points out in comments, future supreme court nominees are potentially at risk here. Definitely something I don’t want happening when folks with Ds after their names are in power. And this ain’t the time to farting around with that.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Corker may be marginally better than Ford, but with no voting record what do we know? For example, he SAYS he supports the 2nd Amendment, as do most of them, but often that means they will ALLOW hunters and target shooters the PRIVILEGE of keeping thier guns. That’s what Bill Clinton used to say. I suppose on that issue a more sepcific legislative question is to ask how if Corker and Ford if they would support the re-enactment of the so-called “assault weapons ban” which was really a semi-auto weapons ban on effective self-defense rifles. If they support that or waffle, then you know that they do NOT believe in teh wrods of teh 2nd Amendment by any stretch.
Another good question to ask is how they stand on the subversion of our nstion into a North American Union; the agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations being clandestinely pushed by Bush and no doubt supported by other CFR-globalists in both major party establishments.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:24 am
If you care about getting Kelo reversed, vote for Corker. If the Republicans keep the Senate it will not guarantee that we get a new Supreme Court Justice who understands the takings clause, but if they lose it it will pretty well guarantee that we won’t.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:25 am
Yeah, supreme court nominees are a huge reason as well.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:08 am
Definitely something I don’t want happening when folks with Ds after their names are in power. And this ain’t the time to farting around with that.
Are GOP court appoints really that important to you? Abortion, gay rights, strengthing the power of the executive and so forth?
September 7th, 2006 at 10:10 am
AC, fair question, if a smarmy one. But to me, more important issues (property rights, gun rights, etc.) are on the table.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Not sure about Corker and Kelo. The City of Chattanooga processed several eminent domain proceedings on several homes while he was Mayor. As a developer, I bet Corker plowed over several private properties to make a buck or two.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Both Corker and Ford are awful. Ford is by far the superior candidate. If I could believe him I could vote for him. Ford’s associates, friends, and masters make him too dangerous.
Corker was and is a shrewd businessman, normally a plus. Corker’s associates, friends, and masters make him too dangerous.
So what to do? I had decided not to vote for either man. But Uncle would call me a pussy and he would be right. A choice must be made. Not voting in this race is a cop out. Don’t be a pussy.
I have to vote for one of them. I will take a small puke bag with me and vote for Corker. I guess I should think carefully about what I eat for breakfast election day.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Xrlq:
If you care about getting Kelo reversed, vote for Corker.
Baloney. Last I checked, Bush still gets to make the nominations, irrespective of who’s in control of the Senate. I suspect he’s highly unlikely to nominate a lib’rul activist judge in the unlikely event he no longer controls the Senate in ’07.
And as AC points out, even if you’re right, you may get Kelo back, but you’re also likely to get massively expanded executive power, just in time for a D to get back into the white house, and I doubt that’s what anyone here really wants. Even if implausible, imagine President Hillary with the sort of sweeping executive powers the Bush Administration is trying to claim for itself.
In a way, I wish you were right, and it were a choice between “liberal activist” judges and “restrained originalist” judges, but it’s not. The Republicans will nominate socially authoritarian justices who support a unitary executive, which in my opinion is the opposite of restrained jurisprudence.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Oh, and by the way, Uncle, how do you reconcile this:
Ford is the most liberal congressman Tennessee has and he votes 88% of the time with Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
with this?
[Ford’s] voting record is inconsistent and opportunistic.
Which is it? He’s a partisan liberal who votes with the far left the vast majority of the time? Or he’s an inconsistent opportunist who votes whatever’s politically expedient? You can’t have it both ways, unless you take the mystifying view that voting with the “far left” is “politically expedient” the vast majority of the time.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:44 am
I don’t. One is Corker’s assertion. One is mine. I did note here his inconsisten and opportunistic voting record on guns, though.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:50 am
SayUncle, I always enjoy coming to your site to get a different perspective. Its easy for us East Coast (in my case East TN) liberals to simply jump from liberal blog to liberal blog without ever challenging our world view.
With that said, your comment section inevitably turns into the Who’s Who of Tennessee militias. Not that I blame them. Even a liberal like myself has thought about getting a gun that could be useful against organized armies. It wasn’t until we got this cowboy president that I ever thought the state of government could deteriate so much that we would need to defend ourselves against it.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Why does this years campaign seem entirely based on why we shouldn’t vote Democrat? Can’t the come up with any reasons why we should vote Republican?
September 7th, 2006 at 11:54 am
You say that like it’s a bad thing. You’re probably in the militia too and just don’t know it.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Oh and by the way, according to WBIR, Ford voted more conservatively that 92% of democrats in the house. If your assertion is correct, that would mean Kenneddy and Hillary are pretty conservative. Don’t know who’s numbers to trust on this one… Where’d you get those stats?
September 7th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Not my stats. Corker’s stats.
September 7th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Then I definately don’t believe it. The only way Corker wins this election is if he gets his base so scared of liberals they turn out in droves.
Ford ain’t no liberal. And I wish Corker would stop shooting at straw men and start campaigning on issues. Every single one of Ford’s ads hits on one of his platforms. What do Corkers ads prove. That he’s a businessman and his mom likes to talk over him…
September 7th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Irrelevant. No one is nominating Corker to the Supreme Court. All that matters is that Republicans would likely vote to confirm judges Ford would likely reject.
If the Republicans had controlled the Senate in 1987, Justice Bork would have (probably) voted to endorse the Kelo decision, and Justice Kennedy wouldn’t have been around to vote the other way. Kennedy isn’t on the bench because Reagan set out to nominagte a lub’rul activist; he’s there because a Democrat Senate made Kennedy the best he could do.
September 7th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Guess we’d better not elect Hillary President, then.
September 7th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
no, i wouldn’t. not voting or voting 3rd party are options i can respect. I’ve even done it.
September 7th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
If he doesn’t control the Senate, he’ll have to nominate lib’rul activist judges in order to avoid having gaps in the court or, worse, leave a court with many openings available for a possible Dem win in 2008, at which point expect to see folks like Churchill nominated.
I’d be quite happy to lose a women’s right to choose (to destroy something we’re not sure counts as human) or homosexual rights (to redefine a word just to sate their id), if it meant keeping property from unreasonable police actions or my right to protect myself from the Democrats and Euroweenies of the world.
September 7th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
#9 and SayUncle,
I’m gonna “waste my vote” (as the ruling elites instruct us not to do) on independent Emory “Bo” Heyward. Having corresponded with him, he’s a true Constitutional conservative who fully supports the 2nd Amendment and all the Bill of Rights and also opposes the CFR-globalist agenda like open borders, NAFTA, CAFTA and the North American Union now being planned in the shadows by our supposed “conservative” President.
#9, I really like your statement about Ford He is a well-spoken candidate but….”his associates, friends and masters make him too dangerous.” That really explains my thinking perfectly after the consummate globalist traitor, Bill Clinton, came to town to support Ford AND when CFR-globalist puppet Bush came to town to support Corker.
September 7th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Personally, I think that Corker is a joke. Either Hilleary or Bryant would have been infinitely better. However, this situation reminds me of what happened when David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana against the notoriously corrupt Edwin Edwards. Reluctant Edwards supporters put out a bumper sticker that said “Vote for the Crook, Its Important!” As mucg as I dislike Corker, electing Jr. Fraud (Ford) would be an unmitigated disaster. Therefore, I would like to propose the following slogan expressing the sentiment that we should hold our nses and vote for Corker: “VOTE FOR THE PUSSY, ITS IMPORTANT!”
September 8th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Ron W beat me to it, but sounds like this guy is right up your alley:
http://www.boforsenate.com/issues.htm
(See #12)
September 8th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Heh. Bo is a little too hard core, even for me.
September 8th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Too “hardcore” for ya, huh, Uncle? Well then, vote for one of the soft men to go with the others, plenty of which we already got in D.C.
Refer back to TDL’s final comment for clarification and emphasis.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:13 am
[…] Even though I’ve stated that I’ll likely vote for Corker merely due to Harold Ford’s ties and loyalty to the big government, nanny statists like Schumer, Clinton and Kennedy, Ford is running a better campaign. Corker is losing ground and it’s Corker’s fault. […]
September 13th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Xrlq:
Sorry I’m late, but I had to respond to this:
Kennedy isn’t on the bench because Reagan set out to nominagte a lub’rul activist; he’s there because a Democrat Senate made Kennedy the best he could do.
You say that as if it’s a bad thing. I don’t think that it is. I’d rather have a moderate than a liberal activist or a conservative activist (or, as in Bork’s case, a crazy person).
In fact, if I were King-o-Constitution for a day, I would require a 2/3 approval in the Senate for any judicial nomination, something I’ve stated before. Judicial appointments are far too important to allow a transient slim majority stack the courts with their dream judges. I’d say the same thing if my party were the one in control of everything, by the way.
Bottom line is, every justice out there should be someone that very few partisans are happy with, and nearly all partisans can live with.
Guess we’d better not elect Hillary President, then.
Yeah, but sooner or later, it’s bound to happen. If not her, then someone you like and trust and agree with nearly as much. Then what?
Maybe you’re right, and maybe the thumb-sucking “oh my God the gays and terrorists are going to get us” conservatives will stay in power forever, but that seems highly unlikely.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:13 am
TGirsch:
The moderates on the bench are the most activist of all, unless by “activist” you mean “consistent” or “principled.” For those of us who define it in terms of judges asserting raw power and ruling according to their own whims, the two “moderates” on the Rehnquist Court, Justices Kennedy and O’Connor, were the worst of the lot. YMMV, but in any event, recall the context of my original statement: if Uncly-Wuncly cares about getting Kelo reversed, then he should help re-elect a Republican Senate this fall. Whether Justice/Philospher-King Kennedy was “good” or “bad” in a vacuum is beside the point. He certainly wasn’t “good” from the perspective of anyone who feels strongly that Kelo was decided incorrectly.
Then it will suck to be me. Elections have consequences.
Come to think of it, it would also suck not to be me, as the bad policies of the Democratic Party are not just bad for me in particular; they’re bad for society in general. Nevertheless, I’m not interested in creating a Hillary-proof government. Any government system that boxes in a bad President enough to prevent him from doing real damage is a system that also hamstrings good Presidents to the point where they can’t do their jobs.
As long as Democrats persist in lumping the thumb-sucking “oh my God the gays are going to get us” conservatives together with anyone who takes terrorism seriously, you may as well get used to your minority status. Idiotarian foreign policy didn’t sell well during the Cold War, and it isn’t going to sell well now, either. The only reason it sold (or at least, wasn’t a deal-breaker) in the 1990s was because so many of us (myself included) had deluded ourselves into thinking we didn’t have any real enemies left. Since 9/11, that doesn’t work anymore, and neither does whining about eeeeeevil Republicans trying to “politicize” terrorism by pointing out the two parties’ grossly disparate policies in combating it. The only way for the Democrats to neutralize the war on terror is to get 100% behind it, and tell Michael Moore, George Soros, Moveon.org and anyone else with a Vietnam fixation to go fuck themselves. I hope I’m wrong, but somehow I don’t see y’all going back to being the party of Zell Miller, Scoop Jackson, Harry Truman or even JFK anytime soon. Until you do, enjoy your proverbial 40 years in the wilderness. Meanwhile, I’ll lose no sleep over the prospect of President Hillary; she’ll never even make it past the primary.