Shameless Chambliss

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Shameless Chambliss
33
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 8:00am

Senator Saxby Chambliss is in a runoff election with Jim Martin in Georgia. Chambliss is the guy who in 2002 took out Max Cleland, a former U.S. Senator, triple-amputee disabled US Army veteran of the Vietnam War, decorated war hero, and a critic of the Bush Administration. In the 2002 election, Chambliss stooped to run an infamous ad blasting an image of Cleland next to Osama bin Laden.

Then Chambliss was content to go right along with Bush and his failed policies for the past six years. Now
Chambliss expects people to reelect him for it.

How is Chambliss expecting to get himself reelected? By using the same hit-em-low fear tactics that Bush used to get himself reelected and that Chambliss used to defeat Cleland in 2002.

You can watch Chamblis' latest ad here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#27669978 , complete with fear music playing as the narrator says Obama is a scary liberal and shows his opponent Martin holding a sign reading "Women for Obama." I don't know about you, but Obama doesn't sound so much like a scary liberal to me. In fact, many think he's right of center. Instead, Obama sounds a lot like hope. And what is up with the prominently featured picture of the "women for Obama" sign in the Chambliss ad? Weird mind games I guess.

This is nothing new. Chambliss has a history of whipping people up with baloney:

"Chambliss was criticized for remarks he made during a November 19, 2001 meeting with emergency responders in Valdosta, Georgia, where he said that they should "turn the sheriff loose and arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line." "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxby_Chambliss

By the way, let's compare Chambliss and Martin's military service, which is always a good baloney barometer:

"In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, Chambliss was given five student deferments and he received a medical deferment (1-Y) for bad knees due to a football injury."

"From 1969 to 1971, Martin served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War."

Just like Bush in 2000 and 2004, Chambliss was the wrong choice in 2002. Nothing makes him any better today.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 6:49pm

<And people dare to wonder why Congress didn't get anything done.>


I'm not sure the public understands that either.

Sopal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-05-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 7:59pm
Not. (yawns)
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 8:38pm

"Our country always does better under divided government."

Somehow I'm guessing that's not what you were saying in 2002, 2004 and 2006. You were trashing Democrats, not calling for "divided government." Now that the tables are turned, so are your standards. But whatever.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 8:40pm

"I don't expect the Democrats to "reach across the aisle"."

Maybe you are the only person in America that didn't notice that Obama already has courted and received endorsements from prominent Republicans like Powell. Guess you didn't notice the stories about Obama keeping on Gates, or asking Hagel to serve in his cabinet. Guess in your mind it's all just ultra-evil-liberal lies lies lies. At least that's what all the Fox-Republican officials and politicians say whenever they talk about anyone different from themselves.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 8:41pm

"many on the 'losing' side said although they wanted M to win, they hoped the house wasn't stacked ... same as many of those on the O side. Many here on this board have been discussing for months their desire for a more united government."

Funny, that's not what I recall at all. It was clearly I want my Republicans all the way from the Republicans.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 9:19pm

I get the feeling that the thread about Chambliss is more about the Democrats hoping for a super-majority in Congress.

Setting aside Chambliss' campaign tactics, it would be best for the nation as a whole if Chambliss got back in, or if Stevens or Coleman win their elections.

A filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate is baaaaaad news. There would be NOTHING to keep them emulating Republicans and their follies for the first six years of BushCo.

Gettingahandle


Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.


Facts stifle the will, hobble conviction.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:15pm

"There would be NOTHING to keep them emulating Republicans and their follies for the first six years of BushCo. "

Actually there would be plenty. Obama, for starters. And the specter of how badly the Republicans just messed up when they were in control. Plus there's the fact that even if the Democrats were to win the last 3 seats in contention, they would still have to rely on Lieberman, who is no longer a Democrat and campaigned for McCain after all.

Bottom line is that people should vote for the right people. There is little risk that voting out the baddies will somehow tip the balance in a way that will hurt America more than keeping these baddies in power another six years. Haven't we seen how "bad means justify supposed good ends" hasn't worked over the past 8 years?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:51pm

The writers of the Constitution knew that there was a need for checks and balances. I voted for Obama but fully know that "absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely". Obama himself is not immune to that truism.

Nor do I want the party which controls the White House to have a super-majority in the Senate. Democrats are just as human, just as fallible, and just as prone to forget lessons of history as Republicans. Daily reminders of the need to work for consensus are wonderful checks against arrogance, hubris, and power-based stupidity.

Voters should cast ballots for the senator they feel will serve their state's needs. But I don't see any reason to characterize one party as "good" and another as "bad' since over time both have shown aspects of good and bad.

Gettingahandle


Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.


Facts stifle the will, hobble conviction.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 11:12pm

""absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely". Obama himself is not immune to that truism."

Great quote. Looked up the origin:

"This arose as a quotation by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.""

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.html

And good point gettingahandle, and well made. I respectfully disagree. Case in point, the Great Depression is an example where America needed the Democrats to control not just the Presidency but sweeping majorities in Congress to get us out of the mess caused by Republican control of the Presidency and Congress. I don't know if FDR could have done it with those horrible failed Republicans who were the cause of the Great Depression squawking with power and cyaing.

So it doesn't always work the way you are rightly afraid of. In a similar situation the opposite was true in fact.

That said, you have a good point.

Conservative Republican columnist David Brooks of all people addressed it:

"Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be "a very mediocre senator," he was is surrounded by what Brooks called "by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party."

"He's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team," Brooks said. "I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive.""

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2100839/posts

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 11:15pm

And why is McCain lapsing again? I was just beginning to like him again.

This is what McCain said of Shameless Chambliss' bin Ladin attack ad on a fellow Vietnam war hero vet who suffered even worse than McCain in Vietnam:

""I'd never seen anything like that ad," said Sen. McCain, himself a Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war, in July 2003. "Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield. It's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible.""

Now McCain is going down to campaign for Chambliss.

America - be bold. Keep doing the right thing. Don't vote for guys like Chambliss anymore. They got us into this mess and they certainly aren't going to help get us out.