You’ll note that this was McNerny’s position as well. He knows his republican colleagues, and in the cloakroom they express their dismay at the awful situation in Iraq. So, because he knows, personally, that their hearts are in the right place, he doesn’t want to pressure them.

I also recall that while MacNerney was telling people to back off his case, he said that those in Republican Congressional districts should be pressuring THEIR REPRESENTATIVES. Seems a bit hypocritical…don’t we elect people like MacNerney to put some HEAT on their recalcitrant colleagues.

In their quest to get the Veto Proof Majority (VPM) they will have to sink to the position of the very last Republican that will bring them to that 67% majority. And that person is unlikely to be even as “moderate” as Senator John “5000 reduction by January” Warner.

These are going to be vitriolic Pugs like Congressman Dan Lungren or Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson!

So when they shoot for the VPM they are gonna have to sell out their principles…to get nothing. NOTHING!

And why should we support them when they simply become Republicans? Because they give friendly dinner parties?

Peterr @ 79

The Netroots appeal for Darcy has brought out almost 2000 contributors, who’ve put in an average $35 each so far.

Reichert is looking to use Bush to get 50 GOP bigwigs to contribute $10,000.

How’s that for a snapshot of the political approach of the two parties?

How can he raise $10,000 per contributor without running afoul of FEC limits? Will only some of this go to his campaign and the rest to the local or national party? Surely $10,000 is well over the limit.

Definitely…if it is only for his campaign…and it doesn’t matter if some of it goes for the “food” or “production costs”. That’s not allowed. That’s in the “campaign expenditure” column and the limit is on the size of the CONTRIBUTION.

Could someone explain this to me? We are all limited to giving some amount of money to a candidate. Offhand, I can’t recall if that amount is $2500 or $3000, but it’s something like that. How can politicians charge $10K per person for an event? This doesn’t make sense to me.

The personal contribution limit is IIRC $4200. Those events are “party events” where you give money to the National Committees…which I believe is “unlimited”. In reality, then, you can give vast amounts to campaigns…if one is willing to trust the Party to funnel your contributions “correctly”.

Another point…you can give as much as you want to PAC’s…and these can focus the contributions to candidates as well…thus you could give $4200 to the candidate directly (per year), then give X amount to the DNC (which could funnel, say $25,000 to that candidate), and then you could give to a bunch of PAC’s – who then could give even more to the candidate.

And you can have your relatives donate, after giving them their “allowance”. Check out all the “Housewives” that somehow pony up that $4200 to multiple Congressional candidates and are somehow flush enough to plop down $25K for the RNC. I guess that means the Conservatives really do appreciate that “housekeeping” is worthy of decent pay ;-) pity they don’t treat their “foreign help” the same way.

Essentially the spending laws really don’t prevent anything

I have worked very hard to support Webb and Baird. To watch them attacked here is painful. These are men who are far ahead of their districts. We need to reward the increment. Where there is progress, we need to chime in and say yes, you’re not perfect but you are so much better than what was there before.

McNerney too.

But if we are just going to say well you aren’t Prince Charming and so to hell with you, I cannot be part of that.

Right!

Don’t let Perfect be the enemy of the Good.

jayackroyd @ 21

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. the consensus view in Washington is that the US will remain in Iraq indefinitely.

Of course, or they would not have built the embassy and the permanent bases. … They must have had the plan to build that embassy for years. Who drew up the plans? Who ordered the plans to be drawn up? Who is the architect, and who paid him and when?

Wouldn’t it be marvelous to track down that information? Somehow I’d bet good money it was all in place before Bush took office in 2001.

And I’m certain the “old” Soviets had numerous “surges” in Afghanistan in an attempt to give their Kabul puppet government breathing space, countless “surges” spanning almost the entire decade of the 1980s, costing the “old” Soviet military forces thousands in casualties while stuck in the Afghani quagmire.

So, the Bush administration has gotten us stuck in a similar quagmire in Iraq, repeating the same mistakes the “old” Soviets made in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Will the outcome be similar?

The similarities between Afghanistan of the 1980s and the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq of today are striking. Warlords. Tribal enmity. Sectarian butchery. The increasing influence of sharia-spouting religious sects, with their murderous followers enforcing sharia, purging Iraq of any secular freedom. “Players” from outside Iraq financing and arming groups inside Iraq. Iraq today sounds an awful lot like Afghanistan twenty years ago, with the Bush mal-administration having taken the place of the “old” Soviet mal-administration, with Iraq having replaced Afghanistan as the quagmire to end all quagmires.

The question is, though, will Bush’s misadventure in Iraq shatter the United States just as the “old” Soviet Union’s misadventure in Aghanistan led to the break-up of the Soviet Union almost twenty years ago?

Elitist conservative warmongers, whether neo-con Republicans or neo-con Communists, always seem to be good at destroying things, as they embark on one imperialistic conquest after another, don’t they?

The United States of America will be lucky to survive the eight years of the Bush administration, the most lying and thieving administration in American history.

=====================

Or could there be some MAJOR DLC party disclipline/threats/career bribes going on?

Have a read of Glenn Greenwald and then explain to me what HRC’s Feingold-Reid and supplemental vote was about…

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html

argh Democrats are really making me sick at the moment.

We can be pure, or we can make progress against those who will steal our country forever and not give it back.

Your choice.

And exactly how do I “choose” and correctly identify, egregious, between simply “imperfect humans” and “those who will steal our country forever and not give it back?” That’s what I tried to point out above: we, as constituents, desperately need to accurately make just that vital distinction in order to know whom to oppose and whom to support for federal office.

You have the luxury of personal knowledge of Baird to buttress your support of his incumbency. We do not. [I do not know which side of this divide Brian Baird falls on. I’m reserving judgement.]

So castigating us as foolish advocates of “purity” of some sort in those who represent us [too “purely” in favor of our Constitution perhaps?] because we are simply trying to make exactly the same determination that you have already made about Baird (through public analysis rather than through the personal interaction you had with Baird) seems to be a wildly-off-the-mark accusation about our efforts here.

I’m saying that there are those of us who have put everything on the line to push things forward in an imperfect political world and it’s pretty easy to be an armchair quarterback but not so pleasant to suffer the consequences. I’m kind of hurting right now from those consequences so you will excuse me if I don’t think that political purity is the holy grail. You want to make a difference in Washington? Then deal with the imperfect human beings who are there and those of us who know and work with them. Make them into the evil enemy, that’s shooting our own. Not helpful. We may yet go down, but please don’t accelerate the process by taking down very good people who want to make things better here.