October 25, 2002

I watched this all before. Paul Wellstone died. Much crying and gnashing of teeth here.  Sometimes Paul could make Teddy look like a moderate. Paul Wellstone was a real hero of mine.

The Dems were out of power anyway. But if you recall, for one brief shining moment we had 51 dems in the senate when somebody switched sides.

So what could the repubs do to turn this all around into their favor back then?

Well Jesse Ventura, the Navy Seal, the wrestler who wore boas and the governor of Minnesota was mad at the dems. Do not forget this. I will return to this later.

Dems stood up and gave speeches at the funeral, cried like babies and the repubs yelled foul.

Rick Kahn, the eulogist for U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone who ignited a firestorm of protest after his impassioned (and some said partisan) memorial speech, does not regret his words that night, saying they were not a political rallying call but a cry from the heart.

During his remarks to 20,000 people at Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota, Kahn exhorted Republicans in the audience to join in the Wellstone cause and urged U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad and other Republicans to back Wellstone's replacement on the ballot.

After the resulting controversy, Democratic candidates' numbers plummeted, Republican campaign coffers filled and talk radio telephone lines blinked.  http://www.startribune.com/local/11577176.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

This was dated November 8, 2002 at my Star/Tribune.

Norm Coleman won the election. Walter Mondale had agreed to run in Wellstone's place but this crazy mood took over and Coleman won.

Coleman, of course, ended up an embarrassment to the State of Minnesota.  Wiki gives us some gold:

Coleman had made plans for a second run for governor in 2002, but was persuaded by Karl Rove and George W. Bush to run against incumbent Senator Paul Wellstone in that year's Senate election. The White House was determined to unseat Wellstone, and felt Coleman, with his popularity in heavily Democratic St. Paul, offered the best chance of doing so. Coleman easily won the Republican nomination.

In April 2003, Coleman told a Capitol Hill reporter that he was a "99% improvement" over Wellstone because he had a better working relationship with the White House.

You bet he did. I mean Norman had a wonderful relationship with the White House. Among his duties:

·  Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

• Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration
• Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Ranking Member)

A hundred billion dollars going to Cheney's company and subsidiaries thereof, and there was Norman. Outsourcing out of control.  Graft at its highest level in history.

Norman could have done something. He could have been a Harry Truman. He could have raised holy hell. BUT HE HAD A BETTER RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WHITE HOUSE.

Goodbye Norman, wished I had never knew ye.

The repubs, of course, would like a repub senator from Massachusetts, but I would like a new car and a summer home in the Caribbean.  But how can they possibly come out ahead on this mess?

Ingraham: "[T]he Democrats are playing the death card again." During the August 27 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Ingraham stated, "Remember when the funeral service for Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was under way and it turned into a raucous Democratic campaign rally for Walter Mondale? It was embarrassing and exploitative, and we know how that one turned out." She continued: "Now the Democrats are playing the death card again, wrapping their wildly unpopular health care bill in the sentimental gauze of Ted Kennedy's memory."

Tantaros: "[L]ast week, they played the God card. Now ... they're playing the death card." Later in the program, following Ingraham's statement that "what's happening with the Democratic Party and the attempt to use his death to ram this bill through, I think is frankly disgusting," Tantaros said: "Well, that's absolutely right. I mean, last week, they played the God card. Now, as you said in your memo, they're playing the death card. And I think it is pretty pitiful when you have to invoke the memory of a deceased senator to get your bill through."  http://mediamatters.org/research/200908280010?lid=1061451&rid=33968779

Or this tidbit in Politico:

"Remember Paul Wellstone's death? You know, 'Let's do everything for Paul.' And we're now being implored to get behind Obamacare because it's what Ted Kennedy would have wanted," he said, according to the liberal media monitor Media Matters, which is in turn suggesting that conservatives have crossed the line with allegations of politicization.

The H.S.A. Coalition, a lobbying group devoted to tax-free health savings accounts -- championed by conservatives as a health care solution -- warned supporters to "watch for the Wellstone effect." 

"The Democrats should remember their experience with the Sen. Wellstone funeral," wrote the group's president, Dan Perrin. "While I disagreed with almost everything Sen. Kennedy stood for, the MSM [mainstream media] subjecting the country to a Sen. Wellstone-type funeral experience, would be using him like a cheap suit    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26514.html

I am going to leave out that obscenity rush as well as shitforbrains beck...whats the use?

THEY think they can spin this and end up with some result on the health care legislation that benefits their constituency--the health care industry. See, they will claim that the dems have taken a tragedy and attempted to make political paydirt out of it, blah, blah blah.

And then hope the MSM will take the cue and attack the dems. Okay?

No. Jesse Ventura is not the President of the United States. One of the few proofs I have that there is a god.

Jesse was an independent and for some reason he was really mad at the dems and so it was he as governor who screwed the pooch for the dems in November of 2002 and left us with one of our worst senators in history. If Jesse had come out and said:

Hey, we will all miss Senator Wellstone, I will appoint Walter Mondale as interim Senator, a man I admired for years and this republican crap about turning a funeral into a political rally is a bunch of shit.

Mondale would have once again been our Senator. Easy as that.

Jesse had the ear of independents in this state. Coleman squeaked out with 61,000 votes out of two and a half million votes and that was that.

This aint gonna work for the repubs nationally like it did in 2002.  NFW.

HuffPo makes a nice argument against the spin by repubs:

"[N]o one wants to politicize the death of a recent president," the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, bluntly declared during a July 13, 2004, appearance on Fox News Sunday. "But you know what? The Bush campaign should. And, in my view, they should go out with an ad next week, a very respectful ad about President Reagan and say, We have a disagreement. George W. Bush is a Reaganite. John Kerry thought the Reagan presidency was a period of moral darkness." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/28/conservatives-warning-aga_n_271332.html

And all this will be played and replayed over and over again until SOME DAMN BILL COMES OUT OF BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS.

See, we here at Café already know that the repubs have no moral ground upon which to step. We know that the lies will just continue to emanate from the fascist outlets. That is a given.

The point is whether or not, in this instance, MSM will give in to repubs and simply state:

Does the Sun in fact revolve around the earth? YOU DECIDE. We leave it up to you.

No. Not this time.