Friday Afternoon Roundup - The Fall of the House of Kennedy
Written by Daniel Greenfield
SATURDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2010 07:40
Witnessing the end of the Kennedy era is a little like seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall. The retirement of self-destructive Kennedy scion, Patrick Kennedy, will now mean that for the first time in a long time, there will be not a Kennedy in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. Patrick Kennedy, may have retired to dodge some larger scandal, though considering the scandals he has already been involved in, it's hard to imagine what else there might be. Or he might simply be trying to protect his "legacy" by leaving before the voters kick him out.
One notable way Democrats have been dealing with the problem of incumbency unpopularity in the midterm elections is by purging some of their own incumbents behind the scenes by encouraging them to retire, rather than face a party endorsed challengers. While the DNC or Rahm Emanuel can't be blamed for "retiring" Murtha, some of the retirements of incredibly unpopular figures like Senator Dodd or Patrick Kennedy, might well have gotten their start with a Dem night of the long knives that may just be getting started.
But the end of the Democratic party's titled aristocracy, the Kennedy clan (not counting Ahrnold, a Kennedy by marriage, currently misruling over Khalifornia) is an occasion for celebration.
But maybe the party thinks it no longer needs the Kennedy brand, now that it has the Obama brand. A miscalculation considering the declining value of Obamamania (TM). If Biden and Gibbs have gotten desperate enough to try claiming credit for success in Iraq, then the stench of failure is really in the air.
None of this however should make Republicans feel too complacent. A public shift means that there will suddenly be a lot more public scrutiny aimed at the GOP, which has been safely ignored for over a year. Once people start taking Republican politicians seriously, the media will be primed to search and expose any scandal or weakness. We already saw how this went with the last fall of the Republican congress. And that means putting our own house in order first.
Glenn Beck performed a useful service by exposing Debra Medina on his show, as either a 9/11 Truther or a willing panderer to them.Medina is one of the Paulian inflitrators who are hoping to piggyback on the Tea Party movement. This kind of thing is not limited to just the Paulians, as the following Gateway Pundit story reports, but the Paulians are the most aggressive in the 911 Truther/Far Right sphere.
Like Lyndon LaRouche's followers, their goal is to worm their way into any political organization and then hijack it for their own agenda. They will keep saying that their agenda is conservative, when in fact it's something else entirely. And if you haven't noticed it yet, the media has.
It's why the media will not expose Paulians, but someone like Beck has to. Instead the same outlets that routinely trashed the Tea Parties and Republican candidates, are touting and whitewashing people like Medina. Just as they did Ron Paul.
Any intelligent conservative should ask himself why the same media outlets that smear Republican candidates are enthused about the Paulians. Why about the only negative coverage of them that exists comes from conservative blogs and outlets. And it shouldn't be hard to figure out when looking at Paulian candidates like Adam Kokesh
After spending most of the last decade in the company of communists and anti-American groups like CodePink, ANSWER, Moveon.org, SDS and IVAW, Adam Kokesh is now a conservative republican running for congress.
Then there's Rand "Send the Gitmo terrorists back into Battle" Paul, running for Senate in Kentucky. Sarah Palin's endorsement has not stopped Ron Paul's organization, Campaign for Liberty, from running articles attacking her. The fun site also contains articles such as "Disinformation on Guantanamo Recidivism - More government propaganda. " and "Gun Control and the War on Drugs - They're related, and all who oppose one should oppose the other." This is what you get when you support or vote for Paulians. Pro-terrorism, pro-drugs and anti-American paranoid conspiracologists.
There are no shortage of people on the left and the right looking to either discredit or hijack the Tea Party movement. Many of them are well organized, aggressive and heavily financed. Meanwhile many of the authentic "Rocky" candidates in these races, such as Bill Johnson, who's running against Grayson and Rand Paul in Kentucky, or Tim Graney who's running against Ron Paul, are not being heard. Because they're being sidelined by a well organized political machine and a media that plays footsie with it, the way they would never do for any actual Republican...
