Lame Ducks, Marco Rubio, Illiterates And Lindsey Graham
November 19, 2010 by Chip Wood
*Why they’re called lame ducks. The phrase “lame duck” was first used in the 18th century on the London Stock Exchange. It referred to a broker who defaulted on his debts. The first written mention occurred in 1761, when Horace Walpole wrote Sir Horace Mann and asked, “Do you know what a Bull and Bear and a Lame Duck are?” It was not until the 19th century that the term came to refer to a politician who had been defeated for re-election but had not yet been replaced in office.
*A rising star in Florida. I was a proud supporter of Marco Rubio long before his success forced Charlie Crist to drop out of the Republican primary. During the campaign Rubio said a lot I liked. But this election-night comment deserves to be cast in concrete: “We make a great mistake if we believe that these results tonight are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party. What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago.”
*Winning thanks to illiterate vote. Am I the only person who sees something ironic in the fact that Lisa Murkowski won a write-in contest for her Senate seat in Alaska thanks to the votes of thousands of people who couldn’t spell her name correctly? If the lady was insufferable before (and she was), she’s really going to be impossible now. Do we really want a Republican Senator who is more arrogant than Barack Obama?
*I’m not so sure about this one. I have friends in South Carolina who insist that their senior Senator “got the message” from this year’s elections. “Lindsay Graham will start voting Republican,” they promise. I’ll have to see it to believe it. Meantime, though, I’m absolutely delighted that Jim DeMint’s star is rising. He defied a lot of establishment Republicans to support numerous Tea Party candidates. Good for him.
–Chip Wood
You can opt-out at any time. We protect your information like a mother hen. We will not sell or rent your email address to anyone for any reason.
Us illiterates in Alaska managed to spell Lisa Murkowski correctly, and write it clearly, without any challenge by the observers sent by Miller, over 92,000 times. Of the 8,000 plus votes challenged but counted (thereby taking the count over 100,000 for Sen Murkowski), the vast majority were challenged for such evils as dotting the “i” in Lisa with a small heart, writing her name as Murkowski, Lisa and some times adding Republican after the name (thereby following exactly the format of all printed names on the ballot), or horrors, putting a mark that might be construed as a comma between first and last name. And by the way, the only “we” who count regarding whether we want a Republican senator like Lisa, are Alaskans who register and vote. No one else.
Get your facts right before making “ironic” statements–your credibility, otherwise good, suffers when you skip that step.