Raw Deal

Comments

2 responses to “Raw Deal”

1. 

   J.M. Prince

   October 8, 2009

   I’ve got no place to put this, so file it under: More of a raw deal in politics, this time also dealing with ‘dirty tricks’, just heard on NPR’s Fresh Air’ with Terry Gross today (10/8) on WABE:

   An interview with former Sen. Max Cleland for his new book:

   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113506152&ps=cprs

   “Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove”

   By Max Cleland

   Hardcover, 272 pages

   Simon & Schuster

   “In his new memoir, former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland pulls no punches about the campaign tactics that unseated him and targeted others: “The attacks on [John] McCain, [John] Kerry and me, all decorated wounded combat veterans, are a shameful legacy of the Bush administration, and among the most shameful political stunts in the nation’s history.”

   “In his new memoir, former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland pulls no punches about the campaign tactics that unseated him and targeted others: “The attacks on [John] McCain, [John] Kerry and me, all decorated wounded combat veterans, are a shameful legacy of the Bush administration, and among the most shameful political stunts in the nation’s history.”

   More from the Fresh Air NPR site:

   “October 6, 2009

   Max Cleland volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and was rewarded with the Silver Star for his “gallantry in action.” But he did not escape the brutality of the war; he lost both legs and his right arm when a fellow soldier accidentally dropped a grenade.

   When he returned home, he chose a life of public service and politics, serving variously as a Veterans Administration chief, a state legislator and eventually a U.S. senator representing his home state of Georgia. His public-sector career lasted until 2002, when he lost his U.S. Senate seat to Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss.

   During that heated campaign, Chambliss ran misleading and negative ads, using Cleland’s procedural votes on setting up the Department of Homeland Security to challenge the sitting senator’s national-security credentials and to question his patriotism. Cleland has said that politics and public service had long been the things that gave him purpose — they allowed him to “focus on something outside myself” — and that the end of that career left him “back dying on the battlefield.” After 9/11, the loss of his Senate seat and the invasion of Iraq, Cleland suffered a relapse of a long-dormant case of post-traumatic stress disorder and entered Walter Reed hospital for treatment.

   His new memoir — titled Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove — is his account of his idyllic Georgia childhood, his life-altering wartime experience and the dark days that followed the end of his Senate career. He joins Terry Gross for a conversation about those experiences”.

   It was an unusually frank discussion about the damage done by the Bush/Karl Rove smear machine that was seemingly adept at first targeting & then taking down veterans and patriots who served in wars they studiously sought to avoid, sometimes for years if not almost decades, all in the service of their own brand of scorched earth politics. Which of course we’re still living with the effects to this day & hour. Sobering stuff for certain. JMP

2. 

   J.M. Prince

   October 6, 2009

   I predict it’ll finally vault him into the ranks of the 2nd string here, possibly right behind Ms. Handel. Worth at least a few points in a GOP primary for certain. The old Reagan trick that he learned from Nixon’s vaunted ‘Southern Strategy’. Dog whistles to the faithful that they hear loud and clear. ‘He’s one of us’! And I suspect quite deliberate too. My guess is that the usual clumsy & now utterly clueless ‘Gee is that what it seems to look like…’ coverage from the AJC proper will bounce those numbers higher too.

   On the central question of voting here? Yes, ‘voter suppression’ is all about making it more difficult for minorities to vote. Here & elsewhere these can be quasi-legal efforts that can be supported by the color of the law enforced by interested partisans in power. As in the blatant but continuing efforts to try and disenfranchise a whole spectrum of minority voters with the endless ‘Photo-Id’ wars of the last few years. Our Ga. transplant Z noted this today (Mon) in a ThinkProgress.org post too:

   http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/05/nathan-deal-ghetto/

   JMP