Talk Talk: You Can't Get There From Here

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, You Can't Get There From Here. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, February 15, 2009 after watching "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", "Hard with Chris Matthews"."Meet the Press" and "a Charlie Rose Interview".   Newman: Well, let me bring Abe Lincoln in here.   Salit: OK.   Newman: The world will little note, nor long remember, that vote.   Salit: Well put.   Newman: What will be remembered is whether the package turns out to be at all successful. Everyone agrees that it's not going to happen overnight. It could be a year or two before we see any results.   Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• A Long Climb To Power Nears Its Pinnacle: Barack Obama's Path To The Presidency Paved By Decades-Long Struggle Of Black Politicians And Activists (CBS News) When Powell crossed party lines to endorse Mr. Obama late in the campaign, he held considerable sway over independent voters.
  
• Obama 'standing on ancestors' shoulders' (By Patti Mengers, Daily Times, Delaware Co. PA) A self-described "staunch independent," Virgilette Gaffin, who has chaired Cheyney's department of communications and modern languages since last September, sees Obama as an inspiration to her students.... Gaffin became "sold" on Obama after hearing him speak at the 2004 Democratic national convention.
  

POLITISOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

Quote Of The Day: Was Bush's Internal Battle Between Reaganism And Chenyism? (By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief, The Moderate Voice) The Bush/Cheney/Karl Rove concept of governing meant you had government of the base, by the base and for the base. But this isn't the United States of the Base. It is the United States of America which includes independents, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, centrists and some others not included in these categories. 

NEW YORK POLITICS/INDEPENDENCE PARTY

• Two Billionaires Show Renewed Interest in New York Independence Party (Ballot Access News) Not everything in the article seems completely accurate, but the gist of it seems to be that both men desire to wrest control of the New York City Independence Party away from Lenora Fulani and her political allies.
  
• Billionaires team up to "revamp" the New York Independence Party (Independent Political Report) Tom Golisano is a billionaire businessman from upstate New York who helped found the Independence Party of New York. Michael Bloomberg is a registered independent in the State of New York, a billionaire businessman, and the mayor of New York City. What do these two titans of industry have in common?
  

LAST WORD

Obama Adopts Lincoln's Legacy (By Choi Yearn-hong, Korea Times) "...My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate...." - A. Lincoln

Little Known Facts: The Party of Lincoln

by Steve Rankin

The Republican Party was founded in the summer of 1854, and it had the largest number of members in the US House that met in 1855, so it was a third party for only a few months. (Of course, with the draconian ballot access laws, that would be impossible for a new party to pull off today.)

Abe was elected in 1860 with 39.9% of the popular vote, thanks largely to the North-South split in the Democratic Party.

Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas, the nominee of the northern Democrats, actually finished fourth in electoral votes in 1860. Vice President John Breckinridge of Kentucky, the southern Democratic presidential nominee, was second in electoral votes, and Tennessee's John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party was third.

Steve Rankin's blog is Free Citizen (on The Hankster sidebar).