Jul 30, 2010

Weiner In Your Face


Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) lashes out at Republicans (namely Rep. Peter King) who voted against a bill that would have secured $7.4 billion dollars for the medical expenses of 9/11 emergency responders who became ill in the line of duty.

It's inspiring to see such passion - even if it was just yelling and screaming - presented in the Congress. Whether or not I personally agree with his decision I truly respect his stance and finally showed some balls. Most politicians are so concerned about their political career and walking on eggshells and partisan.

He could probably aspire to a higher office seeing as how viral this video has gotten today - too bad about that name though.
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1 comment:

  1. Sargent7/31/2010 10:58 AM

    Republicans want Dems to respond this way -- to fulminate and rant about procedure and about their inability to pass legislation, even though they enjoy comfortable majorities.

    Whatever their substantive objections to each piece of legislation Republicans oppose, their larger game plan is to render government ineffective in order to deny Dems victores, create a sense that government is broken and has failed to deliver, stoke anti-incumbent fervor, and ensure that Dems bear the brunt of blame for government dysfunction.

    Republicans are not going to be shamed into doing what Dems want them to do. Republicans are pursuing a concerted game plan here that Dems need to reckon with more directly.

    Indeed, Dems would be far better served if they kept calmly repeating that Republicans want government to fail, in order to breed cynicism and to get voters to give up on the idea that government works for them.

    By the way, there's precedent for this. Remember when former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle erupted on the Senate floor in 2002 in response to Bush's rank politicization of national security in the runup to the midterm elections? That didn't work, either.

    I'm not saying that Weiner isn't right on the issue, or that he shouldn't show passion about it. That's all good. All I'm saying is that raging against successful Republican efforts to block individual Dem initiatives isn't enough. Raging about GOP obstructionism in general isn't enough, either. The point is that Dems need to build an effective larger case that transcends individual issues and reckons more directly with the strategy underlying all the GOP obstructionism. That's all I'm saying.

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