Meant to raise this question yesterday, which would have been less confusing, but when it occurred to me last night I didn’t feel like breaking the laptop back out, so here goes.
On Monday, I received a release from the Rob Miller campaign headlined “99 Reasons,” and beginning this way: “It seems far away now, but we are just 99 days from ending Joe Wilson’s congressional career.”
OK. Aside from that sounding excessively optimistic, it wasn’t particularly interesting. So I set it aside.
Then I got a release from the Nikki Haley campaign headlined “100 days,” and saying essentially that that was how many days were left. How she arrived at the number is further confused by this boldfaced passage:
Yesterday marked a significant milestone in our campaign — there are only 100 days left until Election Day.
So does that mean they were counting from “yesterday,” which would have been Sunday? If so, why does the sentence go on to use the present tense, saying “there ARE only 100 days left”? One is left to conclude that the Haley campaign was saying there were still 100 days left.
Was she counting Monday itself, as a way of asserting her wish not to waste a day? Perhaps. But I’m left with the impression, once again, that these Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything. But I set that aside, too.
Then last night, just before 10 p.m., I got a release from Karen Floyd headlined “99 Days of Bad Ideas” and just chock full of the sort of ranting nonsense you expect from parties:
We’re going to hear from liberals like Joe Biden, who just stopped in to raise money for John Spratt, saying that we should have spent even more “stimulus” money. We’re going to hear fromCongressman Spratt himself that the budget he wrote is actually fiscally responsible, although we all know it increases our debts and puts our nation at risk. We’re going to hear from Rob Millerthat it’s okay for candidates to accept millions of dollars from liberal Washington special interest groups. We’re going to hear from Vincent Sheheen that English doesn’t have to be our state’s official language and that tax cuts won’t create jobs and grow our economy. We’ll hear from Matt Richardson (he’s the liberal running for Attorney General, in case you’ve never heard of him) that we don’t need to stand up to the federal government when they step on our rights every other day. We’ll even hear from their US Senate candidate who believes action figures of himself will fix our high unemployment rate.
Why don’t they just save themselves trouble by typing “liberal” once and then just pasting it into the text over and over? “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” It would make as much sense, and be just as relevant. They could italicize some of them and boldface others, for variety. “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” If they don’t think variety is ideological heresy, of course.
And where on Earth did they get the thing about English as an official language? What does that have to do with anything? And is that really the best they can come up with as an indictment of Vincent?
Anyway, the thing that interested me was that Karen Floyd was siding with Rob Miller on the number of days left. Just goes to show that there is room for finding common ground across the partisan divide. And it demonstrates how out of touch Nikki is, even with her own party.
Yes, that last sentence would have had a smiley face after it if I did smiley faces.
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Is Sheheen still running for Governor? I don’t think I’ve seen a less vigorous campaign for governor. There was a puff piece in the Charleston paper on Sunday that basically boiled down to “he’s a nice guy who likes to hang out in Camden and wants to work with the legislature”. No substance, no ideas, no specifics.
Ever get the chance to ask him what HE would have done as governor with the budget in terms of the Sanford vetoes? or would that be expecting him to demonstrate his qualifications to be governor rather than demonstrating he is not Sanford?
He’s got less than 100 days to make his case. What’s he waiting for?
Did any of the releases suggest any proactive ideas for creating jobs, addressing energy, or for paying down the debt? Or did they all just knock the other guy?
South Carolinian reasoning continued…
I spake English and if you don’t spake English you need to go back to where you came from and quit takin arr jerbs. Learn it or leave it, Paco. That’s the way we’ve always done it and we need to put our way of life into law so everyone will have to live that way and if Vincent Sheheen don’t understand that then he’s a traitor to dixie and our way of life and he can get on a plane with his librul buddies Obamer and Pelosi and git.
/South Carolinian reasoning
Doug, I have also been frustrated lately with Vincent. Personally, I haven’t seen or talked with him since the night he won the primary. I want to see him out and making a splash — the way he did last week with releasing his financial records — more often.
I know that he’s reorganizing his campaign, building it up from a primary organization to a general election. Did you see the story in The State about Tim Shock today? That was kind of weird because that’s old news. I talked with Tim two or three weeks ago, and he was already with the campaign then.
And Norm — I’m sorry I didn’t go find links for those releases, but basically these were fund-raising e-mails (and therefore I suppose not technically “releases” — I just tend to call things that come to me that). Those tend to be about attacking the other guy to whip people up and get them to give — which is one of the very worst things about the way politics functions these days…
Did you see the story in The State about Tim Shock today? That was kind of weird because that’s old news.
-Brad
Ok, The State featured a story based on old news. And that’s weird because?
Sheehen does need to be a great deal more proactive. There is much he could talk about. He can play nice and focus on how he’ll do a better job with the State’s economy than his predessor. Or he can go negative and hound Haley on this transparency issue. A little of both would be nice to see. Come on Sheheen. I think you’ll make a fine governor but your lack of a robust campaign gives even me a few doubts.
Norm, here’s a release I got from the Rob Miller campaign today that actually IS about proposals (because it’s not a fund-raising message).
Whoa! Rob Miller actually got a HEADLINE in the paper for that silly, trite, populist nonsense about cutting congressional pay…