Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Ogonowski: Don’t Trust Republicans

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The ad opens up with a series of mugshots of nasty politicians, horrible people in a horrible insular club that Ogonowski desparately wants to join.  It includes such horrible people as Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, some bespectacled, heavyset guy I can't identify (Stevens?) Republican/crook Duke Cunningham, and last and certainly not least:

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I would note that this montage is flashed over utterly irrelevant newspaper text about a debate contest.  Anyway, It's nice to see that Ogonowski's exclamation point on Congressional corruption is Tom Delay.  Good that he agrees with Democrats, and disagrees with most Republicans.

And whose fault is this corrupt Congress?  Well, again we remember that the strongest argument is deployed last in persuasion.  We get a flickering donkey.  Then, in the penultimate scene of the ad is this picture:

 

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Jim was a good understanding of what's going on in Congress.  For some reason though, he's running for the wrong party. 

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      • My husband was once a Republican.  As a teenager, he volunteered for Nelson Rockefeller.  He says that neither Eisenhower nor Rockefeller could or would be nominated by today's Republican party because the Republican party he supported in his youth in Maine no longer exists.

        Today's corrupted remnant is wholly owned by certain moneyed interests.  If Ogonowski's goal is to reform and reclaim “the party of Lincoln” I wish him luck.

         Today, my husband is a strong and active Democrat because he sees this as the only way to protect constitutional liberties.

        t

          • is to start firing people like DNI McConnell for lying to the Senate, and to offer to repeal their latest warrantless wiretapping act.

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            Otherwise the GOP welcomes their money and effort but not their principles.

    • So the way you change a party is by sitting on the sidelines much of your life, then jumping into a clear field when the party begs you?  If you want to change the country, you run for Congress.  Changing the party is a different exercise. 

      If he wanted to change the party, wouldn't he have a longer record of party involvement? 

      • When you don't have a record of doing something, you should just never do it.  I mean, why do new things?  Why change?  Change is bad.

      • Sabutai,

         

        He was busy defending this nation as a full time member of teh National Guard.  That kind of precludes being active in partisan politics doesn't it?

        Nobody asked Jim to enter this race. He did so himself.  To suggest anything else is speculation and not true.  But believe what you must.

        • Why don't you have a strategy on Iraq?

          I was too busy defending this nation to create one.

          What's your approach to education?

          I was too busy defending this nation to conceive one.

          Et cetera. 

  4. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a clear conscience on the issues of integrity and ethics.  Political scandal is a true bipartisan effort.  I'm glad Ogonowski brings up the issue of corruption: more politicians should show greater accountability, not accept special interest money, not meet with lobbyists, etc.  They need to spend more time among their constituents and reading/writing legislation.

    I view Paul Tsongas as a reform-minded Democrat on many issues.  I don't know if that perception will rub off onto his wife, but Niki Tsongas would be smart to make this a campaign issue.  It's clear from this ad by her GOP opponent that this would be a strategy to get some independent, Republican, and 3rd party support. 

    • Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a clear conscience on the issues of integrity and ethics.  Political scandal is a true bipartisan effort.

       

      Give.  Me.  A.  Break.  Over the last 10 years, for every William Jefferson, I can find you 10 Duke Cunninghams.  For every Bill Clinton cigars, I can find you 10 Mark Foleys.  I can't even think of a Democrat to compare with Michael “heck of a job” Brown.

       

      The “Democrats aren't perfect, so let's call it even” crap is completely bogus.  It's an obvious GOP/Fox News tactic to blur the lines that so clearly distingush the two parties over the past ten years. 

      • Find 18 Republicans in the last ten years to offset the two Democrats you mention.  And it must be actual corruption, not merely disagreeing with them

        Any Democrat that I add will, of course, need another 10 Republican scandals.

        Or are you willing to say you are speaking in hyperboles?

        • Stromv's comment is hyperbole, but in essence there is a core of truth there.  If you were to undertake such a research project, the outcome will surely result in a ratio that tilts toward more corruption on the republican side — depending on how far back in history you want to go.

           

          By the time you delve into Tammany Hall The ratio might even out, but if you searched back only as far as the Regean era I'm confident that the R/D corruption ratio would have a much larger numerator. 

        • It's at least 11:1

          Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley,  Jerry Lewis, Ray L. Hunt, Brent Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, Jack Abramoff, Chuck McGee, James Tobin, Allen Raymond, Bob Ney, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzales, J. Steven Grilles, Claude Allen, Monica Goodling, Dusty Foggo, Larry Craig, David Vitter, Bryan Doyle, Bob Allen and last but certainly not least, Ted Haggard. 

          If I were a better person, I wouldn't even point out that in order to include Bill Clinton on the list, you have to go back at least seven years, while all of the Republicans named here have crashed and burned under W.'s watchful eye.

          Props to TPM's Grand Old Docket and of course all the Republicans themselves, without whom this wouldn't have been possible. 

      • Go take a 15 minute break, but only because you have put in some hard work minimizing your party's corruption and overstating the other party's corruption.Your opinion is what’s bogus.There isn't a sinister Fox News tactic tricking us into thinking that Democrats have ethics problems.  They do.  The GOP does too.  People are always willing to accept money and have outside influences affect their better judgment.  This is a problem from municipal government all the way up to federal government.Mark Foley=Barney Frank, and lets not forget Gary Condit. It is really childish to say, lets count up the republicans and compare to democrats and see who's more ethical.  Do we just count Congress?  How about the executive branch?  What about state governments?  How about Boston city hall?  Do you think I could find more examples of unethical democrats in Boston than republicans?  Would this prove that Democrats are more unethical?   Your post is the same old same old attack the other hypocrisy.  

         

         

        Disclaimer:  I was paid for this post by a GOP/Fox News collaborative

         

      • …neither you nor anybody else would know about Clinton an Lewinsky were it not for Ken Starr’s soft-core port book.

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        I read it (over the Internet) shortly after it was published, and, after I got done laughing, I wondered what the big deal was.

      • When the Republicans took over, a big issue was the corrupt Demo9cratic Congress.  Remember Dan Rostenkowski and Jim Wright?  There have been more corrupt Republican corruption scandals over the last few years because they lead the Congress.  The Democrats have only had the Congress back for eight months, so I bet were still a little way off before the first major Democratic corruption scandal.  But,sure as sunset, it will come.

            • Yeah, Tom Delay, he used to be such a jolly elephant!  same with Jack Abramoff.  You might be right about Romney though…

              • Dan Rostenkowski, Speaker of the House, conviceted and incarcerated.  BFD.  Corruption just isn't a partisan thing. It is just common in people that seek that line of work, especially if they do it for a long time. 

                The party in power is plagued by cooruption.  'Twas ever thus.  In a year or two, whatever Alcee Hastings is up to now will be the new scandal, and the cycle will turn again.

            • … When Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, in part as a result of having defeated health care reform, they set about to re-shape K Street as a partisan Republican force.  Conservatives called the undertaking the K Street Project.  It involved, in part, pressuring business lobbies to stop spreading their donations between both parties and instead donate exclusively to the GOP.  They also demanded that lobbying firms hire only Republicans for top positions and use their political muscle to support the Republican position.  In return, Republicans gave these lobbyists extraordinary deference in shaping legislation.  Republicans demanded total loyalty from K Street and offered total loyalty in return.  The business lobby and the GOP would no longer be separate parties with overlapping interests but partners in an ironclad alliance.  … It has been increasingly difficult to distinguish between business and government, with the former regularly taking on the duties of the latter.  In 2001, Enron interviewed several candidates to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Bush ultimately appointed two who met with their approval.  Enron’s chairman Ken Lay met with the holdover FERC chairman and instructed him that he could keep his job only if he reversed his opposition to energy deregulation.  The next year, two of Bush’s appointees to a commission regulating lead poisoning revealed that they were first approached not by the administration by by the lead industry itself.  The patters is not merely “influence,” it is the wholesale delegation of the tasks of governing.
              …The evidence of the GOP’s enmeshment with with its business supporters is so overwhelming that few conservatives deny it outright.  Instead they offer two basic defenses.  The first is that Republicans behaved no differently than Democrats.  But the contrast between the chummy bipartisan sleaze that characterizes Republican Washington is enormous.  It’s not just a difference in degree but a difference in kind.  Democrats accept the prevailing political culture by which lobbyists would cultivate ties with both sides.  They do not expect total loyalty, nor do they grant it.  The depredations produced by the K Street Project – Government treating lobbyists as full partners, not merely interests with a seat at the table – are all unique Republican innovations. More to the point, Democrats have frequently found themselves working at cross-purposes with K Street.  This is because the nature of the two parties is fundamentally different.  The Democrats’ economic base consists not only of business but also labor, environmentalists, and consumer groups.  In Congress, most Democrats do the bidding of their home district employers, and there are pro-business Democrats on the right as well as pro-labor Democrats on the left. …Its’ impossible for the Democratic Party to be completely captive to its funding base because its base disagrees with itself so frequently.  Nearly all of Bill Clinton’s domestic agenda alienated large segments of his party’s base.… The GOP, on the other hand, faces minimal divisions within its economic base.  Yes, social conservatives do not always agree with economic conservatives, but the social conservatives focus almost exclusively on social issues and so do not usually weigh in with much force on economic issues.… Even at the height of their political power, Democrats never sought, let alone won, the sort of alliance with K Street that Republicans enjoy today.

              • … come from several different paragraphs.  For some reason the line breaks I had put in for purposes of making that clear didn't come through in the rendering.

  5. The guy is to chicken to tell viewers that he is a Republcan.  Even more amazing is that [Republcians at RMG http://www.redmassgroup.com/showComment.do?commentId=4518] think that avoiding the the “elephant in the room” fact is just fine with them.  Heck, some are over there saying to run [harder against his own party http://www.redmassgroup.com/showComment.do?commentId=4495].

    Reminds me of the scene in Blazing Saddles when Cleavon Little, facing a lynch mob, puts a gun to his head and yells, “Nobody move or the ^%$ gets it”

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    PS: To the Editors, this “upgrade” sucks…sorry for the bad links.  To late to play around with the formats to get it right.

  6. Jim Ogonowski is a conservative Republican running away from the Republican party.  His campaign manager was part of the Bush Cheney team in the Minnesota 2004 state campaign.  He went to Republican National Committee candidate training school.  He's pushing for Republican money.  He has the same position as Bush against the expansion of childrens' health insurance, for the extension of the Bush tax cut, and of course, for the war.  He is has qualified his “pro choice” position. 

    I don't think people are that dumb.  All of this will come out.

    Will

    • That you are a paid staffer of the Niki Tsongas campaign.  Perhaps part of the opposition research team.  Why do I think that?   Oh I don't know maybe your body of work here at BMG leads me to?

       

      It seems your entire time here has been spent denigrating other candidates on behalf of Niki Tsongas. 

      • if that is true, 2 things need to happen:
        1.  the staffer needs to post a disclaimer
        2.  EaBo needs to address the issues said staffer raises.  any truth to them?  evidence otherwise?

    • In the heart of anti-tax country in the 5th Congressional District do you really think being for tax cuts is an albatross.  Perhaps that is why your boss, Niki, is trying to frame this campaign as a referendum on Iraq.  Because she knows the 5th District is with Jim on every other issue.  But that insistence on Iraq may backfire.  I don't know if your internal polling matches what Survey USA found regarding Massachusetts Residents take on Iraq and the Surge.

      Not very promising for an Iraq centric political strategy is it?

  7. …they only have themselves to blame.  Between Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Reagan’s embracing of Christian conservatives (without doing anything for them, of course), they have actually ruined the party themselves.

  8. …As far as I can tell, Ogonowski is running as a Republican.  If he is actually counselling against trusting Republicans, why should anyone trust him?

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    Computer says no

  9. Jim Ogonowski is running against corruption from both sides.  If he had not shown Cunningham or Delay you would have been the first to say, see he's just a Republican politician beating up democrats he really doesn't believe there is corruption across the whole spectrum of political thought. 

    I met Jim before he had consultants before he had a campaign staff, at the Au Bon Pain in Woburn for coffee.  What he said to me then are his positions now.  His campaign staff didn't change him to be a moderate republican.  That is what he is, a conservative or libertarian on fiscal issues and a moderate on social issues.  In numerous interviews he has stated that Don't Ask Don't Tell should be repealed and gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military.  That doesn't sound like a socially conservative republican position to me.  

    By this post it seems you are really afraid that your Gal Niki (note I'd say your Boy Eldridge if Jamie won so don't go accuse me of being sexist) is going to lose.  Because you know what she is.  And she's going to lose bad.

    • …if Ogonowski wants to help recharge the Republican party, he would try to do it originally from the state level–i.e., the MA state level. 

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      Two reasons.

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      One, the national Republican party is actually a coalition of fifty state parties.  That’s true of the national Democratic party, too.  The problem is, that the national Republican party seems to have walked more in lockstep with a majority theme than the national Democratic party has  (actually, one might ask if the national Democratic party has a theme).

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      Two, the last few Republican governors in MA have virtually destroyed the party at the state level.  It is possible that Ogonowski could help revive the party at the state level.  He might win MA-05, but it’s doubtful.

      • will in and of itself revitalize the State Republican party.  His campaign has attracted activists, as has Ms. Tsongas' from around the state.  He will de-facto as the highest ranking elected republican in Massachusetts be the leader of our State Party. 

        • …I will in this case.  Ogonowski is unlikely to win.

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          If he want to help the Republican party in MA, he should put his efforts into a state legislative seat.

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          A defeat a couple of weeks hence doesn’t preclude him from doing so at the next statewide election, but it doesn’t help him, either.

    • Don’t kid anyone about how he’ll reform the GOP, EaBo.  He’ll vote to make Boehner minority leader, and Blunt minority whip.  And it’ll all go downhill from there.  And that’s a vote to put anti-choice legislation on the agenda every year.

      • This is one of the most important things that I would like to see Niki repeat over and over. I'd like Ogonowski to be challenged on whether he intends to vote for the GOP leadership if he wins. If so, then he can't exactly stake a claim to reforming the party he's clearly going to support.

  10.  

    “I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member.”  –Groucho Marx

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