None other than Curt Shilling.
It looks like the retired athlete, Trump endorser and conservative call-it-like-he-sees-it kind of guy believes he has what it takes to challenge Elizabeth Warren, the rock star of the American Left, in 2018 for her seat in the U.S. Senate. He said as much in an interview with AM radio station WRKO yesterday.
Apparently, the job he really wants is President of the United States but this would be his first stepping stone.
All I can think is that this would be a colossal waste of both time of money for folks on both sides of the race. As a Trump-lite, he might take note of what the Presidential vote looks like here in November before going forward.
But, hey, if she is going to have an opponent, much better him than someone credible.
He certainly has the “screw myself with a Twitter post” thing down cold.
The 2004 ALCS will always rank as one of my favorite sports memories, and he played a major role. I’ll always respect him as a player and for the way he treats fans. But he has to stop with these attempts at recapturing that glory, he had to sell his house and most of his memorabilia in bankruptcy auctions just to become solvent again after his failed venture in Rhode Island. Then he opened his mouth and lost his ESPN gig. Give him WEEI or
WRKO show and call it a day. Spare him this embarrassment.
Schilling is definitely negotiating with WEEI for some sort of formal role.
WEEI, for the last year or so, has been scripting on-air feuds among its hosts. (There have also been, it seems, some real feuds.)
So I think this is pre-publicity and he’ll end up at WEEI, and this will go away.
But … here’s a fun game. If it’s Schilling vs. Trump, you’d vote Schilling, right? Well think of the whole field:
Schilling vs. Carson: Schilling.
Schilling vs. Cruz: Cruz.
Schilling vs. Graham: Painful, but I’d have to say Graham.
etc.
The history of Mr. Schilling’s business dealings in Rhode Island requires language less passive than “his failed venture in Rhode Island”. He made a great many high-profile and utterly false claims. Massachusetts was wise to pass on the “opportunity” to “invest” in his scam. Rhode Island was more foolish — and paid the price.
In fact, substantive charges of fraud surround Mr. Schilling’s “13 year old medieval fantasy“. From that last link (emphasis mine):
Curt Schilling may have been an inspiring athlete. By all indications, he is also a dishonest and corrupt fraud and shyster.
Sounds like he fits the mold of Massachusetts GOP senate candidate just fine. If nominated, he joins such distinguished individuals as Jack Robinson (in fairness, the GOP did attempt to scrub him from the ballot at the last moment) and Ted Busiek.
The ghost of Edward Burke, recently disturbed by the shenanigans of Scott Brown, is apparently about to start rolling over again.
She’d make a substantially more qualified Senator than Schilling.
A good contest would be someone like Winslow, Ross or even Polito taking our senior senator on. Weld/Kerry was a real contest and the state benefitted from it, it would be great if every race around here was like that. So I won’t root against Warren having an opponent, though she’s more than earned my vote. But I hope it’s one worthy enough to make civil distinctions and not tomahawk noises.
Seriously?
The guy’s more interested in hearing himself talk than in real policy proposals.
Plus he has come to BMG multiple times to engage in serious discussion of the issues. Besides, JConway did not say he would support Winslow himself.
On and off this site, and would argue he is one of the smartest center-right leaders in this state. He also is smarter than Baker and has the courage not just to denounce Trump entirely, but also to endorse Johnson/Weld. I won’t vote for that ticket and wouldn’t support him against our fabulous senior Senator. I am not ashamed to admit I think he’d make a far superior Secretary of the Commonwealth than our present incumbent, and I haven’t been shy about telling him this.
Thanks.
“Reminds me of Donald Trump: another far-right candidate “…
How exactly do you define far right, other than having the temerity to be registered as a Republican? Trump is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, etc. AFAIK, so is Schilling.
One of the GOOD side effects of our primary was to demonstrate something that most of us have been saying for years – there aren’t enough social conservatives to take the GOP nomination, let alone the general. They went with Carson and others, and wound up behind ‘Smarmy Ted’ Cruz – and it still wasn’t enough.
Ideologically, I am far closer to Trump (insofar as he has an ideology at all) then most of the GOP field, but that doesn’t mean I support him since there really are things that ‘trump’ blind partisan positioning.
So what exactly IS far right for you guys?
Schilling isn’t far-sighted (except in the global sense), he’s just a shameless fraud with a massive ego and no record. Maybe not far -right, but increasingly the stereotypical Republican candidate.
He repudiated his pro choice, pro gay marriage positions like Mitt did. Women would ‘have to be punished’. Who knows what he stands for, it’s certainly not consistency.
That said I made the same observation you made that the religious right is totally dead. One of the few silver linings to come our of this putrid primary, though I do worry that we may go too far in the other direction. Politics shouldn’t just be about the material things, there should be a logos and ethos too.
You are right that this campaign has certainly washed the ideology right out of the party. Small government? Opposition to deficits? Pro-trade? Pro-“the West”? Lower taxes? I’m not sure that these things are completely gone, but their extreme weakness has been exposed. Same, as you note, goes for the “social conservatism” formerly known as family values. And this, from a party that made Mitt Romney sprint to the right, yapping about being a “severe conservative” in order to get the nomination.
Ideologically, you’re closer to Trump, but what is that ideology, exactly? To me, it seems like “cultural conservatism” (as opposed to social conservatism) and forthright resentment of various ethnicity. It’s pretty damn ugly and odious, in my view– and I’m someone who would really like for the GOP to be something other than angry gay-bashing “Christians,” so that I might maybe vote for them.
What we have most definitely learned is that while GOP elected officials were ideologically conservative, their voters aren’t. What we havn’t learned, though, is what those voters are, other than that they dislike (i) Mexicans, (ii) bossy women; (iii) Moslems; (iv) blacks; and (v) _____?__.
I don’t think that the GOP is going anywhere, because it is still a 2 party system. But the battle for supremacy between the insurgent “tea party” and the Chamber-of-Commerce “establishment” party has ended and they both lost. What comes next will be… interesting.
Coupled with living in an alternate reality. Sometimes far right seems to be less a coherent ideology than it is an irrational quest for an identity in blind opposition to anything that can be labelled “other”.
That’s where I was going with “cultural conservatism.” It is a sort of identity politics, but in reverse. Because it is strictly in reverse, there is mostly a list of things and people opposed: the media; Hillary; Obama; scientists; people with expertise; Mexicans; Moslems; blacks; transgendered; women.
Unlike others, I don’t trace this back through decades of GOP political positions with which I might disagree. There’s a difference between and an outright departure from reality. Seeds were there in the 90s– remember the guy re-enacting the murder of Vince Foster with a watermelon? But for the most part, there was always a grain of truth there. Whitewater was shady. Clinton did lie under oath.
In the Bush administration, though, they departed from reality in a near total sense. Hence the motto of this website. First, the existence of WMD. Then the serial defenses of extremely UNconservative policies of the Bush administration. Iraq is all good! Pre-emptive invasion is great! Fuck the Powell Doctrine! Water boarding isn’t torture,and we know this because we don’t torture!
Once unmoored from reality, they have become completely uncontrolled. Obama is a racist! And divisive! And doesn’t negotiate with us enough! Climate change is a Chinese conspiracy. Glenn Beck.
They need a new William Buckley to get their inner John Birch back under control.
He had humor, intellect. When he was replaced by the “conservatives” by Sarah Palin as their leader, I knew it was time to go.
Why the South Must Prevail, William Buckley, 1957
What’s not to miss?
“We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels. They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘superpredators.” HRC
Funny things happen when one starts to throw stones from one’s glass house….
I am sure that if he were alive today WFB might well “walk back” these words, just as HRC did with hers. Don’t you agree?
William F. Buckley lived until 2008. He had PLENTY of time to reconsider his voluminous racist diatribes, and chose not to.
Opposition to the civil rights movement was a cornerstone of his publication, and the racist arguments he frequently advanced in its pages were demolished countless times in the two decades that separated passage of the civil rights bill from his death.
He made a half-hearted attempt to apologize in 2004. As many have pointed out, it was a classic non-apology apology that neatly made no mention whatsoever of the two canards he repeated so often.
For example (from the second link):
The original text of that 1957 column has conveniently been posted by kbush. Here, for example, are some choice excerpts that my second link references (emphasis mine):
Mr. Buckley, your apparent hero, did not offer the states-rights argument that he feebly attempted to walk back in 2004. He instead offered a flat-out assertion of white superiority — an assertion that he was conspicuously silent about in the decades that followed.
Here’s another (emphasis mine):
Again, a white supremacist argument — your hero asserts that white culture alone understands “civilized standards”, and advocates violence — race war — to impose those “civilized standards”.
Your eagerness to disparage all things Clinton has apparently blinded you to just how toxic “conservative” crowd was that you remember with such touching nostalgia.
There is no comparison between any utterances of Bill or Hillary Clinton and the toxic, racist, hate-filled rubbish published by William F. Buckley.
Buckley hosted the likes of James Baldwin and Huey Newton in a respectful and civil give and take on Firing Line, the kind of program we could use more of in the vacuous cable news era. He was a long time opponent of the war on drugs which has done more to destroy the black community and black social fabric than any other federal policy since the end of Jim Crow. A war vigorously waged without end for decades by Democrats as well as Republicans
He recognized the end of his movement towards the end of his life as he distanced himself from the Iraq War, the idiocy of Sarah Palin, and the religious rights movement away from constitutional conservatism and towards religious nationalism.
The very forces he kept out of his movement: the Birchers and white nationalists are the kind that have taken over his beloved Republican Party. He wouldn’t be endorsing Trump. That’s the only point John was trying to make, though it would be nice if he could make a single point on this blog without bashing the Clintons and you could avoid taking the bait. Both of you are friends on and off this site but your banter is becoming awfully tiresome.
William F. Buckley was far more odious in life than he is remembered now.
Being less crazy than the John Birch society is faint praise. David Duke is arguably similarly less offensive than many of his KKK predecessors. That does mean we should accept homages to him. It also does mean we should accept a comparison between him and our nominee.
In my view, this comment spirals deeper and deeper into already very murky waters. William F. Buckley and his ilk led the charge against the civil rights movement. The GOP embrace of southern racists was not accidental and contributes much to its current racism.
I am profoundly uncomfortable with attempts to rewrite history and sanitize decades of racist diatribes. The gentile apparent civility of Mr. Buckley’s broadcast presence should not be allowed to detract from the toxicity of the ideology he promoted.
“It also does not mean we should accept a comparison between [David Duke] and our nominee”.
John was agreeing with CMDs sentiment that Buckley expelled the Birchers and we could use gatekeepers like that today. Expelling racism from the right would be part of that. I think we can make those sentiments without being accused of closet conservatism or bringing in grudges that linger from the primary.
I’m really tired of that from both of you. Just stop talking about the Clintons, we got a lot of local stuff happening in MA that is more interesting and relevant than this snoozer of a presidential race. You’re both voting for her, so will 55% of the country. Let’s talk about something interesting for a change.
as in documented intellectual honesty which I don’t find even slightly amusing.
She did NOT say that superpredators were limited to a certain race. She just pointed out that some people are hardened recidivistic criminals, which unfortunately seems to be true in some cases.
Trump but less informed.
I am hard pressed to think of anyone less informed than Trump, the guy who says he knows more about ISIS than even “the Generals.”
I have been traveling through battleground states this summer so I saw the HRC and indy PAC TV adverts that probably don’t make it on Boston TV. They are devastating, If you are in PA, VA, OH, NC, SC, or FL you cannot miss the raging Trumpet claim he knows more than the generals. Or his other horrific claims. Even my right-wing brother has abandoned ship, which means he won’t even show up to vote for the other down ballot races (I thank the goddesses for this).
aimed at New Hampshire.
I was expecting this but not so soon in the season. HRC and friends have tons of money. NH was always in play but pumping money into GA is a sure sign that they want to put Trump on the defensive in places that should be safe.
Although I have to add that as a sometimes resident of GA, the state is changing demographically. You can get better Mexican food there than in Boston, a sign of the changes in the US.
From Shilling’s official blog.
Quite a ranting post. Who does this sound like?
who speaks his mind and is not afraid, not afraid of being politically correct and you know who I am talking about, you know, you know, of course you know. A man who knows more about what this country needs, and it needs a lot, a lot, trust me, I know what it means and he can make it happen, he can make it happen, he can make it happen, believe me.