Reprinted with full permission.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Selma Freaking Alabama???
So I'm lying in bed this morning, half-awake, getting ready to get up, get dressed and get on the road to Harrisburg.
The TV's on Fox News. They go into the 10 o'clock hour, and suddenly it's Carl Cameron talking about John McCain kicking off something he calls the "Time For Action Tour" in Selma, Alabama.
Selma. Alabama.
Holy freaking crap! That's when I notice that Cameron is telling me this while standing in front of an arched bridge over a river and now I realize that John McCain is about to speak at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Edmund. Pettus. Bridge.
Some clever Republican political strategist has just proven himself too clever by half. Whatever PR value there is in having a Republican talk about the need to "take action" on poverty, it's more than canceled out by the glaring idiocy of sending him to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to talk about civil rights and John Lewis:
"There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent. In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That's what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge. That’s what he still believes; what he still fights to achieve: a better country than the one he inherited."What the bloody hell is this? Going to the buckle of the Bible Belt and talking about "the sins of indifference and injustice"? Talking about "places left behind"?
To start with, nobody in Alabama needs or wants a lecture about "injustice," and certainly not from a Republican senator. Look at the calendar: 2008. Anybody old enough to have marched with John Lewis in the 1965 voting-rights march is now more worried about Social Security and Medicare than anything else.
Second, if you want to talk about "places left behind," leave Alabama out of it. Anybody with Google can easily discover that the economy in Alabama has been growing faster than the overall U.S. economy for several years, for example:
In 2006 and 2007 24 new auto plants opened in Alabama. Although Birmingham residents are most familiar with Lincoln's Honda Manufacturing and the Mercedes-Benz U.S. International plant in Vance, supplier plants also play a significant employment role. Since 2003, supplier plants have reported 6.8 percent growth in jobs. Jefferson County's supplier job growth has increased 41 percent.But the most obvious blunder involved in John McCain going to Selma and talking about John Lewis is that John Lewis is a Democrat. And not just a generic Democrat, but a feisty liberal Democrat.
John Lewis, partisan Democrat, is sure to be enraged by watching the McCain campaign attempt to co-opt Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a GOP campaign photo-op. And if the McCain campaign tries to use that photo-op in an advertisement, the Democrats will immediately trot out Lewis to preach a sermon about the transparent bogusness of John McCain.
For crying out loud, while John Lewis was preparing to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, John McCain was preparing to kill Commies in Vietnam.
Who can account for the fathomless idiocy of a GOP strategist who, not content to have a genuine Commie-killing war hero as his candidate, decides it's a clever move to co-opt the most famous episode in the life of a Democrat like John Lewis?
Maybe once Crazy Cousin John figures out what a dumb move this Selma trip was, his infamous temper will take hold of him and he'll strangle the GOP strategist who dreamed up this idiotic stunt.
If any Republican campaign wants to stage a photo-op at a famous bridge and invoke the name of a famous Democrat, my suggestion would be Chappquiddick and Ted Kennedy.
Posted by Robert Stacy McCain
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