In New York, elections are frequently contests between the Democrats and the phony Republicans.
The GOP is in a pathetic state. There haven't been any statewide Republican stars since George Pataki. And if George Pataki is your idea of a star ...
As I said, it's pathetic.
Michael Bloomberg was/is a phony Republican. Rudy Giuliani was one for the first and better half of his political career. Mort Zuckerman, the Daily News publisher, was one for the three minutes that he contemplated running for the Senate.
Now, there's Steve Levy, the Democrat who runs the eastern end of Long Island as Suffolk County executive. Levy is running for the Republican nomination for governor.
For the Republicans, the alternative is Rick Lazio, the former congressman whose last race was ten years ago, when his ineptitude in running for the Senate helped to turn Hillary Clinton into a Senator and national superstar.
Ed Cox, the Republican party chairman, likes Levy's chances. Other Republicans aren't as thrilled. The Conservative Party, which is made up of Republicans pretending to be something else so they can have their own special line on the ballot, is among the unconverted.
Back to Levy. He is a hard-working, hard-campaigning politician, with the perky, moustached face of a former student politician who never got over being senior class president. If by any chance he wins the nomination, he'll present himself as the man who can make tough budget-cutting decisions that Democrat Andrew Cuomo has never showed any talent for.
Which may be true - at least the Andrew Cuomo part. But Levy is different from most New York faux Republicans. Generally, they're social liberals with an aura of fiscal conservatism.
The big thing that you will hear about Levy in the coming months is that he's anti-immigrant. As county executive, he proposed deputizing local cops as immigration law enforcement officers. He clamped down on efforts to organize meeting places for illegal workers so that they'd stop hanging around on street corners and in parking lots, waiting for day labor contractors to drive by. He's referred to illegal women who have children as the mothers of "anchor babies." He waved off the murder of an immigrant from Ecuador by white teenagers as a "one-day-story."
The New York Times editorial board, which has lashed into Levy regularly, suggested that he was at least somewhat complicit in the attack. When a politician tolerates "the poisonous notion that "illegal" is a stain that can never be erased, with no path to atonement, then you turn the undocumented into a permanent class of presumed criminals who have no rights," the Times said.
The state is hungry for a new kind of leadership - any kind of leadership. Levy could, at minimum, prod someone like Cuomo to really take a stand on the hard questions that face New York.
But are we ready for a leader who handles the most difficult, inflammatory issue in his community simply by giving voice the frustration of the majority? So far, there hasn't been much evidence that Levy has done anything to make the problems of illegal immigration better, and it's easy to make the case that he's made things worse.
If that's all a phony Republican has to offer, we might just as well settle for the real thing.
The original founding republicans were liberals. That's the problem.
We need to return to the Liberal values of the founding fathers, both democrat, and republican.
"America, the first modern liberal state was founded, without a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy.[8"
"Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting many foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
The US founders loved " The Enlightenment" of the people. that's part of the general welfare. You need to feed cloth and shelter people before you can educate them, and hopefully Enlighten them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
Bush, Cheney, the GOP, the very flower of the conservative movement, shredded the constitution, bankrupted the economy, abused the truth, tortured, war mongered, let the poor die.
The DLC is conservative: "The model on which the Democratic Leadership Council was built was the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Founded by "Scoop" Jackson Democrats in response to George McGovern's massive loss to Richard Nixon in 1972, the CDM was dismayed by two presidential election losses and the organization's
goal was to steer the party away from the New Left
influence that had permeated the Democratic party since the late 1960s and back to the policies that made the FDR coalition electorally successful for close to 40 years. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
Stories like these are trumpeted by the MSM as proof that racism is rampant in the country even though they are pretty infrequent. On the other side of the coin, when illegal aliens commit vehicular manslaughter from drunk driving (which happens all the time) it is dismissed by the MSM as a 'one-day-story'. Race pimps like the ADL make sure that any crimes that whites commit against minorities are on the front page. How about stop reporting on race crimes all together because they only divide people.
Hmmm. What a coincidence that he did so just as he decided to run as a Republican and seek the Conservative Party line as well.
He will apparently fearlessly do what he believes is right -- especially if it helps him get on the November ballot.
I've been a Republican all my life, and I resent this "fake Republican" name.
But again, please keep the overconfidence flowing.
His 'Stop Wasting Money' theme will do more to solve New York's problems then any of the outlined hopefuls even dare to conceive.