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sisyphusshruggedor, you know, some of you may not, but here goes anyway.
Sen. Frist was touring a base which is about to be closed. The economy of South Dakota is not doing all that well just now, and the South Dakotans are, understandably, curious as to why they should vote to give away not only the Senate Minority Leadership but a vote on the base closing decision (two if the Democrats retake the Senate). Sen. Frist had this to say about that:
Reuters is under the impression that Frist is openly offering to buy votes to get a 60-seat majority in the Senate.
Nah.
Cast your mind back to the midterm elections. Remember this picture?
The occasion on which this casual shot of five more-or-less accurate representations of great presidents was shot was a campaign trip. It wasn't supposed to be - it was set up with Sen. Daschle's office on the understanding that it wasn't going to be - but it was. It was a campaign trip on behalf of Rep. Thune, who was running for the office then (and now) held by Sen. Tim Johnson. (Check out the speech particularly for the shoutout to then-Governor Janklow).
We were given to understand at the time that this was a shot across Sen. Daschle's bow
South Dakota was, at the time, undergoing a serious drought, and Janklow was promising South Dakotans that his relationship with Our Fearless Leader would bring manna to the state.
Woops.
I'll let "Citizens for a Sound Economy" (what it sounds like - they don't like taxes) tell you what happened then.
True 'nuff. Clinton didn't have Karl Rove making his policy decisions for him.
Dry milk.
In the resulting scramble to make up lost face, Thune's access to Our Fearless Leader turned out not to have quite the motive force of Daschle's butt on the Majority Leader's chair.
But what the heck, he decided to try to buy them anyway. Unfortunately, it came out later that he was trying to buy them with money diverted from programs that were feeding, um, people.
Woopsie.
Anyway, tankety tank tank, and Thune loses. The Hill, always a reliable source for beltway conventional wisdom from a navel perspective, thinks maybe Daschle is going to be too scared to run against Thune this year, unless...
But hey, what are the odds of that happening?
So anyway, what we appear to have here is Our Fearless Leader and his handpicked Majority Leader bigfooting the South Dakota race and pretty much guaranteeing complete gridlock for the next six months because the last time Our Fearless Leader bigfooted the South Dakota race and tried to turn it into a pissing match with Tom Daschle, he ended up with a wet leg.
I can only hope he shows this kind of judgment in all of his decisions between now and November.
In an break with bipartisan traditions in the U.S. Senate, Republican Leader Bill Frist urged voters in South Dakota on Saturday to vote his Democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle, out of office.
"It may be rare, but these are rare times," Frist told reporters after touring Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City.
"I'm here in South Dakota because I love John Thune," he said. "I have campaigned for (Republican Senate challenger) John Thune in the past, not just in this cycle."
Senate leaders have traditionally been reluctant to campaign against each other.
The Senate historian's office said it could not recall another case in the past half century where one Senate leader has campaigned against another on the rival's home turf. However, things are different this election year.
Sen. Frist was touring a base which is about to be closed. The economy of South Dakota is not doing all that well just now, and the South Dakotans are, understandably, curious as to why they should vote to give away not only the Senate Minority Leadership but a vote on the base closing decision (two if the Democrats retake the Senate). Sen. Frist had this to say about that:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist toured Ellsworth Air Force Base Saturday and said afterward the facility might have a future as a site for development of unmanned aerial vehicles.
"It's one thing that I think we should at least consider," said Frist, who toured the base alongside GOP senatorial candidate John Thune. "And I will be talking to the Pentagon about this."
Reuters is under the impression that Frist is openly offering to buy votes to get a 60-seat majority in the Senate.
Nah.
Cast your mind back to the midterm elections. Remember this picture?
The occasion on which this casual shot of five more-or-less accurate representations of great presidents was shot was a campaign trip. It wasn't supposed to be - it was set up with Sen. Daschle's office on the understanding that it wasn't going to be - but it was. It was a campaign trip on behalf of Rep. Thune, who was running for the office then (and now) held by Sen. Tim Johnson. (Check out the speech particularly for the shoutout to then-Governor Janklow).
We were given to understand at the time that this was a shot across Sen. Daschle's bow
Today, just two days before his first midterm election test, Bush travels to South Dakota for the fifth time as president. The ten presidents prior to Bush visited the state a total of 12 times; meaning in two years, Bush has traveled to the state almost half as many times as 10 predecessors did in 66 years.
Why has the plains state of an estimated 756,600 residents suddenly become the epicenter of a fierce battle for the Senate, where one seat separates who is in control?
In Washington, the reasons seem obvious: It's a tight race for Democratic incumbent Sen. Tim Johnson and his popular Republican challenger Rep. John Thune. And it just so happens to be the home state of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
South Dakota was, at the time, undergoing a serious drought, and Janklow was promising South Dakotans that his relationship with Our Fearless Leader would bring manna to the state.
Woops.
I'll let "Citizens for a Sound Economy" (what it sounds like - they don't like taxes) tell you what happened then.
President Bush has actively recruited candidates and quietly discouraged others not to run. One of those recruited candidates is young rising star in the Republican Party, Rep. John Thune of South Dakota. Rep. Thune early on made clear he would prefer to remain in the House of Representatives. But, he couldn’t resist the recruiting efforts of President Bush, so he is now the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in South Dakota. Thune is locked in a close race with the incumbent senator, Tim Johnson. South Dakota, of course, is the home state of Democrat Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle. So, the political stakes just couldn’t be higher. And clearly, this president understands and cares about politics.
The president’s actions last week, however, strongly suggest he cares more about principle, than politics. First, let me provide a little background. South Dakota is currently in the midst of one its worst droughts on record. For farmers and ranchers, the drought has caused real economic hardship. The congressional delegation, including Rep. Thune is asking for federal disaster assistance.
President Bush traveled to South Dakota last week. The trip was perfectly timed politically. The president could announce from the podium, along side Rep. Thune, with Mt. Rushmore as a backdrop, that he would deliver drought relief in the form of federal dollars. But that isn’t what the president did. Instead, he traveled to South Dakota, and from the podium, with Mt. Rushmore perhaps providing the inspiration, George W. Bush said no. He said federal spending is a problem — and it is — and to bring fiscal discipline to Washington, he needed to say no to the good people of South Dakota.
Wow! What an un-Clintonesque moment.
True 'nuff. Clinton didn't have Karl Rove making his policy decisions for him.
Some parts of South Dakota are drier than they were during the Dust Bowl days of the mid-1930s. Officials estimated this week that the drought has cost $1.8 billion in lost business and production in a state whose total annual economy is about $23 billion.
Nevertheless, top White House staffers have concluded that Bush's claim to fiscal responsibility is, at least for now, more important than an expensive boost for Thune. "It's not that we're unsympathetic, but he's the president of the entire country," a White House official said.
Administration officials contend that drought relief for ranchers should come from the $190 billion farm bill Bush signed in May, instead of being funded by a new disaster package championed by Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota. The Thune-Johnson race has become a proxy battle between Bush and Daschle, and as the Senate leader travels his state, he cites the number of days he has waited for the administration to endorse his $4 billion disaster-relief package. Bush's visit will fall on Day 182.
Thune heralded last week's announcement of a presidential visit as a sign that South Dakota's concerns are important to the White House. But Johnson seems to be relishing the visit at least as much, portraying Thune as impotent in Washington.
"I welcome any influence Congressman Thune can bring to bear, but so far that influence has been nonexistent," Johnson said by telephone. At campaign appearances, he says that for someone who has the White House on speed dial, Thune seems to spend a lot of time on hold.
Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said in an interview that the administration is looking aggressively for ways to use existing programs to help drought-stricken ranchers but will insist that new money for them be matched with cuts elsewhere. For instance, she used a teleconference from the department's studio on Monday to tell farm reporters about $150 million worth of nonfat dry milk in government storage that will be sent to four drought-stricken states, including South Dakota, to aid in the production of feed.
"If we're going to provide this kind of assistance, we need to make sure there's offsets so that it does not impact other things we're doing and so that it doesn't add to the deficit," Veneman said. "We should not put further impacts on the deficit, on Social Security and on taxes to provide more benefits for farmers when this year we had this farm bill that provided a lot of additional funding for farmers."
Dry milk.
In the resulting scramble to make up lost face, Thune's access to Our Fearless Leader turned out not to have quite the motive force of Daschle's butt on the Majority Leader's chair.
One test of who can deliver for this state is Washington's response to the drought that parched fields to powder here this summer. When President Bush came to Mt. Rushmore last month, he didn't offer the disaster assistance that many had expected. Instead, the president told South Dakotans that spending curbs were needed to revive the economy. It didn't sit well.
"A lot of people are going out of business," said Johnson. That may be why one of the first items that Daschle scheduled for Senate action after the August recess was a plan for an additional $6 billion in emergency drought relief for farmers and ranchers. Daschle and Johnson claimed credit. Now, Thune is trying to pass some version of drought relief in the GOP-controlled House. The White House wants drought relief to come out of the record $190 billion, 10-year farm bill passed this year.
"Thune was damaged by Bush's refusal to give South Dakota drought aid. It indicates that he won't have much influence," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, who last week adjusted his call in this election from "toss-up" to "the thinnest possible edge" for Johnson.
Thune insists that his campaign is closest to local South Dakota values, and that voters won't hold the Bush's stance on the drought against him. "I don't think South Dakota's principles are for sale," he says.
But what the heck, he decided to try to buy them anyway. Unfortunately, it came out later that he was trying to buy them with money diverted from programs that were feeding, um, people.
A hunger advocacy group has charged that a special livestock drought-relief program crucial to the Senate campaign of Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) cannot be financed without cutbacks in school lunch programs and food banks for the poor.
"Money that formerly went to feed U.S. schoolchildren and other hungry people is being diverted to feed cattle," Bread for the World contended, based on a budgetary analysis of the livestock program.
For the past six weeks, Thune and the Bush administration have used the special $752 million program to showcase Thune's ability to provide crucial, election-year assistance to beleaguered cattle ranchers without busting the budget or cutting back on programs.
Thune is the Republican nominee in one of the hardest-fought Senate races in the country with huge partisan stakes: The Democratic nominee, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), is a close ally of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), and Thune was handpicked by Bush aides to run.
The livestock program has been a boon to Thune. Before the program was announced, he faced the damaging prospect of having to campaign with a president of his party who had rejected his pleas for new federal spending to relieve the worst drought in South Dakota since the Depression.
After the Sept. 19 program announcement, Thune and such groups as Americans for Job Security, an industry organization backing his bid, promoted the program as a demonstration of Thune's ability to figure out how to protect constituent interests without forcing new spending or cutbacks in other programs. "While Washington was talking, John Thune was doing," President Bush said Sept. 24.
But Bread for the World has analyzed the sources of cash for the livestock compensation program and concluded that the numbers do not support Thune's and the administration's claims that the $752 million can be diverted without damaging the school lunch and other domestic nutrition programs.
The Bread for the World study added up all mandated programs and other expenditures under the $6 billion Section 32 fund, and concluded the $752 million "will soak up" cash traditionally used "to buy 'bonus' surplus commodities -- foods such as fruits and vegetables, beef and salmon," half of which went to school lunch programs and the rest to food banks and food kitchens.
Woopsie.
Anyway, tankety tank tank, and Thune loses. The Hill, always a reliable source for beltway conventional wisdom from a navel perspective, thinks maybe Daschle is going to be too scared to run against Thune this year, unless...
If what I read in my own newspaper is right, and it usually is, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) better get ready to face a stiff challenge from former Rep. John Thune next year.
Thune, who was the handpicked choice of President Bush -- and Karl Rove -- to knock off Daschle’s junior Democratic colleague, Sen. Tim Johnson, last year, but fell 524 votes short, is apparently gearing up to try again, this time against the state’s most popular politician.
It’s a tall order. Beating Daschle is as daunting as rappelling up the face of Mount Rushmore. Even if Bush were to buy a ranch in the Black Hills and spend every weekend there, I wouldn’t bet against Daschle. I’ve traveled around the state with him, and even Republicans are proud that he was their state’s first Senate majority leader and could be that again.
Aye, but that’s the rub. I’m not convinced Daschle is going to run, and I’ll tell you why. There are several reasons, the first of which is that Democrats aren’t likely to recapture control of the Senate next year, unless Bush 43 suffers the fate of Bush 41, who came out of the first Gulf War with sky-high approval ratings and then lost because the economy tanked.
But hey, what are the odds of that happening?
So anyway, what we appear to have here is Our Fearless Leader and his handpicked Majority Leader bigfooting the South Dakota race and pretty much guaranteeing complete gridlock for the next six months because the last time Our Fearless Leader bigfooted the South Dakota race and tried to turn it into a pissing match with Tom Daschle, he ended up with a wet leg.
I can only hope he shows this kind of judgment in all of his decisions between now and November.
