I keep hearing, both on the national and state scene, that the massive amounts of money spent by special interest pacs made no difference in this election. But if you think about it there was huge change coming out of this ocean of spending by the right wing. They had no impact. Usually, they do push and bully their way around with dollars. But the spending was so outrageous that the American voter caught on to the game and decided to ignore the hateful politics that came out of this.
I wonder if Governor Martinez will learn anything here. She is not immune and her failure to change the legislature from blue to red will now make her look ineffectual. On election night she was reduced to handing out free pizza at long voter lines in Rio Rancho. She looked marginalized and silly.
I wonder if Governor Martinez will learn anything here. She is not immune and her failure to change the legislature from blue to red will now make her look ineffectual. On election night she was reduced to handing out free pizza at long voter lines in Rio Rancho. She looked marginalized and silly.
2 comments:
Interesting. Free pizza is available, the governor is there. Coincidence? How much pizza got handed out? Larry Barker is looking into it as we eat, I mean, speak.
Susana and food. As a reminder to the causal reader, Susana Martinez switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party after some Republicans bought her lunch. She tells this story herself, over and over. She repeated it during her speech to the Republican convention.
Missing from the story is the fact that she had been fired by her boss, the DA down there in Las Cruces, and wanted to run against him.
It's not hard to guess why she switched. The Republicans were welcoming her with open arms. She'd get all the their votes and some of the Democratic vote, instead of having to fight over Democratic votes in the Democratic primary, and voila, as she bragged during her speech at the convention, she won in a landslide.
I know I keep bringing this up again and again but some of your readers may not be aware of it and I think it's a necessary part of understanding what kind of thing motivates this woman. Ambition, revenge, self interest, probably. Loyalty, principles, probably not.
When I say "principle," in this case I mean adhering to a set of beliefs that are outside of self interest, that are a guide to the conscience, that are a way to filter out self interest.
She may not have consciously been a die hard Democrat and in fact it's obvious she wasn't. When it came down to it she had some underlying values that were not the same as the values of the Democratic Party, a different set of principles, based more on self interest.
What does all this has to do with your commentary? You asked if the governor will learn something. I hope she does and isn't listening to all this chatter about what Republicans need to do to remain a viable party. I've heard her name mentioned a couple times now as an important element in Republican outreach to Hispanics. That's why they trotted her out at their convention, after all.
If you go back and read that speech it was all about her, about how her family succeeded by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, an implicit endorsement of a primary Republican talking point.
There's wasn't much anyone in the working class could relate to. People know full well that success is more often about having a head start, and connections, and advantages like education and stable home lives and role models and mentors, things many people just don't have to any degree.
Is it possible that Hispanics will buy the Republican message just because it's delivered by a Hispanic? We're probably going to find out pretty soon because Susana is indeed listening to the chatter. Will Hispanics see that to explain away her bald pursuit of self interest she has concocted a myth about herself, chosen from one of the myths the Republican Party uses to drum up support from working class Anglos? I hope so.
Post a Comment