The answer is blowing in the wind
I regularly enjoy highlighting the perfidies of Democrats and their inane socialist policies in this column. For example, they love to lament the loss of civil liberties—the USA PATRIOT Act and bans on same-gender marriage—but then in the same breath, they seem to have no problem telling the rest of us what kinds of SUVs we should or should not drive.
Now, courtesy of Nevada’s ballot initiative process, voters get a chance to raise the state minimum wage to $6.15 per hour come Nov. 7 because the big, bad Republican-meanies in Congress didn’t raise the federal minimum wage.
Courtesy of the Nevada Democratic Party’s Web site and Tessa Hafen, Democrat candidate for Congressional District 3: “Republicans need to stop playing political games and start getting serious about raising the minimum wage. Ten years without an increase is long enough, and I support giving a raise to hardworking Nevadans without conditions or strings attached.”
Working for Sen. Harry Reid for eight years apparently makes Ms. Hafen eminently qualified to be a U.S. representative. (And, considering the fact her former boss has been sucking at the public trough all his life, perhaps so.) If Hafen and other equally uninformed Democrats actually gave a rip about the downtrodden, however, they might stop pandering for votes from poor people with $1-$2 an hour wage hikes and finally advance a proposal of exactly what constitutes a “living wage.” Is it $10 an hour? $30? $50? I mean, exactly how much should a business be mandated to pay someone with no job skills? That would at least be a principled stand worthy of debate.
Although, let’s recall, we’re talking about Democrats here. Principles and political platforms among this party tend to change with the prevailing polls. To wit: see Sen. John “I voted for the war before I voted against it” Kerry, and the rest of his ilk who straddle the “war fence” with nuanced positions. Unlike say, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has been pro-war since day 1. Six years ago, Mr. Environment Al Gore trotted out Joe Lieberman as his Vice Presidential running mate, ostensibly because Lieberman was “a man of deep religious faith,” to capture the votes of all those evangelical Christians on the “religious right"—whom Democrats normally portray as clueless, right-wing hayseeds.
And for all his unwavering “pro-war” ideology, he was thrown under the proverbial bus in favor of Ned Lamont who ran mostly on the Democrat’s latest anti-war platform. (Lamont won the primary 52 percent to 48 percent.)
Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a joint statement in support of Lamont, to wit: “Joe Lieberman has been an effective Democratic senator for Connecticut and for America. But the perception was that he was too close to George Bush and this election was, in many respects, a referendum on the president more than anything else.”
OK, does everyone have that?
Lieberman’s own Web site, www.joe2006.com, makes it abundantly clear how close he actually was to President Bush’s positions.
“Warmonger” Lieberman voted against all the Bush tax cuts, voted against the bankruptcy bill, opposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposed bans on stem cell research, opposed attempts to privatize Social Security, opposed Bush’s decision to pull out of the International Criminal Court and also any attempts to open the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) to oil drilling.
It seems about the only thing Lieberman actually agreed with the president on was the war on terror. And for taking that principled stand, he got handed his walking papers by his fellow Democrats.
That primary was definitely a referendum on something.