The Courant has seen fit to give one Robert Thorson a weekly column on its op-ed page. Mr. Thorson is a geology professor at UConn, so he presumably knows a lot about rocks. Unfortunately, he writes about politics, at least he did today. One must wonder why the Courant sees fit to give this person a weekly column, inasmuch as he appears to lack basic knowledge of our political system, both in theory and in practice. Perhaps, in this postmodern world, independent thinking equates to fact free thinking.
Today Mr. Thorson, a proud independent, bemoans the fact that he isn’t allowed to vote in the primary of his choosing. According to him, it is unfair for a political system to exist in which only people who declare affiliation with a party get to take a part in choosing that party’s nominee. This year, for instance, he was deprived of the right to vote in the Republican primary, where he wanted to cast a vote against Huckabee. A laudable ambition, perhaps, but precisely why should non-Republicans be allowed to deprive Republicans of the right to choose their own candidate, free of interference from folks like Thorson? Thorson never tells us.
I would submit to Mr. Thorson that if he changes his mind and decides to register, he might seriously consider finding a permanent home with the Republicans, as he appears to lack the ability to engage in logical thought and/or a basic fund of knowledge. (Take your pick). He’d fit right in over there. Consider this:
Looking from the sidelines, I hope Obama wins the nomination. But if his party picks Hillary, I probably will vote for McCain. Why? Because my vote will be guided by the political distance between any candidate and the ruinous neo-conservative political establishment in Washington today.
Now this is a man with a weekly column in a once respected newspaper. Perhaps I can clue him in on some basic facts. The Republicans have fractured this year along certain fault lines: corporate interests; religious whackjobs, and neo-cons. Romney represented the corporate types, and we all know the group to whom Huckabee appeals. What do you suppose that leaves McCain, the prophet of eternal war? Maybe Mr. Thorson should ask McCain’s foreign policy advisor, Bill Kristol or his other best friend, Joe Lieberman.
Never mind, I’ll make it easy.
Here is the political distance, in inches, between McCain and the ruinous neo-conservative political establishment in Washington today: zero. Precisely equal to the amount of time Thorson appears to have spent actually studying the candidates.
But it gets better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). According to Thorson McCain’s love affair with the Iraq war specifically and war generally will not translate into positive action, despite McCain’s oft proclaimed intentions to see it through to victory. Because why? Because the American people, who have not been able to stop Bush, will somehow stop McCain (yes, that’s right, we’re going to do it all by our lonesomes, somehow), despite the fact that he will be able to claim a mandate for eternal war by virtue of the fact that mindless dolts like Thorson just put him into office after running on a platform promising just that: eternal war.
As for Hillary, Thorson disqualifies her. Why?
Unfortunately, she’s a galaxy closer to business as usual than her competitors, in part because she voted to allow Bush his horrendous blunder.
Must I point out that McCain voted for it too, and has suggested starting in on Iran? Or that McCain has promised to keep us there for 100 years while Hillary at least claims to want to get us out? Or that McCain is pushing the meme that the recent escalation is working, despite the fact that it has clearly failed to achieve the results it was allegedly designed to achieve. What part of business as usual has McCain eschewed? He has embraced business as usual. Thorson might consider actually listening to McCain, instead of the idiot reporters who keep calling him a maverick.
Where does the Courant dig these people up? Why is this person inflicted on a helpless Connecticut every week?
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