Dealmaking Democrats November 1 2009
Marguerite Sexton, a Democrat committeewoman in Abington Township, Montgomery County is annoyed at “Republican dirty tricks” and political deal making.
Basically, she was offered a deal of “if you don’t campaign, then we won’t,” and then was surprised when there was a GOP mailing that named the Republican Constable, the GOP Constable’s deputy and (I guess) excluded her.
You can read all about it on her blog here.
What really surprised me was this pronouncement:
Last spring prior to nominating season Jon Fox visited me to see if we could make a deal regarding the constable election. His proposal was that I would run for re-election and one of the Smiths would run and we could keep the status quo and nobody would need to spend any money. The only problem was that the Democrats have two outstanding constable candidates: Dave Conway and Ray Keummerle. No deal. Not that I would have been in the position to make one anyway. Democrats don’t operate like Republicans. We don’t do deals.
It got up my “Democrat/Liberal introspection radar”
So instead of blogging about it here, I decided to post a comment on her blog friday night.
Democrats don’t make deals?
What about Joe Hoeffel’s deal with Jim Matthews?
Joe & Ruth Damsker ran against Matthews, and if they had their way, it would have been Hoeffel & Damsker vs Castor.
The guy you would have chased from office is now the lynchpin to Democrat gains in the ‘burbs.
But you’re right, Democrats don’t make deals.
I refrained from adding additional “deals”.
In the interest of completeness, let me list a few.
In addition to Abington’s own Joe Hoeffel deal with Jim Matthews….. MontcoDems chairman Marcel Groen was looing to make a deal to put MCCC board member Andy Cantor to fill a vacancy on the Montco bench. The 69 year old white man could have only served a year before retiring. Presumably for the pension, which would have been reinvested right into the Montco Dems. This from the party of diversity.
Oh… let’s not forget the quid-pro-quo deal with Joe Hoeffel (of Abington in case you forgot), who ran for Lt Gov for 3 days before getting a sweetheart bullshit job in the Rendell administration.
Speaking of Rendell… what about the deal that Governor Rendell and President Obama cut with Senator Specter to bring to the Democrat side?
Perhaps Senator Harry Reid’s deals with Independent Joe Lieberman? We’re still not sure of the deals there.
Bringing it back home, Abington’s State Rep, Josh Shapiro (a Democrat) put together a deal to make Denny O’Brien (a Republican) Speaker of the Pa House for a term. Rep Shapiro managed to get himself named Deputy Speaker, not doubt because of his disarming altruism.
Oh, and now we have word of deals in NY-24. Rahm & Schumer calling Dede Scozzafava and getting her to endorse the Democrat. She was a Republican, I remember.
Now that I got that off my chest, when I posted it, I used the blogger / gmail login ID, which definitely shows my name (or at least Alex C) and definitely my email address, which does contain my name. I’m not sure it shows my website. I also checked the “email me when follow up comments are made.”
When I posted the comment I noted to myself that the comments are moderated.
Marguerite decided to not post my comment. Which is certainly her right.
But strangely, and cowardly I might add, she has the nerve to update her post and say,
As sort of a post script to the above blog entry, which I posted quite late last night, Sat. Oct 30 [midnight is not late!! -ed], some R named Alex C [that's me! -ed] wrote a comment challenging my contention that Democrats don’t make deals. I realized as I was writing that I was using a bit of hyperbole. (Republicans will need to look that up in http://www.dictionary.com/ Democrats will know what it means.) What is not hyperbole and is completely and outrageously wrong, illegal and egregiously without integrity is ATRO and the Smiths did to try to gain an advantage. [Politicians taking advantage? Never. -ed]
Some folks stay up even later than I do paying attention to this kind of stuff. [Again, midnight isn't late, but I'm sure if I posted it at 8am, the outcome would have been the same. -ed] One of the things I enjoy about having my own blog is that it is completely fair and balanced. I get to say all my own fair and balanced opinions and then get to pick and choose which comments (or part of people’s comments) I do and do not publish, such as with Alex C above.
Hahahahahahah!!!!
You were serious and self-righteous in your declarations, Marge. Hyperbole, hardly. Why else would you claim you weren’t in position to not make a deal? Only because you had no move to make.
Instead in your feigned indignance, you got caught blindsided by such a massive deal right under your nose, you didn’t know what to do! Instead of ignoring it and carrying on, you had to react!… and now this post!
Weirder still, she then left this comment (not an update) on her post.
To all my Republican friends who are sending me responses that I haven’t published, please consider signing your names and e-mail addresses. I am not GUARANTEEING I would publish them. But I will ABSOLUTELY NOT publish anything unsigned or anonymouse. C’mon. You know who I am, put yourself out there and then we can know who is talking to whom.
How did I know about this comment? It was automatically emailed to me… because I unanonymously (to coin a word) left a comment on a post she didn’t publish!
Marge, I really appreciate your paean to “we can know who is talking to whom”…. what I don’t appreciate is how you can claim on one hand to be completely “fair and balanced” (haha! Faux News joke!) and on the other hand incompletely represent their message.
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Comments, compliments or complaints?
ethanD Nov 2
lol, politicians in general don’t make deals :/