The Friday Political Grab Bag

[Bob Geiger]

If it's Friday, it's time to take a look at what's been floating around the political world this week and that I haven't commented on, might have slipped under your radar or has just flat-out been too silly for you to notice…

Yeah, We Should Give These Guys Bipartisanship - Showing, as they always do, that any Republican talk about a new spirit of bipartisanship in Washington is just a bunch of garbage, the GOP last week elected Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole as the new head of the National Republican Congressional Committee for the next election cycle.

Cole is the same guy who, in 2004, pushed for George W. Bush to remain in office by saying that John Kerry winning would mean that Osama bin Laden also wins.

"What do you think Hitler would have thought if Roosevelt would've lost the election in 1944? He would not have thought American resolve was strengthening," said Cole. "What would the Confederacy have thought if Lincoln would have lost the election of 1864? I promise you this, if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election. It's that simple."

Of course, Cole refused to retract his comments at the time so when Democrats begin thinking about extending a hand across the aisle in Congress next year, they might want to remember that this guy will be waiting to urinate on that same hand in 2008.

* * * * *George Allen Blogger Says Webb Win Due to Netroots - While this may be selling short the campaign run by Jim Webb's organization, it's nice to see Jon Henke, who was the official blogger for the George Allen Senate campaign, give props to Progressive bloggers and the effect we had on the 2006 elections.

Writes Henke:

"Perhaps the biggest success of the Leftosphere happened here in Virginia, as Jim Webb took a long-shot campaign and, with a significant boost from the netroots, capitalized on the general anti-Republican zeitgeist and the missteps of George Allen to pull out a win.

"Make no mistake, without the netroots, Webb would not have won. He may not even have been close. It was a long-cultivated activism/outreach/media-hounding New Media campaign that brought Webb to the attention of the institutional Democrats, sold him to the activists and shaped the narratives of both Webb and Allen for the media.

"Those New Media efforts lead directly to the beating that Allen eventually took in the press, and to the Democratic mobilization on Webb's behalf. The Webb campaign may have taken advantage of that, but it was the careful netroots preparation that allowed them to do so."

OK, gang, let's absorb those kudos for a few minutes and move on to the next ass kicking we're going to deliver in 2008.

Read more, including some great political animations, at BobGeiger.com.