Democratic Politburo Makes a Decree - No Primaries!

[Goose3five]

This is being crossposted from Comments From Left Field.

Many thanks to Mark Crispin Miller for posting the full audio of a speech given by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at a private party in Georgia on August 2. I have clipped out the relevant two minutes of this speech and transcribed it for everyone to see. Bottom line, Schumer admits to, in effect, a new Democratic strategy whereby he and the DSCC leadership will choose who will run against vulnerable Republicans. The case he uses is our own fight for the seat held by Rick Santorum.

Here is the audio clip in mp3 format.

"Let me tell you one other thing we did. We are no longer letting Democrats get in a circle and shoot each other. I was just in Tennessee with Harry and with (...) and we have a primary and I stood up there Harold Ford is running and he can become the first African-American elected in the south to the Senate since reconstruction which would be a great thing for America. There is this young woman whose... not so young... but a nice woman running against him but everyone says she is going to attack him."

"...(unintelligible) we are going to intervene if anyone one democrat attacks another, we're doing that in states where there are primaries. We can't afford to do it anymore. This always happens in the primaries, we would throw up the cards and see where they landed. No more, we are finding the best candidate in every one of the seats where a Republican is vulnerable."

"So I called up Governor...our number one target is Rick Santorum...let him go back to wherever he lives, Maryland, you know you heard about it, he is Pennsylvania but he tried to get exempt from the school tax there cause he lives in Maryland even though he is a registered citizen of Pennsylvania. In any case I called up the Governor of Pennsylvania, Governor Rendell, I said who is the best candidate to beat Santorum. He there is only one person who could beat him but A he won't run and B you wouldn't want him to run. I said why wouldn't we want him to run, he said he's pro-life. He's a deeply religious Catholic man. Bob Casey."

"I said, those days are over Ed. Yes I'm pro-choice, but we need the best candidate. We can't insist that every democrat check off 18 different issues before they get (unintelligible) we could do that, we can't anymore. And so, we persuaded, Harry using his very...Harry has amazing insights into people...and we together persuaded Bob Casey to run. A poll yesterday...national...all the polls they did...Casey 51 Santorum 40. You should see Santorum nervous and walkin on the floor."

(unintelligible)

"And we're doing this in the other states."

A couple of things worth noting here. First, Governor Rendell gave two points according to Schumer "A - he won't run and B you wouldn't want him to run." Let me repeat that, Governor Rendell said point blank to Chuck Schumer that Casey would not run and that we would not want him to run. In my opinion these two points deserve a further look.

Why would Rendell think Casey "would not run?" Well, the conventional wisdom is that Casey has never had aspirations to run for a national office. His only desire it would appear is to eventually make another run at Governor of Pennsylvania. This is all well and good but let me ask you, how good of a candidate do you think Casey will be against Rick Santorum if he had to be persuaded by Schumer and Reid to run?

Second point. Rendell recognized that Casey's pro-life stance is a problem, why do you think that is? I contend that the reason is the majority of the Democratic party is made up of women and by putting up a pro-life candidate and promising to take out any challengers the Democrats are writing off the majority of their voters.

Not only is this strategy stupid, it rings of Soviet Politburo tactics. The Democratic party leadership, or more accurately the DSCC, has decided that they know better than anyone how to win and they are going to shove their candidates down our throats like it or not.

(If you would like the entire 20 plus minute speech it can be found here courtesy of Mark Crispin Milller.)

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Liz at the Pennacchio campaign blog.