Saturday, June 02, 2007

The Republicans smell blood?

Of course there is an anti Ravenstahl tide throughout much of the Burghosphere. And who can blame us, when the kid keeps making mistakes on a fairly big scale. Some of the mistakes are his refusing to talk about other mistakes And its not like I have looked closely at it, but someone mentioned he apparently keeps saying that other people “know they’re wrong”. If true, that’s not a good trait, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of about 90% of human nature (yeah, I am fairly there is a group of about ten percent of people, including me, who do know they’re wrong).

I doubt there are many Republicans who troll the Burghosphere, but they saw the results of the election, they saw the upsets of newcomers against incumbents. Sure, the primary is all about the democrats, but maybe some voters are ready to be pealed off. So Mark DeSantis got on the ballot and Glenn Meakam went to talk at the African American Chamber of Congress. I wish I had a transcript of Meakam’s speech. I gather he talked a lot about education, as well as drawing some parallels between the region’s economic woes and the street violence in Homewood. Kind of easy targets, but its not clear to me that he is interested in businesses that would help in Homewood at all. It’s a long way from Sewickley to Homewood and I don’t think many who make the trip stay very long. I was trying to read up on Meakam and saw a mention of educational charities involving charter, cyber and perhaps parochial schools. So Meakam could probably help Pittsburgh Promise out a lot, but he would rather undermine public education as it exists today.

DeSantis could have the advantage the President currently has. That advantage is, if you know most of the city is against you no matter what, you can talk about anything. I will have to listen to the podcast of his interview on the “Busman’s Holiday”. I read somewhere that the Republican’s kept DeSantis’s write in campaign largely a secret because the Mayor’s people could find enough reliable Republican’s to write in Luke’s name on the Republican ballot, because the write in candidate who gets the most write in votes gets the official nod.

A random thought, the PG and most news services did *not* carry any information on Thursday’s transit rally. I looked and confirmed that on the PG website.

Yeah, its true, this post has more stuff than usual that I can't substantiate.

Tired. Goin’ to bed, perchance to sleep.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a republican and I "troll the Burghosphere" everyday...I just moved here in November so I'm still catching up of sorts, but I am a Republican and I do actually follow city government lol...why I'm not sure. It does seem to me readin all of these blogs (I read about 5-8 daily) that most of the Dems writing them are actually pretty conservative, but in Pittsburgh even if you are moaderate or even slightly right of center, you still have to say you're a Democrat or you can't vote in any elections that matter.

EdHeath said...

Well, you know the economist Steven Levitt ran a column in the NYTimes and in one column he noted that most economists do not bother to vote at all. The odds of your vote mattering in any election are very, very small, and apparently most economists are embarrassed to be seen voting.

Never the less, if City, County State or National politics interest you, you should go ahead and troll away (prove me wrong, or be the exception that dis-proves the rule, or whatever). You might want to change your registration, if you want to vote in elections that matter, except for that business about your vote not mattering. I actually used to be registered as a republican, in the eighties and nineties. I wanted to add one more number to the other side (besides, I was somewhat fiscally conservative). But I decided the Clinton democrats were closer to my world view.

I think you are right, some of the blogs in the “Burghosphere” show a definite conservative bias. Then again, it’s been argued that Dan Onorato is a republican in democrat’s clothing. I wonder if the conservatives of the Burghosphere really reflect anything out there in the public. Then again, if they shout enough they might influence some opinion.

Frankly, at the national level the republicans aren’t republicans anymore. I mean, yes, there was tort and bankruptcy “reform”, but basically the republican congress went on a four year spending spree that put the Great Society to shame. Well, that’s my feeling anyway.