Wednesday, September 27, 2006

What I Should Have Said Last Night

Well, my participation on PRI's Open Source turned out to be a bit off from what I had expected. I was of the understanding that several of the conservative RI Bloggers were likely going to lead the discussion and I was probably only needing to be available for a few words. It ended up that I was in a debate with mostly everyone else on the program. I thought the producer had said RightRI, when she must have said RIFuture (Matt Jerzyk).

Anyway, I found myself reluctantly defending Chafee. Not exactly what I was intending to do. I was anticipating parsing the results of the primary and discussing why so many RI conservatives were reluctant to support Chafee at this point. Instead we talked a good deal about other matters: mainly Whitehouse versus Chafee, which I suppose is appropriate at this juncture, but I wasn't well prepared for the topic.

Of course what goes through one's mind was a lot of things I wish I had said instead of what I did say.

By the way, if you have an hour to waste, here is a link to the web page where you can download last nights show. Warning: the first half hour was a dialogue between host Christopher Lydon and Projo Political Editor Scott MacKay, who, by the way, was very good and unusually balanced.

Okay, here's what I would have liked to have said:

(1) Oh, you keep saying Bush's approval ratings are in the 20's? And you scoffed when I said he's in the 40's. Well, here I am, as we are speaking, looking at a Chicago Tribune article on the web dated September 21, 2006 saying that his approval rating is up to 41%!

(2) Yes, I will hold my nose and reluctantly vote for Chafee in November, but Chafee is vulnerable to a loss primarily because many RI Republicans are struggling with his atrocious record in the Senate, and the intense heat of his extremely negative campaign against Laffey. It was a scorched earth methodology sanctioned by the NRSC - a National Republican Party affiliate to our great dismay. Chafee will need these votes in November and he may not get them. They will either stay home or, perish the thought, actually vote for Whitehouse. But, as I've said before, I understand the logic. What will Chafee do about it? Would he reach out an offer conservatives something?

(3) The Iraq war is not the most important issue in America, albeit it is an important issue. There are issues such as: N. Korea, jobs moving to Asia, Supreme Court Justice nominations and the Bolton nomination. What to do with Iran, and by the way, have you noticed that the economy is really buzzing right now?? And so on.

But that's perhaps for another (rare) occasion for this blogger to be on a nationally syndicated radio program.

I want to thank Producer Robin Amer at Open Source for giving me a shot at this. It was a mistake, but I'm still glad I gave it a whirl.





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