Voinovich slams DeMint and Coburn for GOP downfall; blames 'the southerners'

[babylonsister]

Nice to see rethugs ripping each other for a change.


http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/07/27/voinovich-slams-demint-and-coburn-for-gop-downfall-blames-the-southerners/

Voinovich slams DeMint and Coburn for GOP downfall; blames 'the southerners'
@ 4:42 pm by Michael O'Brien


Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP's downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's the southerners."

Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.

"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"

Voinovich has broken with his party at several significant points during his two terms in the Senate. He bucked leaders to vote against a dividend tax cut pushed by President George W. Bush earlier this decade, for instance, and only last week voted against an amendment sponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) to expand Americans' ability to carry concealed weapons.

Voinovich, along with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), voted against Thune's amendment, providing the key swing votes preventing it from passing.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I love it when they fight each other!

Let's stand back so they have plenty of room, lol!

[WI_DEM]

2. I love it when they eat there own.

[redqueen]

3. Oh yeah Palin had nothing to do with it.

Pfft...

[BlueJazz]

4. There are many, many intelligent Southeners.Unfortunately those Senators are not among them.

[Bumblebee]

5. that's a good one!

[City Lights]

6. I loves me some GOP infighting.

:popcorn: :beer:

[Thrill]

7. LOL!!

[rvablue]

8. K&R!. How about breaking with your party one more time and voting for health care reform, too! n/t

[Proud Liberal Dem]

14. +1

I wish Lugar would help out more, particularly since Obama seems to like him. He's one of my US Senators and my Dad and I, both staunch Democrats, actually like him better than Bayh and have voted for him before. If we ever have to endure a Republican Presidency, he's the only Republican who I would feel comfortable having as POTUS- although he'd probably never be able to get the nod in the first place because he's not as batshit insane as someone like my *representative* Dan Burton :puke: *ugh!!!!* I'm pleased to see that he will vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor but he has stated before that he generally believes in giving Presidents, Democratic or Republican, whom they want in terms of their appointments. I remember that I wrote him a letter thanking him for his vote to confirm Jocelyn Elders for Surgeon General way back when.

[Raineyb]

9. This sounds like fun

:popcorn:

[Marr]

10. Here's an example of growth becoming cancer.

They've used regional hatred to advance their party for so long, and here it's eating away at the party instead. Pretty funny.

[Ikonoklast]

11. He makes a valid point.

When people here hear a throwback marble-mouthed 'good 'ol boy' drooler drawling on about, well, whatever, they know that the southern conservative Republicans could give two shits less about any Yankee in Ohio.

[terrell9584]

15. You realize that Southern government was all Democratic prior to 1994 right?

And that Southerners are natural populists who should be natural Democrats right?

Not to mention that the South does contribute 7 Senators to the Democratic Senate majority (9 if you include West Virginia) and that if every Southern Democrat was out of office tommorow there would be no Democratic majority in the House, right?

[Ikonoklast]

18. Did you even read what I wrote?

Guess not.

When a REPUBLICAN like Sessions, Boggs, or some other mush-mouthed dummy is speaking for the REPUBLICAN party on an issue and the media is reporting it, a senator like Voinovich from Ohio realizes his constituency thinks these people, and those like them, are from a different planet, politically, even though they are all nominally Republicans, and only care for themselves and people just like them.


They are almost walking, talking parodies of a southern politician when somone shoves a camera in their faces. Pandering, inherently racist, xenophobic, unprincipled.

This is what Voinovich was complaining about.

[phaseolus]

12. There's no love lost between the Rust Belt and the South

25-30 years ago, before manufacturing jobs all over America went overseas, many manufacturers in the Great Lakes closed local factories and moved thousands of jobs to places in the American South with lower wages, lower taxes, no union representation, and other incentives. It was an active effort on the part of some Southern communities to poach these jobs. It's understandable, since any political or business leader will do their best to help their own communities. In the media coverage at the time, as we saw thousands of neighbors and family members losing their jobs, we Northerners saw a lot of glee from those Southern leaders about our local misfortune. Some were very happy that our fathers, brothers, and friends were unemployed.

Younger Northerners might only remember a time when the whole country's in the same boat with respect to manufacturing job losses, but to anyone older than 40 living in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, I think a little mistrust of the South in general still lingers on...

[terrell9584]

17. And that argument can be turned around again

Because most non-Southerners automatically portray Southerners as hicks and rednecks and it is assumed outside the South that having a Southern accent means someone is dumb with very little to no positive depictions of Southern culture in popular mass media

[Berry Cool]

13. Um, *cough cough* Senator, the whole lower half of Ohio goes "errr, errr."

And there are plenty of Southern-fried wack biscuits right here in the Buckeye State without having to look below the Mason-Dixon line. John "Tan in a Can" Boehner and Mean Jean "Still Wear My Bicentennial Dress" Schmidt are but two examples. I really wish that were not the case, but let's be honest here.

[saltpoint]

16. LOL! O boy. This is fun.