This is a class blog for the students of POLSCI 426: Congressional Politics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
Mazel Tov Tommy
You would think a person who has been in politics for so long would know better than to say what Tommy Thompson said in a speech Monday. I don't think he appeals to the median voter of the Jewish community anymore. Stereotyping is like the cardinal sin of all politics, and Tommy just shot himself in the foot with that one. Something are just better to be thought and not said.
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3 comments:
You'd think so, but here we are. Tommy shoots from the hip and this is another contemporary example of that hurting a run for office. All I know is that he had that all-too-familiar George Allen "I didn't mean it like that" look on his face when asked about it. Will it hurt him in the Republican primary? I doubt it. Only 19% of Jewish voters picked Bush in 2000. Likewise, just 23% of Jewish voters consider themselves "conservative." I can see this hurting him only if he makes it out of the primary. So what I guess I'm saying is this will NEVER hurt him.
These days, any indication of wanting to draw upon time-tested stereotypes results in ire from just about everyone, not just the target of the classic lines. Whether or not this media outcry over free speech accepted as recently as the 1980s is an indication of actual change in beliefs or an index merely of additional filtering to be “PC” remains to be known, as the public is divided on the extent to which public figures should be punished for such slips of the tongue: A recent NewsMax poll found that 72% of its readers believed that Don Imus should not have been fired over his Rutgers comment, whereas a Washington Post – ABC News poll found that an average of 40% of respondents overall (tabulated because the WP provided only demographic-specific poll results in its article) believe that Imus should have retained his job. You don’t hear this kind of media outcry when elected officials raise taxes despite similar percentages of Americans not wanting to have their taxes raised. Even John Kerry has publicly stated that Imus should have been only suspended and not fired, indicating that perhaps Kerry is more of a bluedog Democrat than what he presented himself as in the 2004 general election. This makes sense when considering the shifting of candidate positions towards the median vote the closer the general election is and makes even more sense when considering that Kerry said he “might or might not” run for the presidency in 2008. By floating such a direct statement about CBS’ handling of the Imus situation, Kerry will be able to track any changes in popular opinion about him that coincide with the public release of his comments to better decide whether a slip of the tongue would definitely take him out of contention if her were to run again for the rpesidency.
Stupid MS Word stalled again, preventing the red line from showing up; sorry for the typo.
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