Time:Easy to be hard but hard to be smart (Hackett)

[thefloyd]

The republican party has been hijacked by religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of other religious nuts around the world," said Paul Hackett, a recent Iraq-war combat veteran who is running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio. As you may have surmised, Hackett is a Democrat, and his statement, to the Columbus Dispatch, raised an immediate call by the Ohio G.O.P. for an apology. "I said it," Hackett replied. "I meant it. I stand by it." In fact, he has taken to repeating it at every stop along the campaign trail.

Which sent me hurtling to Ohio last week to check out the first hot contest of the 2006 election, the primary election between Hackett and a traditional lunch-pail-liberal Congressman named Sherrod Brown, which will be decided in a May 2 vote. The winner will meet incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine in the fall. It is a race with national implications—winning Ohio has become the holy grail for Democrats—but it also raises an interesting stylistic question for both parties: Is this one of those "outsider" years when the public rises up and cleans out the Congress? Hackett is, flagrantly, an amateur; Brown first ran for office soon after graduating from Yale in 1974, and he has been running ever since.

I caught up with Hackett—a tall, Hollywood-handsome sort—as he strode into a wings joint just outside Marion. At 43, he is a successful lawyer whose Marine reserve unit was deposited in the toughest part of Iraq, Ramadi and later Fallujah, in August 2004. When he arrived home—indeed, as he was embracing his wife—his best friend told him that the local congressional seat was open and that he should run for it. He did, lost well to the heavily favored Republican Jean Schmidt and received lots of positive national attention. With hardly a breath, he turned around and began his Senate campaign, after some prodding from the national-party hierarchy.



http://tinyurl.com/cvrhk

[Redneck Socialist]

1. I don't have much use for Joe Klein

"...What can I say? We really hit it off. Brown was quite the opposite of Hackett on the stump: he asked people questions about their lives, listened carefully to their answers—and answered their questions, about unsexy issues like the Medicare prescription-drug plan, in detail and with respect. Many of those people were unemployed or about to be. There was a real intimacy with the candidate, whom they called Sherrod. It was the most basic sort of politics—an unintended reproach to political professionals who tend to fall for flashy war heroes, and to flashy war heroes who insult the public by thinking they can run for office without taking the issues seriously in a dead-serious time.

Whatever.

I'm sure Sherrrod's a swell fella, but I'll take Hackett's fiery passion any day of the week. Hackett at least understands that our government has been hijacked by the lunatic fringe. Kicking their asses to the curb is our first priority. He can learn about the intricacy's of Medicare later on.