what Republican "leaders" really think of NO

[mzteris]

a couple of excerpts from:

Denny Hastert's Dark Calculus John Nichols
Sat Sep 3, 5:20 PM ET

. . .Hastert and DeLay keep vulture eyes on the political map. To the them, New Orleans is little more than a Democratic town full of African Americans, Latino immigrants, gays and lesbians and a few remaining pockets of southern white liberalism. Republican strategists have long been frustrated by New Orleans, a city so blue that it has often tipped the political balance in an otherwise red state. It was New Orleans that gave Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu her narrow first win in 1996 and her only slightly more comfortable reelection victory in 2002. Votes from New Orleans helped make Louisiana one of the few southern states to back Democrat Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection, and they kept Democrat Al Gore competitive with George W. Bush in 2000. In 2003, overwhelming support from New Orleans gave Democrat Kathleen Babineaux Blanco a come-from-behind win in the state's 2003 gubernatorial contest.

. . . Hastert and DeLay see everything in political terms. And in the political calculus of the House Republican Leadership, New Orleans and cities like it have for a long time been written off as expendable. That's why New Orleans didn't get the infrastructure assistance it needed when the city's aging levies could have been strengthened to withstand a storm even as powerful as Hurricane Katrina. And that's why, in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, it made no sense to Denny Hastert to give any hope at all to the people of New Orleans.

Don't doubt for a second that, in his heart of hearts, Hastert believes New Orleans and other big cities are expendable, just as he believes that federal dollars should be poured without limit into the reconstruction of the coast-hugging upscale developments of conservative southern Mississippi and Alabama.


full article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050903/cm_thenation/119659

P.S. VOTE it up!

[Cha]

1. John Nichols is Awesome writing

about these gargoyles.

"hastert to New Orleans..DROP DEAD!"


I voted..it's doing pretty well. I hope a lot of people read this article..brilliantly done.

[mzteris]

2. I thought that bit

about writing off NO because it was essentially blue was a salient point.

[Cha]

3. Intensely "salient"!

We knew it too..it's just so good that John Nichols is writing it down for posterity and other people's consumption.

[carpediem]

4. great article. n/t

.