Monday, April 26, 2010

The Atlanta Machine

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder performs an absolute take down of Newt Gingrich's recent intellectually dishonest rhetoric about "machine politics" - he glibly asks why no one ever referred to Newt's use of the same parliamentary maneuvers as the "Atlanta Machine".

Money quote.
Interlude: which party introduced and passed an extremely complicated, extremely expensive Medicare prescription drug bill in the dead of night -- via a process that lasted three hours? Not the Democrats.
For those concerned about the Republican party driving off the cliff, the whole article is a must read.

1 comment:

nast said...

The thing about machine politics, and especially Chicago-style machine politics, is that you made sure your voters got taken care of, and those that didn't vote for you could go to hell. You voted for the right guy and came home to find trash on your street, you made a call to your alderman and it was gone the next day. You voted for the wrong guy and it would sit there for weeks.

The point is that a month later and I still have yet to read the provision in the health care reform bill that states how non-Democrats don't get to share in any of the benefits. It helps everybody.

If that is supposed to represent Chicago Machine-style politics, then somewhere Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna are rolling in their graves.