Flotsam & Jetsam
Does the ‘H’ stand for Home Run?
You could almost make a party game out of GOP Chairman John H. Sununu’s angry exasperation with Democrats for grabbing control of three of four congressional seats, the governorship, the House, the Senate and the Executive Council. You probably can almost see his blood pressure rise when he thinks about the situation.
Take a recent foray the former governor made to Lebanon, where he spoke at the annual Grafton County GOP’s Lincoln-Reagan Day dinner.
Sununu was at the top of his game, according to a report by Valley News reporter John Woodrow Cox, who probably had a difficult time keeping up with the Chairman’s rapid-fire pronouncements, seething generalities and Ricklesesque one-liners.
Among the zingers:
• Sununu called New Hampshire’s Democratic leadership a “useless crew.”
• During the speech, he called out to a reporter in the back of the room to spell “useless” to ensure, he said, that he was quoted accurately.
• “I don’t understand why people aren’t marching in the streets,” he said. “This is a mismanaged government, and it’s ruining the state of New Hampshire.”
• After the speech, Sununu said there should be a state budget spending freeze. “If they would put me in charge,” he said, “I would cut it all.”
• Asked to be more specific about how he would go about the budget cuts, Sununu replied, “I’m not going to give you a recipe.”
Put simply, the former governor certainly has a way of condescending to share his wisdom with us. Add his intellectual self-assurance and the man surely gives off an aura of never being wrong. Like the time when he was chief of staff under the first President Bush and guaranteed Republicans that David Souter would be “a home run for conservatives.”
Whoops
From the Nobody’s Perfect Department:
A snarky item that appeared in the April 10-23 edition of F&J went on about how there was no longer a New Hampshire Sunday News – that it goes by the name the paper takes the six other days it’s published.
That was really wrong. The New Hampshire Sunday News is the name of the Union Leader’s Sunday edition. Always has been and very likely always will be.
Get on that bandwagon
It certainly hasn’t been the best of times for Republicans, both nationally and in New Hampshire. So when you can take credit for something, go for it, right?
But New Hampshire Republicans appeared to get a little carried away with themselves after the Senate voted to kill House Bill 415, the transgender civil rights bill. Senate Republicans, apparently thrilled that the measure was stopped, quickly sent out a press release, “Senate Republicans Vote Down Transgender Bill.”
“Today was an important victory in stopping the radical San Francisco agenda by the liberal left,” said Senate Minority Leader Peter Bragdon. “The position of the Senate Republicans is the same as that of Governor Lynch, who says concerns raised by advocates of the bill are already addressed in current law.” (Note that “Governor Lynch” bit, by the way.)
They actually made it sound as if only Republicans stood in the way between the bill becoming law and not, a kind of “Profiles in Courage” moment, or something like that.
The final vote? 24-0, which last time we checked meant that it was unanimous – 14 Democrats and 10 Republicans – against passing the bill.
F&J TOTE BOARD
| Auto dealers: | With the very real threat of a significant number of car dealerships closing in the coming months, the House decides to fast-track a bill providing some protections. |
| Charlie Bass: | The former congressman tells the Concord Monitor that he’s considering running for Congress again, or perhaps Senate. |
| Ray Buckley: | The Democratic Party chair gets some attention from The Drudge Report after saying anti-tax tea protesters “looked like they had lost their minds. They didn’t even know what they were protesting.” |
| J. Herbert Quinn: | In a memoir, the former Concord mayor – who was impeached in the 1960s – continues to go after his nemesis, the Concord Monitor, saying it was “filled with yellow journalism and a huge desire to ‘get me.’” |
It’s been making the rounds…
• There are two good reasons Frank Guinta has decided to go for Congress instead of running for governor. John Lynch. And his 70 percent approval rating.
• Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall when the governor found out that the Senate passed the same-sex marriage bill?
• If Republicans are stuck with old faces, at least for now, wouldn’t Democrats be smart to opt for new ones when there’s a congressional seat to fill?
• John the Father says he’d be “the last to know” if his son, the former senator, decides to run for the Senate again in 2010. But dontcha think the chairman of the party should be in the loop somewhere before the end?
• Before her turnaround on same-sex marriage, Sen. Deb Reynolds certainly wasn’t winning any friends among Democratic activists. You think that had anything to do with her decision to change her mind?
• No getting around it, Jeb Bradley and the Republicans made Bud Martin and the Democrats feel like it was 1994 in the Senate District 3 special election.
• Even swine flu couldn’t get State House denizens’ minds off what the governor’s decision on same-sex marriage will be.
