Wow. It just doesn't stop...
Apparently there are those among the Republican Party who feel that Democrats shouldn't even be allowed to own property.
Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) who serves as Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee made the following statement: "I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes, I don't think it's the Nats that get hurt. I think it's Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions from antitrust laws."
To what was this in response? The fact that the leading bidder on the Washington Nationals baseball team is a group funded largely by George Soros.
So, to review, apparently it's OK that President Bush once owned a Major League team, and it's apparently OK that Colin Powell was part of one of the other groups bidding on the team. But if a Democrat wins the team, that's reason enough to threaten MLB with a re-examination of their antitrust exemptions?
Talk about an abuse of power!
Liam.
posted by Liam at 6/29/2005 10:38:00 AM
2 Comments:
Davis has already started backpedalling .... I'm starting to think that inflammatory remarks are just a PR game; the one who can appear nastiest gets the most attention, but as long as he follows up with "only kidding" we can't touch him.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005 4:00:00 PM
I'm not surprised. The comment was indefensible, and I doubt that even most Republicans would have backed him up on it.
The conspiracy theorist in me (small, but not entirely absent in my make up) wonders whenever something like this is said, whether it's this person's week to raise a trial balloon for his party, so that they can either get behind it or "chastise" him so that he can publicly apologize, depending on public sentiment. Test the waters before committing your entire party to a possibly disastrous stance. (And to be clear, by no means do I think this is limited to either party)
There was a minor sub-plot on the West Wing in which the governor of some state (I think it was Michigan) was incensed because the White House did a poll to see how the public would react if they found out that he had been concealing a debilitating disease (for those that don't watch, President Bartlett on The West Wing has MS, a fact which was not disclosed during his campaign).
It would not surprise me if occasionally some obscure party member somewhere was occasionally asked to make an outrageous statement like this, to see if it would fly "in Peoria" as they say.
Of course, it would also not surprise me if this particular Representative was just shooting his mouth off. Congressmen from the lower house seem to have a tendency to do that.
Liam.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005 4:43:00 PM
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