folkbum's rambles and rants

By Keith R. Schmitz

If there is any question about the GOP having any concern for the economic health of this country let's say the Minnesota senate election may be erasing that notion.

In today's Political.com it has been reported that Democratic majority leader Harry Reid will not right now seat the apparent winner of that election Al Franken, even though the laborious hand count of over 3 million votes has him the winner.

If you recall elections past, when the results were in doubt during the the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in Florida and Ohio respectively the GOP pleaded for us all to "move on" for the good of the country. In both cases the Democratic candidates did, for the good of the country although for the "good of the country" that meant George W. Bush as president. The irony is apparent here.

Now it might seem that function has been turned off within the GOP regarding now former Senator Norm Coleman's disappearing seat.

Don't ya think the good people of Minnesota deserve their representation in the Senate during these important debates coming up?

Senator Harry Reid might be regarded as a milquetoast for saying he will not seat Franken in the Senate, but it is quite likely he has heard things from his GOP colleagues in the cloakroom.

We now have an economic war to fight, and the GOP is threatening to hold it up with a time-wasting filibuster on behalf of Coleman if Franken tries to take a seat. Our crisis is telling us we need to move and move now or the Obama administration and optimism for the future will fizzle.

A filibuster will put a choke hold on these efforts. And we could safely say all economic measures proposed by this administration will be more carefully thought out than Henry Paulson's three page ransom note on the $700 billion bailout for his good friends on Wall Street urging urgent passage of the money that the bankers are not now spending.

Did Franken truly win the seat? We don't know. But the process played out and as we say in sports, if you have to blame the referee for the loss maybe the team didn't play hard enough or well enough to deserve the win in the first place. I felt that about the Gore and Kerry campaigns.

Better luck next time. But this time it is our luck that counts.