(NJ-Sen) As a New Jersey resident, I continue to be astounded by polls that show stumbling, bumbling Tom Kean, Jr., with any kind of competitive numbers, let alone a slight lead. The newspapers and TV stations, eternally lazy, let the Repubs manipulate them according to the talking points, driving negative press stories against Menendez, DESPITE previous testimony that praised Menendez's courage in helping to expose corruption in Hudson County. Yep, another form of swiftboating, turning the situation upside down.
However, the blogosphere does not need to conform to the straitjacket press coverage. All the Dems need to do, IMO, is to remind NJ voters that Kean Jr. supports hard-right judges like Alito. It's already on the record (jump)
Kean, Jr., of course is a real party hack. His experience for the office of senator consists of 2 years in the NJ Assembly, and 2 years in the State Senate. He served on three committees: Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens; Judiciary; and Joint Commission on Public Schools. He doesn't brag about it, but he publicly ran away from the committee that would graple with the messy state budget, left deeply in debt after the tenure of Repub Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (whose husband was involved with the bond business at Citibank). This becomes important as a character issue, as he has developed a pattern of cutting and running when he deems the political heat is getting too hot around him.
This just helps to set the stage for the main point: when G.W. Bush put forth the nomination of Samuel Alito for Supreme Court, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor who was retiring, here is what Tom Kean Jr., knowing he would run for the US Senate, had to say: Kean Jr backed Alito as a "principled, fair and capable jurist."
Reminder: this is the same Alito who believes the Constitution does not protect the right to abortion. The same Alito who dissented in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, and thus would find a reason to uphold Gitmo-style handling of prisoners, innocent or not, with no habeus corpus, hooding, stress positions, etc. Then there is even the case where Alito would have permitted the strip search of a mother and her little girl. Is this what New Jerseans really want.
It is time to remind voters how Tom Kean, Jr. would vote on the next Supreme Court Nominee. Alito already votes with hard right Roberts, Scilia and Thomas. All it takes on one more vote, and legalized abortion is over, not to mention habeas corpus. People who are concerned mainly with gas prices are too narrowly focused.
On other parts of his record already public, Tom Kean, Jr., should easliy lose.
Worried about the economy? Tom Kean Jr.'s website proudly supports the Bush tax cuts. How's the trickle down theory working out for New Jersey?
Worried about the war in Iraq? Try to find any reference in the Kean Jr. press materials to any visits to Iraq, or even to the troops mobilized from the armory across the street from Kean Jr.'s local high school in Westfield, NJ. I sure didn't see him during the deployment. Kean Jr.'s official position is full-tilt support of Bush, and "staying the course." It'd be nice to see Menendez hit this point harder in the last weeks of the campaign, IMO.
Worried about the nation's addiction to oil? According to Newsmeat.com, Kean Jr. has $50,000 invested in Exxon/Mobil, and $50,000 in British Petroleum. These investments seem remarkably consistent with the Repub foreign policy, which is Kean Jr's field of PhD study.
Tom Kean Jr has received about $238,000 from the National Republican Party, according to the Democratic site DSCC.org, including such right wing non moderates as Trent Lott (embarrassed by racist comments), Bill Frist (of the Terry Schiavo intervention), and Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum.
In addition, financial records show links between him and the DuHaime company, which helped direct the George W. Bush "re-election" in 2004.
The buzz you get from the conventional print and TV media is that Kean Jr. is a moderate. Even a modest one-hour search of Tom Kean Jr.'s written positions indicate that Kean Jr. is yet another wolf in sheep's clothing.
It seems almost a given that Kean Jr., if elected Senator, would try to use his limited and undistinguished service on the NJ judiciary committee as a very thin credential to leapfrog onto the Senate Judiciary Committee, to try to neutralize Democratic opponents with real records of accomplishment, like Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, Jr. If my local Democrats do not forcefully remind voters of Kean's backing of right wingers like Alito for the Supreme Court, the current Constitutional Crisis could be resolved in favor of the right wing reactionay forces. Ich bein ein East Berliner?