Someone Needs A History Lesson

I haven’t checked in with our good friend J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times in awhile, but today, J.D. is doing his “Mikey Fitz Lapdog Act” again, dutifully recording such gems of reason and intellect from our incumbent 8th District U.S. House rep from PA as this one:

A few weeks ago, I asked Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick what his biggest obstacle to winning re-election would be.

It's not so much his opponent, Democrat Pat Murphy, he said, but President Bush's dismal polls.

If Bush had 50 percent or better job approval marks, Fitzpatrick estimated his victory spread in November would be as high as 10 points.

But with the president's popularity in the tank (an anemic 30 percent), it's going to be a long, tough fight, he told me.

I’m going to highlight that quote from Fitzpatrick again…

If Bush had 50 percent or better job approval marks, Fitzpatrick estimated his victory spread in November would be as high as 10 points.

I hope Patrick Murphy and his campaign plasters that quote all over their website and everywhere they can and does their best to hang Fitzpatrick with it.

Don't worry too much about Mullane, though. I said it's been awhile since I saw what he was up to, but trust me; he's still in "hacktacular" form, having pronounced Patrick Murphy's opposition to Mikey's silly attempt to shut off MySpace.com at schools and libraries as "a blunder" (we'll let the voters decide that, OK J.D.?).

And from the “What Else Can You Expect” department comes Mullane’s quote from Andy Warren stating that Murphy will not win by tarring Fitzpatrick, but by tarring the Republican Party in general (Andy is speaking based on the actual practice of his mercifully-ended candidacy, of course). Actually, I don’t think Patrick is planning to “tar” anyone in this campaign but will do his best to keep it issues-oriented and geared towards the actual concerns of Bucks County voters instead.

And what of J.D. anyway? Dubya is now “ballot box poison”? Why, this is such a departure from “The Great Man Narrative” that J.D. was peddling about Our Dear Leader right after the election, when Dubya was yelling “mandate” all over the place even though he had arguably won only about 51 percent of the vote in the presidential election (I obtained the link from Tom Matrullo at the blog Improprieties).

As Mullane gushed awhile back:

I realized what really divides us last week when President Bush visited Ruth Wright's farm in Lower Makefield.

Bush spoke of the stakes for the world in the global war on Islamo-fascist terror.

He spoke of Afghanistan and how, for the first rime in its 5,000-year history, it had held democratic elections to choose a president, and the first voter was a 19-year-old woman.

"Freedom is on the march," Bush said. "The world is changing because of our deep belief in freedom. We believe everybody wants to be free. Freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom is the almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world."

The crowd went nuts - the loudest and longest ovation of the night. Bush's words weren't Lincolnesque, but his presence made up for it.

Afterward, as I trudged across a lumpy, muddy cornfield, I heard a father implore his young son, "Never forget you saw President Bush."

Why, I’m shocked that there was no commemorative print issued as a result when Dubya brought his traveling “fear and smear” show to Wright's Broadmeadows Farm in 2004 (for which he stiffed Lower Makefield township $25K, by the way). I can see it now…Dubya shaking hands with Abe Lincoln after both had chopped a cord of firewood or hammered spikes for train rails into the rough hewn sod of the old American West…Dubya cloaked with George Washington sitting behind him as they both crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day in 1776 during the Revolutionary War. The patriotic heart just stirs, doesn’t it?

And now J.D. writes that “standing with W is not smart politics”? As I live and breathe, I never thought I'd see such impertinence from one of this area's most consistent journalistic lap dogs. It looks like Mullane has introduced another scenario commonly associated with war to the whole dialogue about Dubya in this area, and it's called “cut and run.”

And by the way, a letter writer to the Courier Times this morning pointed out that the paper’s other metro columnist, the infinitely-more-readable Kate Fratti, is the one who is making more of a sacrifice than Mullane concerning the Iraq debacle. Her son is a Marine, and in case you were wondering, Fratti most certainly does not support the war.

Update: This is yet another banner day for Our Kid, as Brendan calls him (though I'm sure that, secretly, J.D. is so proud).