Posted on 10/12/2010 8:04:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The VFW has a history of tilting towards liberals, but this seems rather stunning. Barbara Boxer, who dressed down a general in a Senate hearing for calling her “ma’am,” won the endorsement of VFW’s political-action committee yesterday. The move also comes despite Boxer’s votes to curtail military spending — or perhaps because of them:
Accenting again the campaign focus she has placed on veterans’ affairs, Sen. Barbara Boxer on Sunday formally opened a veterans’ center at Pasadena City College and was later brought to tears by a forceful defense of her record by Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a highly decorated member of Congress.
Inouye joined Boxer for her formal endorsement by the political action committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose California chairman also praised Boxer’s work on behalf of veterans. …
As Boxer spoke, a few dozen protesters chanted outside the PCC meeting room where she spoke, repeating “Don’t Call Me Ma’am”–a reference to Boxer’s request years ago that an Army Corps of Engineers general call her by her title rather than “ma’am” in a hearing.
Fiorina has been critical of Boxer’s record on military issues, including Boxer’s vote against a military spending bill that Boxer opposed because she said it did not outline a clear exit strategy from Iraq. On Sunday after speaking at a civic affairs conference hosted by the Iranian American Jewish community in Century City, Fiorina said the VFW PAC had “lost a great deal of credibility because they’ve demonstrated once again that all they ever do is endorse incumbent politicians.”
“There are a great number of veterans who are offended by Boxer’s refusal to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Fiorina told reporters Sunday. “There are veterans who are offended by the way she dressed down a general, and there are, unfortunately for the VFW PAC, now a whole lot of veterans who are offended by the decision the VFW PAC has taken.”
One could understand endorsements for Democrats in the House and Senate with more moderate records on defense, such as Jim Webb in the Senate, who refused to go along with the retreat strategy demanded by Boxer in Iraq. Barbara Boxer has worked on veterans’ affairs bills in the past, but mainly on broadly popular benefits bills. There is no evidence that Carly Fiorina would have worked any the less on those issues, nor does it appear that the VFW made much of an attempt to check it. Remember that the VFW — like NOW — had the option of simply not endorsing anyone at all.
It’s a safe bet in most midterm cycles for lobbyists to back an incumbent. It may even be a safer bet in this cycle in California to back Boxer’s incumbency. But I wouldn’t necessarily guess that they’ll be on the winning side this time, and in the meantime, it more or less exposes the rather cynical calculation of the VFW in its endorsing process.
One veteran outraged by this decision is Orson Swindle, who worked on the John McCain campaign and now works on Fiorina’s campaign. I’ll be speaking to Swindle in bonus minutes on today’s TEMS.
And that’s why we Vietnam vets will never join the VFW.
Another glaring example of an organization not representing its rank and file members.
The VFW, like the NRA is protecting ruling class ass. They don’t give a nano-rip about us in the real world.
Over time it would seem all groups have fallen or been exposed to influence by many special interest groups and their money. The NRA and VFW may end up being another part of the problem. If they are not with this grass roots reform then they must get the hell out of the way. Many people will be burning their NRA membership cards!
VFW has gone the way of AARP
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VFW has gone the way of AARP
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RE: VFW-PAC sell out committee
...The NRA and VFW are “special interest” organizations and the libs like the senator from California and her assistants use that fact to their advantage pretty tactically in a divide-and-conquer way which is nothing new for professional agitators/protestor/”revolutionaries” such as themselves.
Special interest organizations are simply vulnerable to this tactic because PROFESSIONAL LOBBYISTS are naturally going to gravitate in the direction that the gravy train chugs.. especially if they are neutral agents and the people who they work for give them a long enough leash.
In the case of the VFW, I believe it was a committee within the VFW-PAC which is a separate organization from the actual VFW itself which endorsed BOXER (and even COL. ALLEN WEST’s lib opponent!) See:
http://www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=news.newsDtl&did=5596
We dont need to scrap the VFW the NRA, the GOP, or even the old media and the entertainment industry; we need to do something more fundamental and preventive/progressive than wag our fingers at it.
I’m going to repeat myself and apply myself until this message takes hold because here’s the bottom line: America’s current economic, spiritual crisis and intellectual and moral incoherence can be traced to our ever progressive education problem with regards to higher learning; the unanswered and prevalent unconstitutional school of thought and economic and philosophical misconceptions which the current president wishes to impose upon our great land: marxist/socialist model which is antithetical to the American constitution, the cause that was particularly boosted in the 1960s and which has been metastisizing and growing while damaging and undermining the shining city on a hill which president Reagan was helping the world see. And he was right, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, even vigilance over our properties and organizations, etc.
America is at a great crossroads once again, and this awakening may lead us to a better solution that everyone has been missing all along so that the problems which follow become simpler ones.
What has been going on on American campuses, the abandonment of intellectual integrity in the name of revolutionary partisanship, is both essential and embedded to the socialist ideology itself!
So its only fair to fight fire with fire against people who have been calling for revolution against the American way BY calling for revolution against them? A well organized “movement” WITHOUT the bomb-building, deception, crazyness and censorship which the BILL AYERS, WARD CHURCHILL, LYNNE STEWART professoriate have actively endorsed?!
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