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Thursday, April 27, 2006

VA-Sen: Holy Moly

Posted by DavidNYC

From Taegan Goddard:

Political Wire received an advance copy of a New Republic profile of Sen. George Allen (R-VA) in which author Ryan Lizza finds many of Allen's high school classmates surprised that he's considering running for president because of the racist tendencies he displayed as a teenager. They say he "plastered the school with confederate flags" and drove a red Mustang with a confederate flag on the front. Then Lizza got a copy of Allen's high school yearbook:

I stared closely at Allen’s smirk in his photo, weighing whether his old classmates were just out to destroy him. And then I noticed something on his collar. It’s hard to make out, but then it becomes obvious. Seventeen-year-old George Allen is wearing a Confederate flag pin.

When confronted with this evidence, Allen sent an email through an aide with this explanation: "When I was in high school in California, I generally bucked authority and the rebel flag was just a way to express that attitude.”

Wow. Just wow. And Allen can't even offer the meager excuse that he was "embracing his heritage" or anything like that - he grew up in California, his dad is from Detroit, and his mother is from Tunisia. If there is any justice in this world, Allen's aspirations for higher office would completely vanish today. Since I'm not that optimistic, I can at least hope that Jim Webb crushes him come November.

Posted at 12:43 PM in 2006 Elections - Senate, Virginia | Technorati

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Comments

Me and Georgy Boy are both Bruins, too. In fact, a lot of nitwit politicians have gone to UCLA.

Posted by: AnthonySF at April 27, 2006 04:59 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

If his racist past in high school isnt enough try reading up on his later years when he had a confederate flag hung on his living room wall and a noose hanging from a tree outside his law office. If thats not enough look at his policies as a governor. Today I am livid with Goerge Allen. He is lower than scum and Virginia needs to send a strong message that we won't put up with people like him representing us.

Posted by: UVA08 at April 27, 2006 05:23 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

If all this stuff is true than he's also a traitor and is guilty of treason. Why? Well, that's easy. Whereas Republicorrupticans say you're a traitor if you don't support the war in Iraq, I'd say that displaying the Confederate flag and invoking overt and purposeful sympathies with the actual Confederacy condons and encourages the largest act of treason in the history of the United States.

Or is seceding from the Union and declaring war on the United States of America acceptable and not treason if you happen to be from a southern state?

Posted by: boyblue at April 27, 2006 08:16 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Good lord...if we try to hold over a candidates head things he said in college...some years ago it appears...then we are all screwed as potential candidates as a lot of us were drunk or stoned or occassionally both.

How about focusing on the present and his real stands and votes? That's Practical Politics. The other is the politics of personal destruction. It was the craze at the time to wear or display the Confederate Flag in the South and other places. If you wanted to give your Northern parents heartburn that's a pretty good way! I imagine he did just that.

Now if the race gets real close and short...weellllll....but not now. There's plenty of time to hoist him on his own actions.

And what's wrong with a good ol'fashioned kegger anyway? We'd be better if a few of our candidates could actually mix with the voters on the voters level. Hey! A Kegger Meet and Greet!

And college people are of age to vote. Too many forget the power of the absentee or precinct voter when it comes to college campus residents.

And if you're a real candidate and don't tie one on once in awhile...you got to be doing it in private. It's a bitch of a job.

Posted by: Stuart O'Neill at April 27, 2006 08:41 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The previous poster smells of being a Republican apologist. Ugh.

Posted by: boyblue at April 27, 2006 08:59 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Will this have an effect on the Virginia polling? I can't imagine it being especially seismic. Wasn't Richmond the damn Cradle of the Confederacy? Allen's been winking and nodding about this stuff for a while anyway. Allen losing the race, I believe, has less to do with him blowing it than Jim Webb eroding his support.

Posted by: robitude at April 27, 2006 09:13 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The implications of the article aren't so much for Virginia, but rather, for the nation, should Allen run for president. I certainly hope Jim Webb beats him this year, as that will rob him of all presidential ambitions by default. I worry, though, that because Allen is so popular in Virginia, he'll get re-elected this year, and then have a strong shot at the Republican nomination in '08. I didn't think it could get worse (or scarier) than Bush, but if we have to deal with President Allen (gulp!) then I'm afraid our nation has fallen beyond repair.

Posted by: The Caped Composer at April 27, 2006 09:49 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Wow, Stuart. Politics of personal destruction, huh? That's your reason for not wanting to hammer Allen with this? Didn't realize you were such a softie.

Oh, and FYI, Allen has in very recent years hung a noose on the wall of his law office (as a symbol of "frontier justice") and a confederate flag in his home. So this stuff is all very applicable.

Posted by: DavidNYC at April 27, 2006 10:27 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

BTW, Allen is only 73rd out of 100 in net approval. So, in the scheme of things, not that popular.

Posted by: DavidNYC at April 27, 2006 10:30 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Stuart, if you read the full article, it becomes clear that this one's gonna be kinda tough to explain away. Check out Hullabaloo.

Excerpt:

It was the night before a major basketball game with Morningside High. The mostly black inner-city school adjacent to Watts was coming to the almost entirely white Palos Verdes High to play. When students arrived at school on game day, they found graffiti spray-painted on the school library and other places. All five people who described the incident say the graffiti was racially tinged and meant to look like the handiwork of the black Morningside students. But it was actually put there by Allen and some of his friends. "It was something like die whitey," says Campbell. The school administrator, who says he is a Republican and would "seriously consider" voting for Allen for president, says the graffiti said, "burn, baby, burn," a reference to the race riots.

Also:

...when his father was on the road, young George often acted as a surrogate dad to his siblings. According to his sister Jennifer, he was particularly strict about bedtimes. One night, his brother Bruce stayed up past his bedtime. George threw him through a sliding glass door. For the same offense, on a different occasion, George tackled his brother Gregory and broke his collarbone. When Jennifer broke her bedtime curfew, George dragged her upstairs by her hair.

George tormented Jennifer enough that, when she grew up, she wrote a memoir of what it was like living in the Allen family. In one sense, the book, Fifth Quarter, from which these details are culled, is unprecedented. No modern presidential candidate has ever had such a harsh and personal account of his life delivered to the public by a close family member. The book paints Allen as a cartoonishly sadistic older brother who holds Jennifer by her feet over Niagara Falls on a family trip (instilling in her a lifelong fear of heights) and slams a pool cue into her new boyfriend's head. "George hoped someday to become a dentist," she writes. "George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession--getting paid to make people suffer."

Yeah, it's assumed now that most people (even politicians) drank excessively in college- I plan to tonight. However, this clearly looks like a disqualifier of GaryHart-ian proportions.

Posted by: Max at April 27, 2006 10:35 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

In terms of the effect it will have on VA polling... It may not hurt him in say the Valley or South Central VA but in the moderate and increasingly Democratic suburbs of Northern VA this has the potential to cause some big time damage.

Posted by: UVA08 at April 27, 2006 11:08 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Max,

This guy sounds like a fucking puke. Reading what you wrote made when want to punch his smug face. He's a dumb thug who should be behind bars. In fact, often what differentiates guys like this from the habitual anti-social career criminals is who their daddies are.

IMO, the majority of Virginia's voters are rubes and deserve what they get if this repugnant waste of a human being is reelected dog catcher, much less United States senator.

Posted by: boyblue at April 28, 2006 12:47 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Hey, boyblue: where you at the Demo Convention in '68? Did you bleed the year before at the Century City Demonstration of '67 after being clubbed to the ground by a rookie cop?

Where you there in the Ambassador Ballroom when they announced Bobby'd been shot?

Fuck you!

I've paid the price in actual action for 40 years of Democratic Politics. I know the pain of having a candidates old statements from 30 years before being brought to the front!

If he deserves it fine! Someone else notes I didn't read the whole article.

Well no shit. I don't have time to real every word written. Again, if he deserves it give it to him!

But you ever intimate that I'm a Repubican apologist again and I'll fly anywhere in the US, two heart attacks, cowboy ass and all, to kick your ass. Any weapon, any time, any place.

Both my heart attacks in the middle of the 2004 Presidential primary campaign and I didn't miss more than 2 days. Now I find I fucked myself good.

I've paid a price for this party that you can't even imagine.

And still I'm a communication guy for one campaign and a management guy for another...and neither has a nickel compared to the big guys. And yet I know they are the 'right guys'.

Anyone wants a part of me can just email me at either blog and I'll happily provide my address and we'll see whose the ass is able to walk away from the beating.

I come from the Steel Town of Fontana, California and one thing my old man taught me before the steel work killed him young....I don't take shit from any man.

Sorry if this is an over-reaction...but NO ONE every accused me of being a fucking Republican before.

Posted by: Stuart O'Neill at April 28, 2006 10:09 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

"He's just an excitable boy!"

Take two Zevons and call me in the mornin'.

Posted by: budlawman at May 10, 2006 06:57 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Actually, this stuff came out too early. I would like to have seen him get the Repug nom, and then slam him with this crap. If we hadn't already had five years of Boy Bush, I'd have to say that it would be unbelievable that we could face 4 years of a turd like Allen.

Posted by: budlawman at May 10, 2006 07:43 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment