Tuesday, May 02, 2006

This guy could be in politics another 40 years...

From Echidne...finally somebody who makes Missouri's own Boy King, Matt Blunt, not look so bad...at least for today:

Todd Rokita of Indiana appears to be proud of his young age, and perhaps of his opinions, too:

Rokita, a republican, who holds one of the highest elected offices in the state and is treasurer of the National Association of Secretaries of state, gave his speech Wednesday night in the Indiana Memorial Union as part of the IU Republican Women lecture series titled, "Something to Talk About." During the lecture, he spoke about election reform, economic development and Hurricane Katrina.

The responsibility of reconstruction after the hurricane, he said in a post-lecture interview, should have been placed upon the shoulders of citizens, churches and neighbors. Rokita criticized American reliance on the federal government after the disaster, saying this increased the scope and role of federal government, hindering America's chances of ever containing it.

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No, Rokita is not twelve. He is thirty-four. But he thinks like a twelve-year old, a slow developer at that, for only someone very young could think that it's a great idea to have the hurricane victims themselves responsible for the reconstruction afterwards. For that is what "neighbors" means: other people who also lost all they owned.

Then the fascinating idea that "people" should do this stuff, not the federal government. I guess the federal government consists of androids or aliens or robots. Not people, in any case. I never realized that.

I really don't have anything constructive to add to this, other than that it makes me sad that educated, elected officials can actually get away with these kinds of statements and ideas. Yeah, if everybody could just pull themselves up by their bootsraps and make something of themselves like our dear President, the country would be in a much better shape...