Senator McCain, It’s Time to Dump Phil Gramm Before He Sinks You

Phil Gramm of Texas is not known as a man of developed intellect nor steady statesmanship. He’s known for pork-barreling, for speaking in crude ways, for blurting out unseemly epithets at American citizens, and for jeering at the unfortunate.

His words this week are not the first time this privileged, pampered and wealthy man has frothed with scorn at the poor, the jobless, the uninsured, the homeless, the foreclosed upon, the working class, and the unprotected. The times he’s done this are legion, year after year, decade after decade.

It worked for him once. But no more. Except he seems to have not caught on yet that his days of goring and glory came long ago, and his time in the sun and scrum is now long, long gone. He won’t regain his position. Not ever again… for Gramm has nothing to offer that a guy sitting at his computer in his boxers, spewing sarcasm and screed over the internet, can’t do too, and with ten times more finesse.

By virtue of Gramm’s worn-out ideas and his seeming nostalgia for a zeitgeist made of back-room ‘bar and cigar’ deals in the old log-rolling style of politics, Gramm is a remnant of the old ingrown politicians of his time 40 years ago.

He is a relic and by dint of his mindset, an irrelevant anachronism… as out of date as the old bathrobe over-coated Communists of Brandt’s time are irrelevant in the new economy, struggles, and spirit in a united Germany today

That Gramm is held out as McCain’s “highest economic adviser” is like saying Sylvester the Cat is going to be advising the Senator on the care and treatment of canaries.

Gramm will sink Senator McCain if he is allowed to continue in ‘highest economic advisory’ capacity. McCain has a certain dignity that Gramm will splat on, over and over again.

If Barack’s “crazy uncle” is the Reverend Wright who spoke whatever he felt like speaking after the Moyers interview, disregarding how his speech would negatively affect public perception of his friend running for POTUS, then for certain Gramm is Senator McCain’s crazy uncle … with exactly the same M.O…. complete disregard for how his foolish and churlish speech will negatively affect Senator McCain.

Gramm, before he left the Federal legislature ‘to spend more time with his family’ in the midst of a supposedly successful career, was known for saying deeply insightful things about economics and commerce. Here are some quotes from Gramm:

“Half the world does not know the joys of wearing cotton underwear.” (promoting US exports, as quoted in Time)”

“I’m carrying so much pork [home to Texas] I’m beginning to get trichinosis.”

“If I bought groceries the way I buy health insurance, I’d eat a lot better – and so would my dog”

“I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that is ready money.”

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CODA
Tomorrow: Gramm’s reprehensible treatment of impoverished, ill, and laid-off American mining families, a class of people whom Gramm also taunted as ‘whiners.’