{"id":12076,"date":"2013-06-18T09:38:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T16:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=12076"},"modified":"2013-06-18T09:38:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T16:38:46","slug":"thurmond-byrd-dingell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2013\/06\/18\/thurmond-byrd-dingell\/","title":{"rendered":"Thurmond, Byrd, Dingell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On long time Congressional figures, I always have to consider this phrase&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/06\/us\/politics\/dingell-becoming-longest-serving-congressman.html\">cliche ridden purple prose<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>His 30-term career not only mirrors the arc of 20th century history<\/em>,<\/p>\n<p>Skip forward to this, and it is more of the same:<\/p>\n<p><em>Mr. Dingell has earned himself foes and friends and watched his cherished Congress change from the days when committee chairmen held sway to a body overrun with partisan discord and strife<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>All right. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ourcampaigns.com\/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=1291\">\u00c2\u00a0Electoral History for the taking<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0For a man who has been in office for, it is said, more than 25 percent of the institution&#8217;s history.<\/p>\n<p>This is the man Bill Maher had in mind, along with Lautenberg, with\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/06\/15\/bill-maher-congress-to-weekend-at-bernies_n_3447144.html\">this editorial about the age of Congress<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0The &#8220;cold dead hands&#8221; routine, and &#8220;Congressman for Life&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;We love this man in this district!&#8221;. \u00c2\u00a0No, I do think Dingell should have lost a primary a decade ago. \u00c2\u00a0Somewhere where the biography of the man turns from his record of achievement to a poetic musing on a changing America.<\/p>\n<p>At least with Lautenberg there is a sense of &#8220;Best the Democrats can do for election&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The main thing about John Dingell&#8230; is to muse about the oft heard remarks on Fidel Castro. \u00c2\u00a0When his supporters would tick off a list of American Presidents he survived. \u00c2\u00a0And, granted, the early ones had in for him for assassination hopes, but with Dingell it is a ticking off of &#8220;International Pariahs&#8221; and dictators he survived. \u00c2\u00a0Say, for instance&#8230; the term limited \u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ourcampaigns.com\/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=77515\">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On long time Congressional figures, I always have to consider this phrase&#8230; cliche ridden purple prose: His 30-term career not only mirrors the arc of 20th century history, Skip forward to this, and it is more of the same: Mr. Dingell has earned himself foes and friends and watched his cherished Congress change from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12166,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12076\/revisions\/12166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}