Last night's The Colbert Report featured another partisan logrolling clip that makes that Comedy Central program and The Daily Show so priceless, with a Fox News pundit-blonde and anchors Brit Hume and Chris Wallace repeating that day's GOP talking point: that Mitt Romney appeared to be a “plausible president” in Monday night's debate.
Democratic logrolling is not as common on these comedy shows–hmm, wonder why?–but we did get a slo-mo version of it from Bill Clinton Tuesday evening at UC Irvine.
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See also:
SLIDESHOW: Bill Clinton at UC Irvine
Bubba Watch 2012: Bill Clinton Coming to Irvine Tuesday
Gary DeLong, Republican Candidate for 47th Congressional District, Snatches Phone from Democratic Tracker at Long Beach Debate
Two weeks ago, Demo-minions posted videos on YouTube showing Gary DeLong, the Republican Long Beach City Councilman facing termed-out state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) to represent the 47th congressional district, joining the ranks of climate-change deniers:
During a public forum that was hosted by a Long Beach homeowners association and which Lowenthal did not attend, DeLong said it is “questionable” climate change exists, that the scientific community is split on the issue and that he has seen “no scientific evidence” supporting the idea of climate change. Click here for the full video.
Now, if Lowenthal had been caught on video saying we need to raise taxes on the wealthy so needy children don't go to bed hungry, by the next day Fox News could have anchors, pundits and candidates all repeating, in Stepford fashion, every hour on the hour, “Socialist Alan Lowenthal wants to expand wealth redistribution so welfare queens can buy new caddys on your hard-earned dime.”
For Democrats, this logrolling takes a little longer, as witnessed by Bubba pouncing on the climate-change denying weeks later as he endorsed Lowenthal, the only candidate at the Irvine forum seeking to represent at least part of Orange County. (The other hopefuls were from San Diego County or the Inland Empire.) The 47th district extends from Long Beach into parts of Westminster and includes Cypress, Los Alamitos, Midway City, Rossmoor, Stanton and Garden Grove.
“We
have got to increase scientific knowledge,” Clinton said to 5,000 boisterous supporters at the College Democrats at UC Irvine rally in the Bren Events Center. “Nowhere else in the world is
there a major political party that denies climate change.”
With Lowenthal standing by his side, the 42nd president of the United States added, “He should be elected on that issue alone.” It's all the more stunning when you consider the location, UCI, which has been a world leader in climate-change science since before the late, great F. Sherwood Rowland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995.
A Democratic Party-commissioned poll released Wednesday based on voters in
the 47th shows Lowenthal with a 20 percent lead over DeLong. Let the logrolling continue: The Republican's campaign released a poll of its own today indicating DeLong has a 10 percent lead over Lowenthal.
For a heartier laugh, click here for the Stephen Colbert video.
And click here for OC Weekly's slideshow of Clinton at UCI.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.