go down old hanna

Rand Paul's got brass, I'll give him that. But he's not as clever as he thinks.

A clever speaker would not have pulled out one of the standard rhetorical falsehoods from the catalogue of standard Republican lies the way Paul did when he spoke at Howard University yesterday. It takes a while for this to sink in, but at this stage of the game their opponents know the catalogue as well as the Libertarian/Republicans do.

This one is #17 in the catalogue, and it goes like this.

17. Some people think Republicans are racists, but our party is the one that stands for freedom and equality. We're the party of Lincoln, the party of freedom. The Democrats were proslavery then, and they're the real racists now. The end.

Get it? Got it? Any questions? Good.

Actually Senator Paul, I do have a question. Do you know who Mark Hanna was, and why he was important?

Mark Hanna pretty much made the big change in the party, from emancipation to corporatism.

He found a presidential candidate, Bill McKinley, who would do whatever Hanna suggested, and "looked   presidential," and managed his election in 1896 and 1900.

Shortly after his reelection, Hanna told McKinley, "All you have to do is stay alive till 1905, and our plans will be realized." He was planning permanent Republican rule, as Karl Rove would later do.

But then in 1901 Mckinley got shot. "and now that damn cowboy will be president," said Mark Hanna. He was referring to Teddy Roosevelt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8cIKeRoKh4