Peculiar Result in Neb Primary

Which is smarter: A Dem primary voter or this can of hammerheads?

Last Tuesday’s primary election here in Lincoln for the Congressional seat currently held by Jeff Fortenberry [R] is a bizarre and largely untold story. No, Rep. Fortenberry did not drown in a TEA Party tidal wave; he easily beat back his primary challengers. The oddity was in the Democrat primary, with the party’s choice, Ivy Harper, facing off against a group of amateurs. Two of her opponents were so inept they had no web presence at all and didn’t even bother  answering the questions to get into the Lincoln Journal Star Voter’s Guide.

Harper campaigned as a “moderate” Democrat, to the extent one believes such creatures exist, calling herself the “Center-Pivot Candidate.” It’s a small joke on the center-pivot irrigation systems, widely used in Nebraska, which apparently means she’ll be going around in circles. Or perhaps, it’s that once she’s elected she’ll pivot sharply to the left? On the issues Harper advocates pretty conventional liberal positions.

So it was shocking to see Harper struggle to eek out a win in a very tight race against Jessica Lynn Turek. Turek’s qualifications and positions via the Journal Star Voter’s Guide:

Turek says she is a Nebraska native who works to make us prouder Nebraskans. She says people deserve economic stability. Technology has made our lives easier and now is the time to make positive adjustments.

Turek has a Bachelor of Arts degree, more than six years of professional library experience and a year of AmeriCorps work.

What would you like to accomplish as a member of the House during the next two years?

Raise the minimum wage; price caps on housing, autos, produce and gas. Price caps on energy and make money beautiful and smell good.

Do you believe Congress should attempt to govern in a more bipartisan way, and if so, what actions would you take to try to help achieve that?

Bipartisanship is a natural result of good ideas. Positive, the Nebraska we want. Everlasting for the future now.

The rest of the questions were unanswered. Now Ms. Turek may be a wonderful person, but who in the world reads this kind of thing and decides, “Yeah, I’ll vote for that?”

Fortenberry on Iraq

We admire Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, our congressman from Lincoln, for not singing onto on the House’s “non-binding” resolution in favor of losing the war in Iraq. The Lincoln Journal Star criticized Fortenberry for not going along with it, and today they published his statement to the House as his rebuttal:

Madam Speaker, this is a pivotal moment for our nation and a very grave and solemn policy debate. We cannot afford to allow the ups and downs of the daily news cycle to set the course for our deliberations. The stakes in Iraq are too high.

During last year’s debate on Iraq, I emphasized that this war is different from the wars of the past — there is no front, no lines of demarcation, no clear enemy in distinct uniforms. This is a war “that invades tranquil space and time without warning, carried out by those who hide among civilian populations, seeking to exploit the vulnerable for ruthless ideological purposes. … We have never before waged a war in an age of globalization, in an age when technology eviscerates the concept of distance, magnifies our losses, trivializes our accomplishments, and places our adversaries in a far better position to leverage our freedoms — particularly freedom of speech — against us.” These are the complexities.

Madam Speaker, I submit that our choices now stand to determine not only the future of the Middle East but the very future of civilization. We can point fingers, blame each other, or we can think constructively together.

So what are our choices?

The National Intelligence Estimate categorically rejects an arbitrary or precipitous U.S. troop withdrawal. The result would be horrific chaos, a humanitarian disaster, destabilizing the entire Middle East, emboldening the geo-political aims of Iran and leading to a much less peaceful world.

It’s a good speech, and you should read the rest of it.