Tweety made his first appearance in 1942’s A Tale of Two Kitties, with cats named Babbit and Catstello. He was an aggressive little bastard, who enjoyed kicking his opponents when they were down. One of his signature lines was, “Aw, the poor kitty cat! He faw down and go (in a tough, loud, masculine voice) BOOM!!”, and then grinning mischievously.
Tweety Bird is now my moniker for Trump, similar to his terms, “Lyin’ Ted” and “Li’l Marco”. And my goal is to send Trump back to his cage in Manhattan where he belongs. This fits nicely with Tweety’s theme song:
I’m a tweet wittow biwd in a gilded cage
Tweet’th my name but I don’t know my age
I don’t have to wuwy, and dat is dat
I’m tafe in hewe fwom dat ol’ putty tat.
What sent me over the edge were the latest tweets. I agree entirely with the sentiments Trump expressed. I don’t disagree with Trump on any substantive issue, other than Article V, which he has vigorously condemned. I just can’t take his utter lack of Presidential temperament. It’s just too much.
In my lifetime, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Reagan and Bush 1 all had proper presidential temperament. FDR was, apparently, a man of excellent temperament. Some one (Walter Lippman, maybe?) said of Franklin Roosevelt, “He had a mediocre mind, but world class temperament.” Trump has a brilliant mind, and the temperament of Dennis the Menace.
After the Hollywood Access tapes came out, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him, so I wrote in Pence for President. And now it’s time to start a Pence for President campaign. All I need is a web site. I hope to get one up soon.
After I had my political epiphany in October of 2013 I attended ALEC’s December meeting in D. C. I talked my old buddy from Wrangell, Senator Robin Taylor, into coming with me. The highlights of the program were speeches by Ted Cruz and Mike Pence.
Cruz was trying to play a part which didn’t suit him, and for which he had no natural ability. Watching him orate was like watching someone with absolutely no sense of rhythm trying to dance.
Pence was a star. I liked everything about him, everything. And the fact that he spent the first third of his speech exhorting the state legislators to back Article V, and the Balanced Budget Amendment, was gravy. I was ready to go to work for this guy. I was Jack Kemp’s Alaska Chair in 1988, and hadn’t backed a candidate since. This could be fun.
But Pence couldn’t raise any money, and he didn’t run. The next time I saw him was at a rally in Carson City. I got a chance to ask him a question from the audience, and I said, “Governor, I saw you at an ALEC meeting in Washington a few years ago, and you talked about the importance of Article V, and the Balanced Budget Amendment. Is there any chance to could bring this subject up with your running mate?”
He hadn’t wanted to call on me. I was dressed in khakis and a blue dress shirt, but I have a big white head of hair that captures people’s eyes, and attracts their attention. He saw me next to one of the microphones, but passed over me. But the lady in charge of the microphone, a very nice woman from the local Republican party, waved at him, and handed me the mike. I’d been sitting there waiting for him, as close to one of the microphones as I could get, for over two hours. I told her a little about myself, and we talked a little bit.
So Pence, I think, was relieved that I wasn’t some kind of nut. His reaction was picture perfect. His pitch, his tone, his demeanor, all were absolutely just right. I’m a careful observer of these things, and have been for a long time. I haven’t seen anyone as smooth since Jack Kennedy.
He smiled nicely at me, turned to the larger crowd and explained that ALEC was a conservative legislator’s organization, and then said a few positive words about Article V. Then he said it would have to come from the states, and moved on to the next question
This was the first I’d seen of him in three years, and I was even more impressed than I was at first. This is a man who should be President.
Pence will, of course, disavow all of this, and insist that not a dime be raised in his name. He may even make the Sherman Pledge “I will not run if nominated, and will not serve as elected.” It doesn’t matter. We’re drafting him, and he can’t stop us.
I talked to my old friend Senator Dave Donley of Anchorage on the phone today. You may have seen him at the Republican National Convention. He was the old guy from Alaska running up to Ryan and demanding a vote. It put a stop to the convention for about fifteen minutes while they straightened things out.
The Hickel/Stevens machine beat me, in that I was never elected to the United States Senate. But I got in a few licks of my own. The most important was the defeat of the subsistence amendment, Ted Stevens’ pet project.
The amendment was a POS, but Stevens didn’t care. This was an easy way to win Native support, and in Alaska the Natives, especially the Eskimo, have a lot of money. He bribed or threatened enough Republican State Senators to get it through the Senate, but it had to get 2/3 in the House, and I had 16 votes out of forty. They’d have to pick off three of my people to get there. They didn’t get any, and we all held the line.
I wasn’t counting on any Democrat votes, but I got one, from Dave Donley, a blue dog Democrat at the time. He took a lot grief for that, but he didn’t care. He was a stand up guy. And still is.
reaganproject.com 