Something is very familiar about all of this...
MACKINAC ISLAND -- He said he has experience as a business leader to turn Michigan's economy around.
She said she has a specific plan to do it, and suggested he's a "nattering nabob of negativism."
I KNOW I have heard that one before... :-).
Coincidence? Are we all channeling Pat Buchanan now? I don't know whether to laugh or be very disturbed by that.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her Republican gubernatorial challenger, Dick DeVos, didn't wade into direct confrontation Wednesday night.
But they gave a crowd of several hundred people at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac conference a taste of this year's gubernatorial campaign, which has been dominated so far by DeVos' multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign.
Need proof that this shindig is just a big party?
DeVos and Granholm were competing with the pivotal fifth game in the Detroit Pistons playoff series with Miami. The game and the forum both began shortly after 8 p.m.
Kathleen McCann, the chamber PAC's cochair, opened the session to applause when she said the game would be shown on the big screen after the two candidates finished their remarks.
There you have it. We know what's really important here. The Pistons won 91-78. Back to work...
While they spent most of their time promoting their ideas for the economy, Granholm fired a few jabs at DeVos.
She said she has a specific plan, while DeVos has offered "bumper sticker slogans and recycled rhetoric."
Dick immediately validated that point.
He said Michigan is too divided socially and politically-
Really? Is he a "uniter"?
-and added, "There's plenty of blame to go around. I'm not in the blame game."
Yes kids, it's the return of the BLAME GAME! Just when you thought it was safe... next he will tell us that he knows where the "weapons of mass production" are.
Back to the homage to Mr. Buchanan-
Afterward, Granholm said her "nattering nabobs" remark was a reference to DeVos and newspapers that promote negative headlines about Michigan.
DeVos said he has run a positive campaign, and that he would offer more specific proposals in the next 30 days.
Here is where the papers fail me. I'd love to hear the whole quote from Granholm. I hope that she is taking on the whole Republican ideology- not just the man. Dick has been careful not to call her out by name (yet- it's coming), she should do the same. You can infer without tipping into a direct attack.
The Free Press wasn't very specific on what else was said, but here is one quote that caught my eye.
DeVos: "We make stuff here, they buy it there and send their money back here. ... It's an equation that works well for us."
Um... working well for who, Dick? The United States saw a record trade deficit last year-
The $725.8 billion deficit, announced Friday by the Commerce Department, was a 17.5 percent leap from 2004's then-record deficit of $617.6 billion. The 2005 trade deficit equaled 5.8 percent of this country's gross domestic product, up from 5.3 percent of GDP in 2004 and 4.5 percent in 2003.
-snip-
Some $201.6 billion of the nation's trade deficit was with China alone, an all-time high for a trade deficit with any country. This gives new energy to China's critics, who charge that the Asian giant deliberately undervalues its currency to make its exports artificially cheap and illegally subsidizes Chinese companies in violation of World Trade Organization rules.
Yeah. It's working really well for us, Dick.
Tell me another one.