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NY OBSERVER: “AL FRANKEN IS STARTING TO LOOK LIKE OLLIE NORTH”

By Michael B. Brodkorb | July 30, 2008

This is article from the New York Observer is an interesting read. While I don’t agree the dynamics with the incumbent are the same, Al Franken is certainly is as radioactive as Olliver North.

From the article:

“But Franken has attracted the same intense passion from his party’s left-wing base that North generated from conservatives. To the left, Franken is something of a folk-hero for his scathing mockery of the right, beginning 12 years ago with his best-seller Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot. Other books (and countless media appearances and his own radio show) followed, and in the years since, the party’s grassroots activists – in Minnesota and nationally – have come to rely on Franken for pointed, unsparing derision of the right. This has given him a strong base of political and financial support.

To the right, of course, this makes Franken an obnoxious limousine liberal, a symbol of the condescension and cultural elitism that, they believe, defines the left and the Democratic Party. In a year when Republicans aren’t motivated about much, Minnesota’s conservatives are salivating over the prospect of handing Franken a defeat – in the same way that liberals in Virginia, most of whom cared little for Robb, found reason to work overtime when faced with the prospect of a Senator North in ’94.

But, again like North, Franken’s problems go much further than the resentment he has stirred on the other side of the aisle. Concerns about his own background and his own style have made him potentially toxic to a good chunk of independent voters – the very voters who backed Coleman in ’02 but who are ready to throw him (and just about every Republican) out in 2008. But because of his celebrity, the race has turned into as much a referendum on Franken as it is on Coleman.

Specifically, Franken has been on the defensive about whether his background as a comedian is a sufficient qualification for public office and has been compelled to explain and apologize for some his more tasteless past writings (including an essay that appeared in Playboy). Plus, he was hit with a scandal involving unpaid taxes in several states. His backers can dismiss the tax story as overblown (it seemed a mostly innocent mistake) and the controversy about his jokes as trivial, but it has all had – and continues to have – a distracting and deleterious effect on his candidacy. And what the left sees as a sharp wit can, even to non-Republicans, come off as simply smug.” Source: The New York Observer, July 30, 2008

Click here for the complete story.

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