Ok. Obama wants some Republicans for the cabinet - I can think of a few...

[Hawkeye-X]

Grassley, McCain, Kyl, Snowe, Collins, Corker, Alexander, Specter, Inhofe, that quack doctor in OK, Gregg, Sununu (if he wins), Brownback or Roberts.

That should do it. Their replacements will all be Democratic, solidifying our Senate to be filibuster-proof. Pass all NEEDED and required legislation without the fucking pork, and they'll surprise themselves by being one of the most popular Congress in history.

Oh and Reid and Pelosi needs to either find testicular fortiude and a Gro-Spine potions if they want to stay at their respective positions.

Hawkeye-X

[BlooInBloo]

1. I can't think of any.

[Unsane]

2. On a serious note, I like Hagel for DOD Sec.

[Goat or Panic]

6. I second a Hagel position.

As for McCain, talk about a shot at redemption. Wonder if he'd be man enough to take Obama up on it.

[MadBadger]

29. I agree

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

39. Or Vets' Affairs n/t

[rufus dog]

3. Would that be fucking genius to appoint McCain to some position

Hangs his shriveled balls out there. Don't accept and you aren't bipartisan, accept and pick up a Senate seat.

[budkin]

4. I say leave them out in the cold...

[quakerboy]

10. What the OP is saying is better.

Trick them into walking out into the cold, and fill their seats at the table with more deserving people.

[damonm]

27. ...and prove ourselves a small as they. Rrriiight...

:eyes:

[leftofcool]

5. Pelosi and Reid need to be replaced with Dems who

have balls. Hillary for one. Can't decide who needs to replace Nancy

[5thGenDemocrat]

7. I can

Dennis Kucinich would be an awesome House Majority Leader.
John
To say nothing about his ability to induce stomach acid in those across the aisle.

[goclark]

28. Dennis please! nt

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

8. Whatev, but no Republicans for DOD

Sends the message that only Republicans can defend and secure. Someone like Wes Clark, if he's eligible, will do just fine.

I would take Waxman over Pelosi in a heartbeat, and Sanders or Webb to replace Reid.

[OneGrassRoot]

11. Agree. :) n/t

[Inuca]

13. Sanders/Webb

Webb is a very junior senator and Sanders is not even officially a democrat. Slow down.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

17. Understood. Didn't say it was feasible, just stated my preferences

Same with Clark. He may not be eligible yet, but that's who I'd like to see nonetheless.

[quakerboy]

9. Take Lieberman while yer at it

Its what I would do. Pull off the more annoying and beneficially replaced Pubs, find them some jobs that sound good but are not positioned to really screw up anything super important, and watch them flail, then retire them when it becomes painfully obvious they are incompetent.

[Undercurrent]

12. Richard Lugar

Oct. 17, 2008

WASHINGTON - Since the first day of his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been dropping the name of his Senate colleague, Republican Dick Lugar...

And during Wednesday's final presidential debate, the Democrat gave Lugar his highest praise yet. He said the Republican was among a handful of people "who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House."

So why does the Democratic presidential nominee keep invoking the name of a 76-year-old Republican from Indiana?

Meet Dick Lugar
Dick Lugar may not be a household name, but he's well known within international security circles. And he's famous to world leaders who are trying to protect their countries from nuclear attack.

In 1991, Lugar teamed up with Sam Nunn, then a Democratic senator, to create a program aimed at securing and dismantling the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons inside the former Soviet Union...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27241356/

--

Obama's 'Diplomacy' Wins a Republican Endorsement

By Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff Adam Graham-silverman, Cq Staff – Wed Oct 15, 1:37 pm ET

The ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee parted ways with his party's presidential nominee Wednesday by endorsing Democrat Barack Obama's approach to diplomacy.

In a lengthy speech at the National Defense University, Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar weighed the benefits of talking to foreign leaders, including U.S. enemies, against other actions, such as military force. The issue marks one of the sharpest divides between Obama and John McCain, who has called the Democratic nominee naive for suggesting that he would sit down with leaders such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Lugar, however, praised Obama, noting that isolation often does not resolve contentious issues.

"He correctly cautions against the implication that hostile nations must be dealt with almost exclusively through isolation or military force," Lugar said in a prepared remarks released before his speech. "In some cases, refusing to talk can even be dangerous."...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20081015/pl_cq_politics/politics2975236_4

--

--From 2006:--
...Old-school realist Richard Lugar, the five-term Republican senator from Indiana, has embraced new-school realist and rising star Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois. The relationship is admiring. "I very much feel like the novice and pupil," Obama has said of Lugar. And it's warm. Lugar praises Obama's "strong voice and creativity" and calls him "my good friend." In short, the two agree on much and seem to genuinely like each other. Rather unusual in hyper-partisan Washington, these days...
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.larson.html


::link fix::

[Jennicut]

23. Lugar and Hagel. They are friends with Biden as well. That is about it for me

as far as Rethugs go. Two is enough and both those guys are good people and both like Obama and have treated him with respect. Both are intelligent men and would work very hard for Obama.

[BlueMTexpat]

41. Definitely agree about Lugar ...

he is one of a vanishing breed. And Hagel's OK. On the other hand, unless their replacements are sure to be good Democrats, both he and Hagel would be good Republicans to have in the Senate. They might actually reach across the aisle to work together with their Dem counterparts for the common good.

[Johonny]

14. I like your thinking

take rethug senators from states likely to replace them with a Dem. No way republicans will allow them to accept the offer.

[phleshdef]

15. I think Lincoln Chaffee deserves a look.

[kwolf68]

16. Me too.

Lincoln is good people.

[TuxedoKat]

21. Me three. (nt)

[Renew Deal]

18. Obama has a fondness for Lugar

So I wouldn't be surprised if he took some sort of role.

[Roland99]

19. Bring back Paul O'Neill as Treasury Secretary is all I can think of

[Chloroplast]

20. I don't think Gov. Napolitano would be able to pick a Dem.

Doesn't she have to choose a replacement from the outgoing Senator's Party?

[WinkyDink]

22. "Obama wants some Republicans for the cabinet "....And he said this specifically when?

[Inuca]

24. Yesterday

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE49T05X20081030

[WinkyDink]

33. Then I respectfully call him nuts on this issue. There are PLENTY of SUPERIOR Democrats. It's not a

matter of "unity"; it's a matter of philosophy.

If these Republicans were so great, they'd register as Democrats.

[NewJeffCT]

34. He's been saying it all along

even has mentioned Bloomberg & Arnold

[Inuca]

42. You see things in black and white

Obama (fortunately) does not.

[mtnester]

25. None, not a one

no no no not right now

[damonm]

26. Maybe not only Cabinet...

Although I like Hagel at SecDef, or perhaps State. Put Inhofe as head of the FAA - he's a BIG friend to General Aviation and no fan of the Airlines, who've been trying to push their agenda at FAA for over a decade.
Thing about Hagel, though - he's retiring, so that wouldn't gain us anything in the Senate, though it would get an INTELLIGENT Republican into a responsible post.

[RoadRage]

30. Powell & Hagel. NT

[WI_DEM]

31. Bloomberg?

[Mz Pip]

32. Not Corker

He deserves no respect from me after that sleazy race baiting ad his campaign ran against Harold Ford. Same goes for McCain.

Brownback is too much of a fundie twit.

I would go for Hagel, Snowe, Lugar. Maybe Christopher Shays from CT. He seems fairly moderate but might lose his seat in the great reallignment that began in 2006 when Chaffee lost his Senate seat.

Tom Campbell was a moderate GOP congressman from south of San Francisco and went on to become Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He seems okay.

[sampsonblk]

35. No way. Their party is dying. Why give them any legitimacy?

Forget it. If I were Obama, instead of propping up this absurb two party arrangement, I'd let the GOP go ahead and finish dying. Let someone else form an opposition. We could end up with several opposition parties. That would be very healthy. But the GOP? Let it die.

[NewJeffCT]

38. Obama has been saying all along

that he will appoint Republicans. He has also expressed admiration of Lincoln and how he appointed political rivals to his cabinet...

If causing the Great Depression and aiding & abetting the rise of Hitler & Mussolini didn't kill the GOP, then George Bush certainly won't, either.

[sampsonblk]

43. I pray he doesn't do that.

I am sure he realizes that the two party system is not a requirement. We could have 10 parties. Or 50. There is no need to prop up a party that can't survive without lies and wars. A political party can be replaced.

[NewJeffCT]

46. It's not a requirement, but he has been saying it all year - and

the Republican Party is not going to go away - as I said in my earlier post, if causing the Great Depression and aiding & abetting the rise of Hitler & Mussolini couldn't do in the Republican Party, the invasion of Iraq and the Bush recession isn't going to do it, either.

If Obama has been consistenly saying that he would appoint Republicans, there is no reason to doubt his word. That said, I'm sure they will be Republicans like Chuck Hagel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, Lincoln Chaffee, Jim Leach (who spoke at the DNC), etc.

[sampsonblk]

47. How are you so sure we aren't seeing the demise of the GOP?

All signs point to it. The majority of the public has lost faith in them. The individual GOP congressmen and senators hitched their wagons to GW Bush when thigs looked good. Now things could not be worse.

Once the party splinters, how on earth can it be brought back together. The parts never did fit. It was an uneasy coalition they had from the start. Once it breaks, I says its broken for good.

[always_saturday]

36. Hate the idea of any repugs in the cabinet.

[NewJeffCT]

37. Hagel is a frontrunner for SecDef... Arnold said he would take a

cabinet position as well (Energy Czar has been speculated)

would be nice to get Arnold out of the Calif. governorship, no?

[donco6]

40. I know - Lieberman! Oh wait . . . he's independent.

Never mind.

[TheDonkey]

44. I was thinking the same thing. foreceable appoint McCain to Postmaster General

and give us that AZ senate seat!

[dynasaw]

45. Olympia Snowe

"Olympia Jean Bouchles Snowe McKernan (born February 21, 1947) is the senior United States Senator from Maine.
A moderately conservative Republican, Snowe has become widely known for her ability to influence the outcome of close votes and Senatorial filibusters, in part making her one of the most influential modern U.S. Senators. <1>
In 2006, she was named one of "America's Top Ten Senators" by Time Magazine.<2> Congressional Quarterly noted that her presence at the negotiating table in the 107th Congress was "nearly a necessity." Her political popularity in her home state is the highest of any current U.S. Senator; as of November 22, 2006, she enjoyed a 79 percent approval rating in her home state of Maine.<3>"

If McCain had had chosen her over Moose Barbie he'd probably have been in better shape. She supports legalized abortion and pro-gay rights.