Somebody I Can't Stand: Ed Koch

I recently read that Ed Koch, not surprisingly, has been stumping for Bush, seeking to use his purported credibility with Jewish voters in Florida to draw recruits to the GOP. (As discussed in an earlier blog, the notion that Jewish voters would react to the GOP with anything other than extreme revulsion is hard to fathom). I say this is not surprising because for years now Koch has been making a good living by going around making political ads that say, "I'm Ed Koch and even though I'm a Democrat I'm supporting..." Fill in the blank: Al D'Amato, George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, George Bush, etc. You name the Republican, Ed Koch has supported him. So far as I can tell, Koch has not supported a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and I don't really have any empirical evidence that he supported him.

It seems pretty self-evident to me that in order to call oneself a Democrat, one ought to occasionally support Democrats, at least every once in a while. Koch's credentials as a Democrat are, to put it mildly, pretty stale.

This is really an issue of deceptive advertising. The FCC or the FTC or somebody ought to have a rule that prohibits bozos like Koch from calling themselves Democrats even though they consistently support Republicans. Koch, of course, has a perfect right to go on making commercials for Bush, but what he should be saying is, "I'm Ed Koch and I'm a Republican Party hack and I'm supporting Bush." It wouldn't have quite the same ring to it, but at least it would be accurate. But then again, what am I talking about -- Bush hasn't made a single accurate advertisement during the course of this campaign, so why should his presentation of commercials featuring one more lying shill be any different?