Who is Senator Paul Wellstone and how did he die?

Question

I saw on a site a book called American Assassination the strange death of Senator Paul Wellstone by James H., it was about 911 ... who is he and why was he mentioned in a book about 911?

Answer 1

Paul Wellstone was the only progressive in the U.S. Senate. Mother Jones magazine once described him as, "The first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. senate." He was also the last. Since defeating incumbent Republican Rudy Boschowitz 12 years ago in a grassroots upset, Wellstone emerged as the strongest, most persistent, most articulate and most vocal Senate opponent of the Bush administration.

In a senate that is one heartbeat away from Republican control, Wellstone was more than just another Democrat. He was often the lone voice standing firm against the status-quo policies of both the Democrats and the Republicans. As such, he earned the special ire of the Bush administration and the Republican Party, who made Wellstone's defeat that party's number one priority this year.

Various White House figures made numerous recent campaign stops in Minnesota to stump for the ailing campaign of Wellstone's Republican opponent, Norm Coleman. Despite being outspent and outgunned, however, polls show that Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing George Bush to wage war in Iraq. He was pulling ahead of Coleman and moving toward a victory that would both be an embarrassment to the Bush administration and to Democratic Quislings such as Hillary Clinton who voted to support "the president."

Then he died.

Wellstone now joins the ranks of other American politicians who died in small plane crashes. Another recent victim was Missouri's former Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft, despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush. Investigators determined that Carnahan's plane went down due to "poor visibility."

Carnahan was the second Missouri politician to die in a small plane crash. The first was Democratic Representative Jerry Litton, whose plane crashed the night he won the Democratic nomination for senate in 1976. His Republican opponent ultimately captured the seat from his successor in November.


...and the guy below is full of **** about the funeral. At Paul Wellstone's funeral, just before the 2002 mid-term elections - In a Minneapolis arena, a setting which couldn't help becoming a political rally, speaker after speaker praised Wellstone's progressive legacy, and said that the best way to honor it was to prevent Norm Coleman from replacing him in the Senate. Of course the Republican congressional delegation squirmed; having fought Wellstone tooth and nail in life, their presence was rank hypocrisy, and the boos they got when their faces were projected on the jumbotrons was the sound of democracy speaking truth to power. Did the angry Wellstone mourners go too far? I was there, working on the ten-day Mondale-for-Senate campaign that launched the next day, and I watched Minnesota Republicans work the media relentlessly, hounding itelevision news into covering the funeral as an outrage. Seeing Coleman gain a lead, I wondered whether one or two of the funeral speakers, in righteous grief, got carried away, and hurt the cause of the Wellstone legacy among Minnesota voters. But I remain convinced that the media framing of the event -- bad Dems dis wunnerful Washington bigwigs -- tipped the balance.

Republicans love playing the civility card. I wonder where these Emily Posts were when the Pentagon lied about the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death at his funeral. I don't recall them denouncing Pat Robertson -- while the World Trade Center towers were still smoldering -- attributing 9/11 deaths to God's revenge on liberalism. Republicans get all huffy, and invoke Marquess of Queensbury rules, when it suits them, but somehow that's never when they're spreading malicious lies and assassinating their living opponents' characters.

Answer 2

Paul Wellstone was a Democrat from Wisconsin. He was waaaay on the left fringe and died in a plane crash in 2002. I'm guessing one of his followers decided to tie his death into a 911 conspiracy theory.
Did the book mention that his feuneral turned into a dang campaign rally? Folks yellin and screamin about the congressional elections( Dems lost big possibly because of the unclassy very public feuneral among other things)