DeMint disagrees with the view that Honduras experienced a coup:

On what basis does the [Obama] Administration demand Zelaya’s reinstatement? His removal from office was no more a coup than was Gerald Ford’s ascendence to the Oval Office or our newest colleague Al Franken’s election to the Senate.

Here’s the video (via Think Progress):

Actually, there is a six-degrees-type connection between Franken and Malcolm X:

Until he announced his run for U.S. Senate in early 2007, Franken hosted a weekday radio show on the Air America network from noon to 3 p.m., Eastern Time. Last week, Air America announced that the new host in Franken’s old time slot is Ron Kuby. In 1995, Kuby, with former law associate William Kunstler, represented Qubilah Shabbazz against charges (filed in Minneapolis) that she tried to hire an FBI informant to kill Louis Farrakhan, who she suspected of involvement in the 1965 death of her father, Malcolm X.

I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under Democrat [sic] President Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it is an interesting coincidence.

As ThinkProgress notes, the 1970s swine flu outbreak happened on the watch of President Gerald Ford, a Republican, not Carter.

I find it interesting that the last office to which the vice-presidential-appointee Ford was actually elected was Member of Congress — the same job Bachmann holds today.

(cough)

Just sayin’.

more inside

Instead, when Nixon’s equally-corrupt Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned his position, Nixon appointed the Minority Leader of the House, Gerald Ford, to serve as Vice President.  This was not so much because Nixon and Ford were buddies or shared the same vision for the country as that the Watergate scandal was in full swing and Nixon hoped Ford’s appointment would serve as an olive branch to the House, which was considering impeaching him.

Ford served as Vice President for less than a year before Nixon was forced from office with impeachment and conviction all but certain if he chose to fight on.  And so Gerald Ford–the first and only President not to be elected on a national ticket–became President from August of 1974 to January of 1977.

Ford’s short tenure still had great impact.  Ford pardoned Nixon–a deeply unsatisfying end to Watergate, but one that probably spared the country even greater division.  He oversaw the end of the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon–an inevitable end to a disastrous war that saw America brought low by an intractable insurgency.

But perhaps his most enduring legacy was his positioning as the last gasp of the Nelson Rockefeller Wing of the Republican Party–a position he highlighted and underlined by appointing Rockefeller as his own Vice President.

Ford was the national equivalent of Minnesota’s Arne Carlson–a man thrown into office by scandal, whose political positions were orthogonal to his party’s.  Ford described himself as “a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy.”  That was not what his party wanted.  What they wanted was Ronald Reagan–for the times a radical social conservative (though he’d be a bit of a liberal in today’s GOP), a confrontationalist in foreign affairs, and a radical Keynesian in fiscal policy.

They almost got him.  Reagan challenged Ford for the party’s 1976 endorsement, with strong support from social conservatives.  Though he fell short of ousting Ford by an 1187-1070 vote, his supporters succeeded in turning the GOP into an overtly pro-life party.

Ford went on to run that fall with then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) as his running mate, replacing Rockefeller, who had been quietly pushed aside by Ford’s youthful Chief of Staff (a fellow from Wyoming named Dick Cheney) and Defense Secretary (a former Representative from Illinois named Donald Rumsfeld).  He lost to Jimmy Carter in a race closer, in many ways, than it should have been–Ford, the man who pardoned Nixon, lost by just 2% of the popular vote, and would have won the electoral vote had he been able to pry Texas and one other state away from the Democrats.

The Rockefeller Republicans would never rise again.  George H. W. Bush could have been their standard-bearer, and was in many ways in 1980; by 1988, he was smart enough to have transformed himself into Reagan lite, a kinder, gentler conservative.  Bush’s son, of course, took Reagan’s legacy and pushed on further than the Gipper could have dreamed.

In 1976, Ford lost every Southern state but Virginia, and won every New England state save Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  He won California, Oregon, and Washington, won Illinois and Michigan.  He won every state west of Minnesota save Texas and Hawaii.

Ford almost came back in 1980; Reagan, in a bid to woo moderates concerned about his brand of conservatism, made overtures to the former President to serve in the number two slot; Ford, however, wanted guarantees of more power as Vice President than Reagan was willing to commit to.  So Ford simply faded into the sunset, remembered as the guy who pardoned Nixon, the guy who tripped and had a bad golf game, the guy who presided over the end of Vietnam.  Bland, safe, accidental.

But Ford’s legacy is more complex and important than that.  And while he did curse us with Rumsfeld and Cheney, he also appointed Justice John Paul Stevens–the vote that’s standing between Roe v. Wade and the thundering conservative horde.

In short, despite his brief, strange tenure, he deserves more than just notations about his accidental appointment.  He served his country in difficult times, to the best of his ability.  And he made hard decisions that may have cost him an election, but that were best for his country.

Gerald Ford died yesterday at 93 years of age.  He will be missed.