‘Murka is a funky place.
You gotta admit that. We get even funkier when we ride election cycles fast down busy streets, hit a slight bump and find ourselves suddenly and quite pointedly reminded how hard the narrow saddle of democracy can be.
It all seems so painful at that very moment but we just keep peddlin’.
Whether you know it or not, we’re knee deep in a very funky election cycle and by that I don’t mean a good Art Neville funky beat.
If you believe the national press meme, incumbents are as endangered as the Gulf of Mexico and all those it sustains.
Two incumbents have gone down in the past five days – TWO – out of 471 congressional seats up for re-election this year and, oh my heavens, we got us a landslide!!
Add on top of that all this funky talk of a U.S. Supreme Court nominee being Lebanese.
The Wall Street Journal, that even handed newspaper of insightful journalism, even ran a photograph of SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan playing softball, which is apparently very popular in Lebanon.
Do we care if Supreme Court nominees play softball? No, we do not. We just want them to be good, decent, social-justice-lovin’, let-freedom-ring, radical left-wing jurists for a change.
– BREAKING: We interrupt this silliness to bring you the breaking news that Tampa, Florida has been selected as the site of the GOP National Convention in 2012. Do they know Tampa is home to brown, black and gay people? That is all. –
So, the second incumbent to fall in a week did so yesterday in West Virginia, which so often leads the nation in hillbilly politics.
U.S. Rep Alan Mollohan, a 14-term Democrat (sorta), lost a party primary battle to a young upstate state senator who out-GOPeed the quasi-Democrat for the victory by vilifying the incumbent as just not right-wing enough. AND THESE ARE THE DEMOCRATS!
The Republican who State Senator Mike Oliverio will meet in the November general election better be bringin’ those Neanderthal genes hot ‘n heavy to bring the cave people out in force.
Mollohan’s big crime was that he voted in favor of health care reform, this despite him carrying solid pro-life credentials.
Because he supported better health care for all Americans – and in West Virginia, dental care is a big deal – the pro-life crew aborted its long standing support. After all, one can’t claim the pro-life banner and be in favor of better health care.
They also turned against him because he supported doing something to slow climate change and Lord knows we don’t need to change the climate in West Virginia.
Not to be outdone in hillbilly politics, the gubernatorial race in Alabama has turned the clock back to the 1920s where GOP front-runner Bradley Byrne (seriously) was accused of favoring the teaching of evolution in public schools. Byrne, for his part, countered that, by God, he believed every word in the Bible to be true and dictated directly by the Supreme Being to her secretary!
This after some weeks ago when fellow GOP candidate Tim James, son of former governor Fob, made a big deal out demanding driver’s license examinations be given only in English, the God-given language of the Bible.
Maybe the national punditry has it all wrong. Maybe this is not necessarily the year of the anti-incumbent. Maybe it’s just a good year to have a shallow gene pool.
