10,000 Whack Jobs Leading GOP
It is hard to tell the whack job Chiefs from the whack job indians in the Republican Party, harder indeed every single day. That’s the first task to rebuilding the GOP brand, but it will be a long time before they recognize that. Meantime, 10,000 whack jobs sign a petition to impeach Obama from the Senate, a body from which he has already resigned.
The petition to impeach Barack Obama from the Senate has reached 10,000 signatures. The whack jobs may not have noticed that Obama has resigned from the Senate already. Oh, we can make fun of these whack jobs, and they mightily deserve it, but it is disturbing to me to imagine what the thinking processes of people such as this are like. Here’s the petition, which includes all the crimes they identify against Obama, and here is the list of signatories. (The end of the list is the best part.)
This is all about leadership, of course. Whack jobs are not generally going to be led to sanity, of course, but leadership in the Republican Party is lacking, either in sanity or in numbers. For instance, as I noted a couple days ago, the Republicans are going to have to try and replace George Voinovich seen, according to the latest reports. Chris Cillizza speculates on who will succeed Voinovich, and notes that the Republican bench in Ohio is strong, as opposed to the Democrats, but Cillizza doesn’t note that the radical religious right has a stranglehold on the Ohio Republican Party, and that will spell serious trouble in their selection of a more moderate candidate, and also in getting their candidate elected. The prediction here is they will opt for a whack job for their leadership.
Like Norm Coleman. These whack jobs will evidently defend Norm Coleman at all costs, even to the end of displaying their inability to read. This is the leadership of the GOP thinking 37% is a majority, not some lone whack job with a petition. I’m beginning to think the severe hatred of Al Franken has brought out the inner whack job in the Republican Party leaders, not that that inner whack job was hiding very effectively. Hey, Norm Coleman himself is such a whack job that he claims he loves Minnesota at the same time he wants to deny their representation in the Senate. Sure, losing can unhinge a candidate, but this guy’s hinges were barely hanging on in the first place.
The question is not about who is leading the whack jobs and their insane conspiracy theories, but whether the leaders of the Republican Party will ever wake up and recognize that they are being led by the whack job wing of their party so much that the term “whack job” has become an intimate part of the Republican brand. Sure, one reads the phrase “failed Obama Presidency” in the latest P. J. O’Rourke column and if one is a Democrat one giggles a little, just before thinking that there likely are many whack job Republicans, both in the leadership and the ignorant rank and file, for whom the phrase “failed Obama Presidency” is historically accurate, even though it refers to something in the future.
Hey, Haley Barbour, this problem you’ve got with the Republican Party repairing its brand is far worse and far different than what you report to the Wall Street Journal. Here’s one commentator who doesn’t think you’re going to figure out the enormity of your task for a very long time. Indeed, here’s one commentator who can’t tell whether there are any Republicans left who are NOT whack jobs.
Chris Cillizza speculates on who will succeed Voinovich, and notes that the Republican bench in Ohio is strong, as opposed to the Democrats,
Actually, to be fair to Cillizza, the discussion in that article doesn’t really indicate to me that the Republican bench is “strong”. He uses the word “obvious”. The folks he cites are Portman, DeWine and Kasich. And “obvious” is the word I’d use - if I were trying to come up with three names that could win statewide office, I’d come up with Portman and Kasich too (and Portman mainly because he’s been out of electoral politics for a while, so he has a chance of building a statewide image nearly from scratch). I wouldn’t come up with DeWine because he already lost once, and the nutbars in the state GOP don’t like him much at all (the machine likes him, but the voters don’t much care for him).
OTOH, he undersells the Democratic bench a little. First of all the names he has there kind of seem like long shots to me. I sincerely doubt that Jennifer Brunner is going to be running for Senate in 2010 - I think it’s far more likely that she’ll be trying to hang on to her Secretary of State seat and then going for the governor’s seat in 2014 if she’s successful. Fischer may try, but he’s not been very successful at the runs for statewide office in the recent past. And Zack Space’s name keeps coming up but this is just his second term in office as a Congressman - I’d be really surprised if he managed to jump up to Senator after just 4 years in Congress (but it could happen I suppose).
Besides the names Cizzila listed, Marcy Kaptur of Toledo might want a crack at it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kucinich decided to primary for it regardless of what the party wants (though I’d be very surprised if he got the nomination - outside of Cleveland he’s mostly a punchline in the state these days). Tim Ryan might also want a stab at it - though this is only his third term in office, he was someone who was thought to be a possible opponent against DeWine a few years back when Sherrod Brown took the seat.
(But needless to say I have no idea who the Dems will end up running. And, frankly, given that I was sure that Voinivich would decide to run again in 2010 when the rumors first started sprouting, and who didn’t think that Sherrod Brown had a snowball’s chance in Hades when he ran, I’m probably the wrong person to prognosticate about these things anyway…)
I admit, NonyNony, that when I mentioned “strong” I was sort of referring to a Cillizza column that published about an hour after my last column about Voinovich. (thank you for the scoop). That said, I am a Cillizza fan, though I think he suffers, as most of the media does, from trying to be “fair,” and thus discounting the eroding GOP brand and how it effects all GOP candidates.