Elephant Dung
Dunno how I get on the contact lists that I do, but the other day I got a call from Tom DeLay's office informing me that I was very important to his work and saving the nation, maybe the world. He wanted to appoint me to something, and the quid pro the honor was a cash contribution to his PAC. Um, I don't think so, I told the woman who called. I'm not a Republican, first of all, and I didn't get to second.
Which is that I think the former exterminator was on the wrong end of his sprayer. If he had only pointed the Raid the other way, we wouldn't have had to suffer his grotesquery as a leader of the pack of House Republicans who were more about an insidious far right-wing agenda than what was good for the country. I bailed, politely, so she wouldn't have to deliver the whole, ridiculous pitch.
Today I got a email from Duf Sundheim, addressed to me once again as a fellow Republican. You can be forgiven if you don't recognize his. He's trying to wrest control of the California Republican Party from the looney-tune dogmatists who have delivered up such eminent choices for stunning defeat as Matt Fong, Dan Lungren and Bill Simon. Good for him, 'cause the people in charge for the last ten years are so caught up in their causes that they have sacrificed any chance that Democrats might have to face serious opposition in The Golden State.
In the last election, Republicans failed in every statewide contest, and now hold only a third of the two legislative bodies and less than half of the Congressional seats. Despite the fact that incumbent Governor Gray Davis was despised, he still managed -- with a huge amount of money, but more with a substantial edge in party registration -- to win re-election. He almost lost, but that was mostly because Bill Simon was such an extraordinarily incompetent candidate, who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
The reason why Simon was the GOP candidate was because Slick Willie Clinton convinced Davis to spend $10 million to torpedo the far more popular and politically astute Dick Riordan. For all his lightweightedness, Riordan would have mopped the floor with Davis, even if he'd been found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. Instead, Riordan's sins were that he was pro-choice and he said he didn't think every odd citizen was entitled to own machine guns. That was contra the Republican creed, and the party faithful blew him out for the doctrinaire Simon.
Last week, the head of the state GOP said that any legislator who voted to increase taxes would find himself facing an immediate recall campaign. This is kinda crazy, since California faces a $35 billion deficit and even if they sold Hollywood to Japan they couldn't pay down the whole debt. New or increased taxes will be required, and the GOP leadership knows it. Which is why, much unlike them, they publically dissed the dope who titularly leads them.
Which is why Sundheim might have been thought to have a chance of capturing the seat...until it was revealed that he had given a thousand bucks to the Bill Bradley campaign in 2000. Big deal, you say, since Republicans and Democrats with money always give to both sides; it's scurrilous, but that what the monied folks do. And I liked Bradley, so that was a point in Sundheim's favor, until he sent me the email, in which he explained that he'd made the contribution to Bradley to force Gore to the left.
I replied to the Sundheim email, and both he and his campaign manager responded. I told them that it was not enough that Bradley's a pal of Sundheim's. There's too much money in politics, regardless of who's getting how much; the system has been corrupted, though hopefully not fatally as it sometimes seems. People with good ideas will succeed, and though they need some money to get their ideas out, it doesn't take but a fraction of what is being raised and spent. The main reason the costs are so high is that the candidates and their thinking are so lackluster.
Sundheim seems like a decent fellow -- gotta give him real points for answering me -- and thus will probably lose. Which is why I'm not a Republican and never will be. They are scary, ignorant, and dangerous, for the most part, and no better than the Democrats, for the most part. Actually, when you look at DeLay and Lott and Cheney and Simon, the fact is that the current crop of Republicans is mostly worse than the current Democrats, as bad as are the Clintons and Daschle and Gephardt and Davis. Which is why I'm registered Decline-to-State.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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