Today I had to go to the doctor to have a finger looked at. No. Not that finger. Driving in I had Hannity on in the truck, and he was talking about the anger in the Republican campaign. Seeing as how, at this point, I'm pretty excited about Nobody, it was mainly background noise while I was thinking about driving and other real world problems. Then he played a clip of Jim Talent from an anti-Gingrich commercial. For those of you not from Misery, Talent was a Congressman from somewhere around St. Louis County, as best I recall, back in the 1990s and subsequently lost a run for MO governor in 2000 to the most wildly incompetent, inept, ineffectual little dweeb to poop in the Mansion during my lifetime. PeeWee Holden may not have been as utterly corrupt as Warren Hearnes, but he was even more worthless. And he still beat Jim Talent.
The first time I saw Talent was at an airport campaign rally where I had gone to see the guy I had voted for when he first ran for governor of Texas a few years before. I think his name was Bush. John Ashcroft was there as well. Ashcroft is a fine Christian man, but he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and Jim Talent made Ashcroft and W. look like the intellectual heavy-weights. I assumed Talent was just having a bad day. I blamed his loss to Holden on the death of Mel Carnahan whose son didn't believe his instruments and flew his plane into the ground shortly before election day.
The despicable Carnahan family, Holden, Roger Wilson, and the state's broadcast media turned the deceased governor's funeral into a massive campaign rally that preempted regular programming. They were shouting stuff like "Mel's in hell and the fire still burns." OK, I admit I added the "Mel's in hell" part. But it was totally disgusting.
In violation of anything like decency or even law, the lieutenant-governor at the time, Roger Wilson, vowed to appoint Mel's wife to serve in the Senate if the dead man got more votes than incumbent Senator John Ashcroft. John, meanwhile, had made the somewhat understandable error of suspending his campaign after Mel's crash out of respect for the family. Silly him. Anyway, the huge, free, emotionally-charged campaign rally/funeral pushed the dead man ahead of Ashcroft and also swung sentiment to Holden, who had appeared on the platform with the surviving despicable Carnahans, and both Talent and Ashcroft lost their elections.
In 2002, Mel's wife, now Senator Carnahan — I've called her the Widder so much that I can't remember her given name, and I could care less — had to defend her seat in a special election. By this time, people had gotten over the emotional shock and realized they had elected a corpse to the Senate. Talent ran a reasonable campaign against the Widder and won in a post-9/11 Republican year. However, in 2006, Talent had to defend his seat against Ma Hogg, aka Claire McCaskill, Nursing Home Mogul. McCaskill was a very poor candidate, but it was a Democrat year. I still have to think that almost anybody but Talent would have beaten her. He ran the stupidest campaign imaginable, sounding like he was running for Student Body President at a West County high school in their debates and making an unresearched allegation that came back to kick his rear. He also failed to counter the heavy money from some Democrat "shooting sports" PAC that made McCaskill more acceptable to a lot of us "bitter clingers" down here in the Ozarks where Republicans MUST win overwhelmingly to carry the state. St. Louis County is not going to pull a Republican across the finish line. You need a strong vote from the hillbillies. Talent failed to fire us up.
Yes, I voted for the dufuss, but then I voted for Richard Nixon as an 18-year-old because, when you come right down to it, I basically just find Democrats sort of reptilian.
That's kind of a long way around to cross the creek, but here we are at last.
Talent is doing a SuperPac spot for somebody, probably Romney, nastily criticizing Gingrich for his time as Speaker, when, according to Talent, Gingrich would say outrageous things on a regular basis and make it impossible for the House members to get anything done. Really, Senator? Like Welfare Reform? Like balancing the budget? That's the stuff you couldn't get done under Speaker Gingrich? Talent also says something to the effect that the Republicans "forced" Newt to give up his position as Speaker. That's funny because I always thought it was Newt's adulterous affair with Callista during the Clinton impeachment that bit him in the butt and forced him out. But I'll give Talent the benefit of the doubt on that one. I suppose the Senator thinks that Dennis Hastert was an improvement over Newt? Does anybody think that Speaker Hastert is going to be considered a great Speaker of the House by historians? He won't even merit a footnote except as the loser that spent the surplus and blew things up between Newt and Nancy and started the snowball of debt rolling again. But Talent apparently considers that a plus since he did little or nothing to hold the line against excess spending during his shortened tenure in the Senate.
Jim Talent, I used to say, is a really nice guy who just should never have run for a statewide office. Well, Mr. Talent proved me wrong. He is not a nice guy. He appears, at best, to be a traitor with no principles who is for sale to the highest bidder for any necessary hatchet work. He has no qualms about back-stabbing the man who broke the Democrats' forty year stranglehold on the House.
Newt Gingrich is a deeply flawed person. He proved faithless to two wives. I have no respect for that kind of attitude. You take your cards, and you play them. You make a vow, and you keep it. I think he is sleazy, and I probably won't vote for him in the primary. At least, I hadn't planned to, but now I might. What Jim Talent calls Gingrich's "outrageous" comments are what make Gingrich a viable candidate. Newt knows how to reframe the argument, to wrest definitions away from the leftist, statist media and communicate the truth to the country at large. He is warped but very intelligent. Jim Talent is not very bright. Talent lacks any ability whatsoever to think outside the box or to question the left's definitions and force them out of their verbal camouflage. Not only does he lack such ability, he even lacks the ability to recognize when someone else is able to do it. I'm not sure what that makes Jim Talent except for being pretty much the opposite of Newt Gingrich.
I am sure, despite his traitorous ad, Jim Talent is still a less sleazy man than Newt. He is probably a much better husband, possibly a better Christian than Gingrich. Nevertheless, Jim Talent has no business criticizing Gingrich for a utilizing an ability that Talent is incapable, so it seems, of even comprehending.
Senator Talent, if you should happen to read this, for your own good, please shut up. An intellectual cage match with Speaker Gingrich is not going to turn out well for you.
That was a good read on Misery politics. I remember the Carnahan election/appointment. Pretty disgusting.
ReplyDeleteWe were Perry supporters, my wife and I, but now it is GO NEWT! Warts and all.
I would have been pretty happy to vote for Perry. My wife really liked him. Despite having been born in St. Louis, she became a Texas girl while we lived there. And he is cool, no question. He just stumbles a little in communicating. He's had some experience now, so maybe next time. Or maybe a VP slot or Secretary of Defense.
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