Election 2010: A Little Puzzled

Surprised? No.
Disappointed? Yes.
Puzzled? Absolutely.

About two decades ago Lisa the Loon hired a big shot, smooth talking stock broker to manage all her assets. She lived high on the hog until she discovered that her broker had mismanaged all her investments. Overnight her portfolio dwindled to minus zero. Undaunted, she fired the hot shot and hired a sharp young man to help rebuild her depleted assets. But two years later she fired the bright young man because he hadn’t brought about enough change fast enough. So, what did Lisa the Loon do? She rehired the big shot, smooth talking stock broker who brought her to ruin in the first place.

Isn't this just what happened in this election? Puzzling, isn't it?

Another piece of the puzzle is made up of a couple of semi-diverse groups with mutual, at least temporarily, goals - one with tea bags dancing around their heads and another with dreams of gold lining, not your streets, but their pockets. These good patriots and Chritianists mouth empty platitudes about honor and family values at every opportunity.

What’s so puzzling about this piece of the puzzle is that these good honorable patriotic Christianists supported and voted for candidates who are anything but.

David Vitter, Republican Senator of Louisiana: Back in 2007, news broke that this pious family man had been palling around with New Orleans call girls for quite some time. Of course this good upstanding father of three denied it, which makes him more than just a lying down kind of sinner. Unfortunately for him his name popped up in the notorious DC Madam’s little black book in July of that year. And then one of the ladies of the evening kissed and told all: Dapper Dave really liked to play Diaper Dave. So what did the party of honor and family values do? Nothing except to return him to office.

Nathan Deal, former Georgia congressman and governor-elect. This gay bashing wheeler-dealer is under all kinds of ethics investigations. Earlier this year the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report alleging that Deal was guilty of violating House rules by improperly using his office to push policy that would benefit his family's auto salvage company. But this slippery Son of God resigned from Congress to avoid the disciplinary arm of the House ethics committee.

Rand Paul, senator-elect of Kentucky. Questionable stand on Civil Rights. Questionable non-apology for the head-stomping incident at a debate with his opponent. Questionable board certification. The reason I use “questionable” is because his garbled English is so “questionable” that it’s impossible to ascertain what he really means. But now he’s off to Washington to join the establishment he hates so much in order to bring it to its knees.

One other thing that puzzles me about the right, and which is just as hypocritical as all the rest, is its disdain for what they perceive to be big government. They enjoy the benefits of clean air, safe food and cars, free public education, roads and sidewalks, government subsidized public transportation, safe working conditions, federally protected bank deposits, and city, state and national parks – to name just a few. If they lose their jobs, they get unemployment. If they get injured on the job, they get disability. I guess when they yammer “I want my country back” they mean they are willing to fore-go all of these big government benefits. More about this kind of twisted logic can be found at DemWit.

But now that the GOP has finished using the Tea Party for their own interests, mainly to win the 2010 mid-term elections, they are already beginning to distance themselves from the insanity that is the extreme right. After supporting certifiable nuts like Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle and watching them bite the dust, maybe the Republican establishment of Boehner and McConnell has no more use for these renegades.

As Robert Ruiz writes, “The folk of the nation have spoken---inarticulately, incoherently and far from lucidly but they have spoken.” Yes they have and I refuse to lower myself to the depths of ugly unpatriotic stupidity that the right exhibited, and still does, after the election of our current president.

Besides, there are some good signs that have come out of this election. Despite the obscene amounts of money that some candidates spent on their own elections the majority of voters were unimpressed. Despite the millions of dollars that the Koch Brothers, the Coors Family, Dick Armey, and Fox News and Rupert Murdoch spent, the majority of Americans weren’t willing to prostitute themselves.

And I derived more than a little perverse pleasure when some of the polls misfired. Angle was predicted to beat Reid by three percentage points; Reid beat her by 5.6 percentage points. Bennet of Colorado has won the senate seat and Quinn seems to be squeaking by in Illinois, but this one is still too close to call. Brady was expected to win by 4.7 percentage points.

For the most part I have no use for Independents and would be delighted if their switch-hitting ways give them saddle sores that grow and fester for years to come.

I hope Democratic politicians cultivate a stiff spine because they’re going to need it over the next two years as the Republicans once again divert attention from the serious problems at hand with needless investigations and attempts to shut down the government, a la Newt Gingrich. As Infidel753 says, by the 2012 elections, “the voters will have gotten pretty tired of them.”

I think I’m already there. The thought of having to listen to Orange Man Boehner emote for two years is enough to make a strong woman cry.

PS: The Republicans do not have a mandate.