The election season is starting in earnest, and already one thing is crystal clear. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are hopeless. It seems inconceivable that either party can possibly win anything. This may be the year when the Whigs finally get to make their comeback.
Gail Collins
The Conversation
David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns.
The whole world is expecting a cataclysm for the Democrats in November. After all, the economy is still a mess, and the party is still ... the party. In Illinois, which was first out of the box this season, the Democrats have already moved beyond the primary and into buyer’s remorse. They’ve already dumped the voters’ pick for lieutenant governor. This week, their question is whether they can get rid of their Senate nominee, Alexi Giannoulias, the son of a Chicago banking family, whose bank failed on Friday.
The Democratic disaster scenario would make absolute sense if it did not also require that the Republicans do something right. But in one state after another, they seem bent on nominating the worst possible candidate. The world is one big scavenger hunt, and their clue says, “Find somebody unelectable.”
In Connecticut, having driven Senator Chris Dodd from the race, the Republicans are racing into the corner of Linda McMahon, whose claim to fame is her role in exporting professional wrestling around the globe. In Florida, they got tired of having their popular governor, Charlie Crist, as the senate nominee even before they actually nominated him. Now Crist is expected to run as an independent, and the G.O.P. will try to live happily ever after with a conservative state legislator who has issues about his use of the party credit card.
In Nevada, where Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, appeared to be hopelessly unpopular, the Republicans’ favorite, Sue Lowden, got caught up in a controversy over whether she favors returning to the days when people paid their medical bills by giving the doctor a couple of chickens. This is truly not the sort of policy debate you want to use to jump-start a campaign. And Lowden has yet to explain how much poultry it would cost for a colonoscopy.
The country may have moved to the right, but conservatives tend to underestimate the amount of blue that’s still out there. The new Republican governor of Virginia seemed stunned that his state reacted badly to his call for a Confederate History Month that did not mention slavery. But really, the very definition of a purple state is a place where, when you devote an entire month to recalling the glories of the confederacy, you have to give some time to the bondage angle.
In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, intended to take nothing for granted when it came to keeping the Republicans’ hold on a Senate seat that’s up for grabs this year. His first, and canniest, move was to force the incumbent, Jim Bunning, to retire. Bunning, a cranky ex-baseball player, barely won his last race when he got caught using a teleprompter during a debate and claimed that his opponent, an Italian-American doctor, looked like “one of Saddam Hussein’s sons.”
For Bunning’s successor, McConnell picked Trey Grayson, the secretary of state, who looks a little like a younger, larger Mitch McConnell. Unfortunately for the plan, Grayson is currently getting his clock cleaned by the Tea Party candidate, Rand Paul.
It is very hard to pick a favorite. Would you prefer the man endorsed by Mitch McConnell and Dick Cheney, or the one backed by Sarah Palin and Jim Bunning? I watched a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce debate on Friday, and Grayson, who opposed wasteful earmarks, but not the good wholesome ones that come to Kentucky, kind of faded into the woodwork.
It was the out-of-the-running candidates who were the attention-grabbers. There was a very large, genial man whose slogan was “We need to make a U-turn to God,” and a small, gnarled World War II veteran who called the president “a would-be mullah of the most evil kind.” This was Gurley Martin, and his answer to a question on cap-and-trade legislation was to croak out “Horsefeathers! Horsefeathers! Horsefeathers!”
If Paul holds on to his lead and wins the nomination, the Democrats — who never really felt they had a prayer in Kentucky — will take heart. Paul is going to be hampered by a general impression in many parts of the state that he is sort of strange. This may be because Grayson keeps running ads titled “Rand Paul: Strange Ideas.”
The Democratic nominee may be the lieutenant governor, Daniel Mongiardo, the same guy who Bunning called Saddam-like six years ago. If he and Paul are both the final candidates, it will be an all-physician Senate election. You do see more and more doctors in the political game. Perhaps they want to get out of the medical business before that payment-by-chicken thing kicks in.
