[Vision2020] A Little Election Amusement

Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Sat Oct 6 08:19:14 PDT 2012


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October 5, 2012
Of Hooters, Zombies and Senators By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

Today, let’s take a look at debates that do not involve Barack Obama and
Mitt Romney. You can thank me later.

I am talking about the races for the United States Senate, people.
Attention must be paid! And, as a reward, we can also discuss a new
campaign ad featuring zombies.

There are 33 Senate contests this year, although voters in some of the
states may not have noticed there’s anything going on. In Texas, for
instance, Paul Sadler, a Democrat, has had a tough time getting any
attention in his battle against the Tea Party fan favorite Ted Cruz.
Except, perhaps, when he called Cruz a “troll” in their first debate.

In Utah, Scott Howell, a Democrat, has been arguing that if the 78-year-old
Senator Orrin Hatch wins, he might “die before his term is through.”
Suggesting a longtime incumbent is over the hill is a venerable election
technique, but you really are supposed to be a little more delicate about
it. Howell also proposed having 29 debates. The fact that Hatch agreed to
only two was, he claimed, proof of the senator’s fading stamina.

Nobody in Massachusetts could have missed the fact that there’s a Senate
race going on. In their last debate, Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren
sounded like two angry squirrels trapped in a small closet. A high point
came when the candidates were asked to name their ideal Supreme Court
justice. “That’s a great question!” said Brown brightly, in what appeared
to be a stall for time. He came up with Antonin Scalia. Then, after boos
from the audience, Brown added more names, until he had picked about half
the current court, from John Roberts to Sonia Sotomayor.

Meanwhile, in Nebraska, the Democrat Bob Kerrey began his debate remarks
with: “First of all, let me assure you that I’m still Bob Kerrey.” This
seemed to be a bad sign.

There are actually about only a dozen Senate races in which there is
serious suspense about who’s going to win. To the Republicans’ dismay, many
of them are in states that were supposed to be a lock for the G.O.P.

Tea Party pressure produced several terrible candidates. We have all heard
about Todd Akin in Missouri, who claimed after a recent debate that Senator
Claire McCaskill wasn’t sufficiently “ladylike.” Since then, Akin has
doubled down on a claim that doctors frequently perform abortions on women
who aren’t pregnant.

In others, the Republicans found awful candidates without any help from the
far right.

Senator Bill Nelson in Florida received the gift of Representative Connie
Mack IV as his Republican opponent, and promptly unveiled an ad calling
Mack “a promoter for Hooters with a history of barroom brawling,
altercation and road rage.” Mack’s fortunes seem to have been sliding ever
since. Recently, while he was greeting voters at a Donut Hole cafe, one
elderly couple asked him to get them a menu.

Some Democratic candidates are also turning out to be stronger than
anticipated — like Arizona’s Richard Carmona, a Hispanic physician who
served as surgeon general under President George W. Bush. Carmona is a
Vietnam combat veteran who worked as a SWAT team leader for the Pima County
Sheriff’s Department. “In 1992,” his campaign biography reports, “he
rappelled from a helicopter to rescue a paramedic stranded on a
mountainside when their medevac helicopter crashed during a snowstorm,
inspiring a made-for-TV movie.”

Let that be a lesson. If the Democrats in Texas had just nominated a
Hispanic Vietnam combat veteran who saved crash victims and inspired a TV
movie, they wouldn’t have to depend on debates to get some attention.

The race where the Democrats are getting a nasty surprise is in
Connecticut, where Representative Chris Murphy is having a tough time
against the Republican Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling
mogul. McMahon has spent a record $70 million of her own money over the
past three years trying to convince voters that what Connecticut really
needs is a senator who knows how to create jobs in a simulated sport awash
in violence, sexism and steroid abuse.

Improbable candidates who don’t have $70 million to blanket their state in
ads can always just cobble something really weird together, put it up on
the Web and hope it goes viral.

Last time around, Carly Fiorina, who was running for Senate in California,
created a sensation with “Demon Sheep,” featuring an actor wearing a sheep
mask with glowing red eyes.

Now John Dennis, the Republican opponent of the House minority leader,
Nancy Pelosi, has a new California sheep-themed conversation-starter. It
portrays Pelosi as the leader of a cult of zombies, preparing a lamb for
sacrifice. Then Dennis breaks in, saves the lamb, calls one of the zombies
“Dude,” and denounces Pelosi for supporting the indefinite detention of
American citizens who are suspected of being terrorists.

Not your typical Republican. Dennis ran against Pelosi before and got 15
percent of the vote. But I feel the zombie ad could well push him up into
the 20s.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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