The Rude Pundit: Today's Vote Will Tell Us Nothing About Barack Obama

[meegbear]

On today's Morning Starbucks with Joe over on the MSNBC, the thirty or so people on the air were talking with Republican Minnesota Governor Tim "My Name Sounds Like Something Elmer Fudd Would Say" Pawlenty about the upstate New York congressional race. It's where the Republican was chased out by right-wingers, like Pawlenty, who support Conservative Party candidate Doug "I've Been Endorsed By Everyone You Hate" Hoffman. Begoateed White House correspondent Chuck Todd asked Pawlenty what the minimum basic requirements were for a politician to be welcome as a Republican. Pawlenty went through a litany of what ex-candidate Dede Scozzafava voted for as examples of what a Republican can't do (even though Scozzafava was supported by the NRA and Newt Gingrich). In other words, Pawlenty didn't answer.

Then Joe Scarborough jumped in to ask Pawlenty if he thinks Republican Senator Olympia Snowe is welcome in his vision of the GOP. While Pawlenty allowed that he's glad that Maine elected a Republican, he refused to say that Snowe should be "in the big tent" of the party. He did say that Snowe "can't deviate" on too many issues and still be in that mythical tent, which more and more seems to be KKK-robe white. Scarborough explicitly asked, "Do you want Olympia Snowe in your Republican Party?" And Pawlenty, who was once considered presumptively moderate, became the flaccid cock of the GOP weasel, and he would not say he did.

Or, to put it simply, moderate is no longer conservative enough for the GOP. Conservative is moderate. Scrawl-with-your-own-shit crazy is conservative. So, essentially, the only way to be fringe on the right is to want to blow shit up, and even then it depends on what the target is.

The media, mainstream and not, is all abuzz over what the results of today's elections, especially the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and that 23rd district congressional race in New York, will tell us about whether or not Barack Obama and the Democrats have lost momentum and power. And the Rude Pundit's calling bullshit.

What it'll tell us is that, in Virginia, if you field a shitty candidate, that shitty candidate will lose. In New Jersey, Jon Corzine will more than likely win, so will the press say, "Hey, look, Obama's still popular"? And in NY-23, a place that's almost entirely white, where they elected two previous Republicans, where Bush barely received a majority in 2004 and Obama won in 2008?

If anyone who voted for Obama there decides to vote for Doug Hoffman and against Democrat Bill Owens because they think Obama is betraying American values or some such shit, then fuck them. They weren't real Obama supporters to begin with. And they are fickle idiots who are mesmerized when Sarah Palin sashays her magical Alaskan ass and Glenn Beck spins his hypnotically nutsy eyes in front of them. Because right now Obama isn't doing anything he didn't campaign on, the very things that are presumably why NY-23 voters, you know, voted for him. To shift to Obama-hating at this point, before any of his major efforts have actually been done, seems self-defeating at best and an eruption of suppressed latent racism at worst.

Oh, and by the way, Tim Pawlenty must have loved John McHugh, the Republican representative who was there in NY-23 before Obama nominated him to be Secretary of the Army. McHugh voted against Republicans on many issues, especially when it came to the environment, health care, and jobs. He was actually a moderate. Oh, and the guy who preceded McHugh? Republican Sherwood Boehlert? Big fuckin' environmentalist who voted against Republicans repeatedly. He works with Al Gore now. Good luck with that fuckin' tent.

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