Confused GOP Candidates Have Problems With Reality
“...you have to wonder if these guys really want to be elected.”
When a political party is centered on a commitment to pissing liberals off and trying to polish turds disguised as policy proposals, its candidates for office are easily confused. Or should I say “intellectually challenged?”
Meet today’s Republican candidates. They must have so many questions and so few answers, to wit:
What constitutes good taste? How much can I lie and get away with it? If I say the sun rising in the east is a Chinese communist plot will anybody notice?
In San Diego this stupefaction extends all the way down to branding, with candidates or committees unable or unwilling to correctly state party identification.
A couple of local mailers have claimed Republican candidates are actually Democrats.
Carlsbad City Council candidate Melanie Burkholder appears on the front of something called the Carlsbad Democratic Voter Guide, along with five other candidates who are endorsed Republicans.
As Union-Tribune columnist Michael Smolens notes:
The mailer has a subheadline saying “Don’t Split The Vote” followed by the words “Unite Behind Our Endorsed Team of Candidates Committed to Progressive Change in Carlsbad.”
Burkholder is given equal billing in side-by-side photographs of her and Assemblymember Tasha Boerner Horvath. They’re not exactly teammates. In 2020, the Encinitas Democratic incumbent defeated Burkholder by 11 points.
Burkholder had announced her candidacy for a rematch last year, but shifted to run for the council instead.
La Mesa mayoral candidate Kristine Alessio’s campaign mailer hails their candidate as “The Democrats’ Choice for La Mesa!”
The Burkholder boo-boo was paid for by a group calling itself Citizens for a Better East County, which apparently has issues with geography unless Carlsbad has relocated away from the coast while nobody was looking. Alessio’s flyer came from the candidate’s campaign. Both groups have one donor in common…. drum roll… Carl DeMaio’s Reform California.
The lying goes beyond assertions of partisan endorsement, plying readers with buzz words not usually found in GOP propaganda.
Alessio’s mailer states that it was paid for by her campaign and that she’s a leader on climate change, diversity and inclusion, and protecting reproductive rights. The mailer featuring Burkholder uses similar buzz phrases and both pieces say the candidates would usher in “progressive change” in their municipalities.
76th Assembly candidate Kristie Bruce-Lane is also confused about partisan affiliation, running an ad saying opponent “Brian Maienschein’s own party doesn’t endorse him.”
Perhaps her confusion stems from Maienschein’s switch from the GOP to Democrat in 2019, a move he explained in a UT op-ed:
Loyalty to my values and to the people of California made my decision clear.
Donald Trump has led the Republican Party to the extreme on issues that divide our country, but his leadership is not the only reason for my change in party affiliation. I too have changed.
His campaign has been endorsed by the State Democratic Party, and the County Democratic Party, among others. Needless to say, no part of the Republican Party has endorsed Maienschein.
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Nationally, GOP candidates are also confused; but at least they acknowledge their party affiliation. As SNL’s Colin Jost said: “...you have to wonder if these guys really want to be elected.”
Exhibits A & B in the confused candidate class of GOPer’s are Georgia’s Herschel Walker and Pennsylvania’s Dr. Mehmet Oz, both who are endorsed by Fearless Leader for positions in the US Senate.
Here’s Daily Kos’ Hunter on Walker:
Normally there are no candidates who climb up on stage to tell stories of sex-having mountain goats with a long history of head injuries, to give one inappropriate example out of many.
We're used to Republican politicians announcing that there are Too Many Trees These Days, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Whatshisname to this guy. We can get through that. We're used to Republican candidates who hide a history of just blood-curdling moral failures; hiding secret sex partners and the abortions you paid for is so commonplace it might as well be written into the Republican Party platform. You can be banned from local malls after becoming infamous as the town's most persistent sex pest, and we're even used to that.
Walker, though, seems intent on shooting the moon here. He's going to fill out every square of the Republican Scandal Bingo cards so that everyone wins a prize. He's running against a Democratic minister, no less, and one who has not yet become famous for telling stories about sex-having animals.
Democrat John Fetterman has had a field day on social media with Dr. Oz, whose scandals include actually living in another state, having voted as a Turkish citizen, and running science experiments that killed 300 puppies.
The House of Representatives is a big place, and it would take more space than this column allows to run down all the muddled ignorance of Republican candidates for Congress.
Here’s a snip from Dana Milbank’s Washington Post column entitled Think you already know crazy? Meet the House GOP Class of ’22.
There’s the woman from North Carolina who was accused of hitting one husband with an alarm clock, trying to hit another with a car (and also menacing him with a frying pan) and punching her daughter. She denies that, though she also invoked a conspiracy belief that alien lizards control the government.
There’s the man from Ohio who lied about his military record, lavishly promoted QAnon themes, acknowledged bypassing police barriers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and with 120 gallons of paint turned his entire lawn into a Trump banner.
There’s the man from Michigan who claimed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman participated in a satanic ritual, who once disparaged women’s suffrage, and who, though Black, raised concern about Democrats “eroding the White population.”
Then there are: the Texas woman accused by her estranged husband of cruelty toward his teenage daughter; the Colorado woman who backed an effort to secede from her state; the Virginia woman who speculated that rape victims wouldn’t get pregnant; and the Wisconsin man who used campaign funds from his failed 2020 race to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, where he apparently breached Capitol barricades.
What they all have in common is that they’re in competitive races, which means they could well be part of a Republican House majority in January. And that’s on top of a larger group of GOP nominees in deep-red congressional districts who are a motley assortment of election deniers, climate-change deniers, QAnon enthusiasts and Jan. 6 participants who propose to abolish the FBI and ban abortion with no exceptions, among other things.
Remember, when it comes to mailers and phone calls/texts, they are supposed to stop once you’ve voted, so don’t procrastinate, do it today.
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com