Shut Up and Just Win!

Comedian, philosopher-genius George Carlin has a line somewhere back in his repertoire that goes something like this: ‘If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.’ The quip is more than appropriate for how the Republican Congressional delegation from New York owns the Democratic Congressional delegation when it comes to arranging a noncompetition deal in fielding a candidate to run against blowhard Republican congressman Peter King. According to the Long Island newspaper Newsday, the Democrats elected from Long Island blanched at helping a candidate take on the island’s sole Republican Bush-backer, which proves once again when House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi utters meaningless pap like: ‘There is no one Democratic voice…and there is no one Democratic position,’ (supposedly talking about the Iraq war) the exception is the lengths Democratic powermakers will go to behind the scenes to not try for the big win, now and then.

King, the highly obnoxious chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee (you see where that’s gotten us, yuk, yuk) has been quoted as saying Valerie Plame “got what she deserved"; “that downtown Baghdad is safer than downtown Manhattan”; and that he “thanks God every morning that George W. Bush is our President” – whether it’s before or after his morning bowel movement that he thanks his maker for Bush, he has never elaborated.

Needless to say, the latter two quotes are so out of step with voters in King’s district that a poll commissioned by Suffolk County Legislator David Bishop and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) showed that when voters learned of King’s boner for all things Bush, they turned on him. In fact, the test-run showed Bishop defeating King by an amazing 20 points. The pollsters' analysis, according to Newsday, is that with sufficient resources Bishop could win.

Resources are the purview of the DCCC, which told Bishop that the Congressional delegation would take ownership of the race, opening up their donors to him so that he could amass the more than $1million necessary to wage a race. Apparently, that didn’t happen and yesterday’s (December 16th) Newsday article points out that these Democrats have extremely cozy personal relationships with King that trump party loyalty. Bishop dropped out when informed that the delegation wouldn’t step up.

The next time one of these towers of strength attends a soldier's funeral, perhaps they can explain why being chummy with a Bush apologist congressman is more important than changing America. Politicians engaging in non-aggression pacts that promote their self-interest over a broader sense of mission is nothing new. But you would think that Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean (another doofus with a loser mentality who crows about being ‘right’ as if it’s some sugar-substitute for victory – and I am not talking about Iraq) and the party leadership could overcome such pathetic self-interest. Honestly, could you imagine Tom Delay ever allowing GOP members to shit-can an aggressive attack on a Democrat.

I used to think victory in both houses of Congress was the only way to disable Bushco, but after this cowardly debacle, maybe Democratic Party voters would be better off forging the equivalent of our own purple finger, the middle digit, fully extended, please–with our own slogan dumbed-up a notch for sissy-fighters like Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and the weak-kneed Democratic Congressional delegation: ‘Learn how to win, M***erf*****s!’