The Great Election of ‘05

Or how Pat Robertson, Bill O’Reilly, and the NRA make beautiful music together

If there is one thing the Great Election of 2005 showed, it was that the right wing has traveled beyond desperate and is now in the realm of clinically insane.

The first thing you have to understand is that the Great Election of 2005 wasn’t a big deal. It’s what’s called “Off-off-year elections”, and in this case, it meant governor’s races in two of the fifty states, a handful of mayoral and city council elections, various other local elections in a handful of states, and a special election in California that Arnie wanted so he could circumvent the legislature in getting his policies for California foisted off on the people.

Normally, in such elections, most people don’t even know there’s an election, and many don’t even hear about it the next day. Turnouts for such usually run about 15-30%.

And that’s about what happened, except for California, where a somewhat startling 48% of the voters took the time and trouble to tell the governator what they thought of his governating. Not much, apparently. All eight ballot initiatives failed. None of them were even all that close.

But pundits, policy wonks and political soothsayers like to look at off-off elections and use it to divine how the elections in the next year, when all of the House and 1/3rd of the Senate is up for grabs might go. Usually the bellwether nature of these elections is equivalent to that of a broken magic ball which is stuck on “Reply hazy. Try again later.”

But this election, limited or not, was unusually decisive. Republicans basically got hammered everywhere there was an election. The only Republican to win a significant race was for mayor of New York, and that particular Republican, Michael Bloomberg, is also one of the two remaining liberals in the GOP. The only Democrat to lose was that ninny in Minnesota who endorsed Putsch last year. There wasn’t much in the way of consolation to be gained from those two races for the GOP.

Arnie got spanked hard, which led to an interesting sequel since Arnie is widely perceived as being tone deaf, politically. One would expect, when pasted, that a politician would rethink his position, and work to mend fences with the people who just handed him his ass on a platter. That’s just what Arnie did, going out and telling the state legislature that now he was ready to work with them. In the vernacular, that’s called “smart politics.”

The rest of the GOP was appalled, of course. They had no idea the Terminator was such a girly-man. Being manly men doing manly things, they simply emitted the usual howls and snarls and smears that had served them so well for so long.

Putsch was no help. He stood in front of a thousand cameras and a billion people and declared, “We do not torture,” a lie so bare-faced that some of his aides visibly winced. Apparently he has finally understood that politically, he is in deep, deep trouble and is leading the party to destruction, because on Veteran’s Day, he celebrated by questioning the patriotism of anyone who questioned the rationale for going to war in the first place. Way to support the troops there, Putsch!

The House realized they were in terrible shape, and first tried their tactic of giving back something they were trying to steal – in this case, ANWR, while in return being allowed to keep the rest of what they were trying to steal – in this instance, $57 billion in particularly savage cuts in services to the poor and needy. The following day, they realized this normally effective tactic wasn’t going to work, and had to do a humiliating climb-down. The “spending cut” plan was scrapped.

The people of Dover, Pennsylvania had a school board election, an event that normally would be a “who-cares” sort of phenomenon, even among most people in Dover. But in this case, the school board in question was that gaggle of religious loons who led Dover to its role as the center of the flat earth and scene of the second “monkey trial.” They threw the religious nuts out with a resounding thump and replaced them with people who understood that science didn’t involve teaching the kids in public schools that Adam and Eve rode to church on dinosaurs. The people of Dover apparently were tired of hearing jokes about how there was no intelligent design in Dover.

This, in turn, led Pat Robertson of the Church of Non Compos Mentis Deus to tell the good folk of Dover that if God brought plague, fire, pestilence or insurance salesmen down on them, they only had themselves to blame. (What he actually said was just as loony: “ [I]f there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there.”)

This just about cements Robertson getting the Reverend Phelps Lifetime Achievement Award for Interesting Theosophy. Just another Ridiculous Madman for Jesus, folks, nothing to see here, move along.

San Francisco had two initiatives on their city ballot that were of interest. One banned the possession or sale of handguns in the county and city of San Francisco. The other allowed the city’s high schools the option of telling military recruiters to take a hike. Both passed.

And the right lost its mind.

One gun nut on Usenet made his feelings known by posting the story of the initiative passed under the header, “89,636 San Francisco residents need to be killed.” The guy wasn’t, perhaps, as crazy as he sounded; he posted through an anonymous remailer. I’ve been having fun taunting the gun nuts, asking them when the NRA would file suit against SF for this obvious and blatant violation of the second amendment. [Hint: The United States has a long history of towns, cities, counties, and even entire states banning guns. While such bans are rarely effective – gun nuts don’t tend to be law-abiding – not one has ever been struck down as unconstitutional.] In the meantime, the gun nuts might consider that their cause would be better served if they didn’t demand the murder of everyone who disagreed with them.

As for the other initiative, Bill O’Reilly, host of the “Sit On It And Spin” show on Faux (or at least, something similar) was in high dudgeon. He all but BEGGED terrorists to strike San Francisco. His rationale – if that’s the word for it – was that if the voters wanted to kick the military out (his interpretation of stopping military recruiters from pestering the kids between classes) then they were, like the good folk in Dover, on their own. “You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”

Going by the type of logic O’Reilly was using (namely, that opposing having recruiters on high school campuses meant no military protection for you), then those who oppose sex education in the schools need to go down to their local veterinarians’ and get neutered.

Someone forgot to tell Bill that under the Patriot Act, talk like his is treason. Luckily for Bill, he’s too stupid and deranged to be taken seriously by anyone.

All of this is, of course, having an effect.

The latest Faux Poll, which, unsurprisingly, is friendly to Putsch, came out. His approval ratings dropped five points over the past two weeks, to 36%.

And the right are just going nuts.