The RNC's Not Ready for Prime Time Players
By David Glenn Cox
Never let it be said that high political office can be bought in America. What should be said is that high political office cannot be bought by stupid people. This latest crop of too wealthy, too ambitious and too dumb Republicans have set records for spending huge amounts of cash in search of fiscally conservative government.
I'll start with Meg Whitman just because she is so frigging easy. Her candidacy was doomed from the start by her own candidacy. She reminds me of the episode Simpsons when Mr. Burns ran for governor.
ADVISER
Now, here's the problem as I see it. While Governor Bailey is beloved by all, ninety-eight percent of the voters rate you as despicable or worse. That's why we've assembled the finest campaign team money can buy. (indicating his team) This is your speech writer, your joke writer, your spin doctor, make-up man and personal trainer. Their job, to turn this Mr. Burns... (shows a normal portrait of Burns) into this... (shows a picture of Burns in a heroic position).
BURNS
Why are my teeth showing like that?
ADVISOR
Because you're smiling!
BURNS
Ah, excellent! This is exactly the kind of trickery I'm paying you for. B-but how do we turn your average Joe Six-pack against Mary Bailey?
Meg has this uncomfortable smile, like a Real Estate agent showing a million dollar condo to a wino. Her tenure as CEO earned her the reputation as a bully and not prone to take advice. My father was a Golden Gloves boxer and he used to say, "When the champ starts training himself the champ is going to lose."
Meg started her TV ad campaign early in the race and continued with ever increasing frequency right up to election day. I once had a customer named Earl, and Earl would talk to a customer about buying a set of tires and finally the customer would agree. Then Earl would keep on talking until he unsold a set of tires. By election day people were so tired of the Whitman ads that she unsold herself.
As I watched Whitman's performance at the women's forum I thought, "oh, that's what they mean by a deer in the headlights look." Meg would be asked a question and her face would go blank. Then as if she had memorized all the answers in a crazy eight ball she would answer, "yes or no, can't say right now, ask again later." I began to laugh because it reminded me of what Meg had told a fellow executive when she said that E-Bay was so simple to run that a chimp could do it. That would certainly explain her debate performance and I wondered what would have happened if someone had thrown a banana on the stage?
Her opponent former Governor Jerry Brown offered to do away with all negative campaign ads if Whitman's camp would do the same. This wasn't a political gotcha question Brown offered to give her twenty four hours to think about it. Meg quick on the draw followed the motto, "never put off for tomorrow what you can screw up today." She then went on to explain to the audience the educational value of negative campaign ads.
This venue was a women's forum, the audience was made up primarily of women and Meg was to only women on stage and Meg managed to get booed.
Franklin Roosevelt once said, "never talk of a rope in the house of a man whose been hanged." Meg apparently hadn't ever heard that one as she campaigned in favor of deporting illegal aliens. It didn't take long before it was discovered that Meg's house keeper for nine years was an illegal alien and what's more Meg knew it. First Meg said she didn't know about it. Then when the paperwork showed that she had been notified she blamed her husband. Finally, she campaigned that the house keeper should be deported.
BURNS
Oh, don't worry. By the time this paid political announcement is done, every Johnny Lunchpail in this whole stupid state will be eating out of my hands. (realizes the camera is on) Oh, hello, friends. I'm Montgomery Burns, your next governor,
Then there was Meg's plan for restoring California's prosperity, it was simple enough Meg insisted, simply fire 40,000 state workers in a state with 25 percent unemployment. Then do away with the capital gains taxes for millionaires and former Ceo's of E-bay. Even if each fired state employee had earned $100,000 per year that's only a savings of forty million dollars. Eliminating the capital gains tax would have cost the state between three and eleven billion dollars per year.
BURNS
Homer, I agree with you and if I'm elected governor, I will lower taxes whether those bureaucrats in the state capital like it or not!
Then there was Meg's promise to bring jobs to California, then she had her TV campaign ads made in Virginia. Now I don't claim to be an expert on all aspects of California's economy but rumors are rife that California has a well established film industry.
BURNS
Ooh, a tough question but a fair one. Lisa, there's no single answer. Some voters respond to my integrity, others are more impressed with my incorruptibility. (Lisa leaves the table) Still others buy my determination to lower taxes. And the bureaucrats in the state capital can put that in their pipes and smoke it!
To call Whitman's campaign a comedy of errors is an understatement because it was fatally flawed by the candidate herself. She tried early on to avoid the press and to make only planned remarks but in a state campaign that's almost impossible.
To paraphrase Churchill. "Never in the field of political conflict has so much been spent, by so few, on so little, for absolutely nothing!
The blame for the Christine O'Donnell campaign in my mind at least, lies with Tina Fey. Fey made it look so simple to imitate Sarah Palin. O'Donnell wears the same clothes as Palin and does her hair like Sarah Palin. She even lies about her resume' like Sarah Palin!
O'Donnell attended attended Fairleigh Dickinson University where she initially majored in theater. She did not receive a degree until 2010 but in 2003 the University sued her for an unpaid $4,800 debt. In 2005 she implied that she was working on her Master Degree from Princeton University. Princeton claimed to have never heard of her. It must have been that other Princeton University, the Princeton University of barbering and cosmetology.
Then she claimed that she had studied at Oxford University as it turned out she took a class from a company that rented space at Oxford University. Sort of like saying you studied at the Vatican. Vatican storage and truck rental where the first month is always free! Her LinkedIn profile claims that she had studied Constitutional Government at Claremont Graduate University. Once again, Claremont Graduate University has never heard of her.
She is one of these poor souls whose lives are filled with error and according to O'Donnell they are always other people errors. When asked about the profile O'Donnell answered, "I never established a LinkedIn profile or authorized anyone to do so on my behalf." Don't you just hate that! When people create accounts to embellish your record without your knowledge. I'm sure that happens all the time.
In 2003 she went to work for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a non-profit conservative publisher of educational materials. The group publishes a Bible related philosophy and in 2004 O'Donnell sued ISI for gender discrimination. She claimed she had been demoted because the conservative philosophy of ISI dictated that women should be subordinated to men. In 2005 after she was fired from ISI and sued again claiming wrongful termination.
In the fall of 2007 she fell behind in her house payments and the mortgage company was about to foreclose when she sold the house to her campaign attorney who just happened to be her boy friend at the time. In 2010 the IRS filed a lien for back taxes extending back to 2005 and O'Donnell's explanation? That it was a mistake and a computer error, just one of the many errors made by others that haunt this poor woman.
Her 2008 campaign left her $23,000 in debt and suppliers and staff got the old fiscal conservative shaft. She was cited eight times by the Federal Elections commission for not filing campaign reports on time. The head of the Delaware state Republican Party claimed, "She’s a candidate who runs for office that unfortunately lives off the proceeds." In March of this year a report from "The News Journal" cited her financial difficulties O'Donnell again explained it all away as "misunderstandings and errors" and further went on to state, "the attacks on her finances were an insult to Delaware voters."
The real problem is that O'Donnell is so pathetically inept that it is hard to make satire from it. She began her campaign for the Senate by attacking "reckless government spending." Pot, meet Kettle, "say did you know that you were black?"
I've stayed away from O'Donnell's remarks about witchcraft and masturbation because being a nut is no reason to disqualify someone from running for high office. After all this country elected Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan twice! In O'Donnell's case it isn't that she just a nut, she's an incompetent nut. She can't handle a checkbook, she can't handle a campaign so she certainly couldn't handle the job as Senator. Her primary qualification is her ability to parrot Sarah Plain but frankly, Tina Fey did a better job of it but still wasn't quite as funny as Christine O'Donnell.