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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Republican Wackjob of the Day
Posted by Jill | 9:59 AM

And it's a tie!

Today's Republican Wackjob of the Day AwardTM
(a new feature here at Brilliant at Breakfast) is a tie between Oklahoma Republican Senate candidate, sometime abortionist and sterilizer of underage girls Tom Coburn and Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning.

Tom Coburn "warns of "rampant" lesbianism in some schools in the state in a tape released Monday by his Democratic opponent," sayeth the Miami Herald.

In the tape released by the campaign of Brad Carson, the Democratic candidate, Coburn says a campaign worker from Coalgate told him that "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"


I wonder how Coburn knows this? Maybe he's going around the state putting cameras in the girls' rooms?

Meanwhile, Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is losing it:

Over the past few months, Bunning has angrily pushed away reporters, exchanged testy words with a questioner at a Rotary Club and stuck to brief, heavily scripted remarks at campaign events, delivered in a halting monotone. The former major league baseball star now travels the Bluegrass State with a special police escort, at taxpayer expense. His explanation? Al-Qaida may be out to get him.

More substantively, the incumbent would agree to only one debate with his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo. And the rules Bunning negotiated were bizarrely rigid: The encounter could not be live; the taping has to occur in the afternoon, not the evening; no audience could be present in the studio; and, under threat of legal action, Mongiardo could not use any sound clips or video of Bunning's debate performance in campaign advertisements.

This apparent fear of the spontaneous has spurred rumors in Kentucky that Bunning, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is suffering from some sort of dementia, perhaps Alzheimer's. Bunning has declined to release his medical records. But until now, there was nothing hard to suggest that the one-term Republican senator was anything but a crotchety, occasionally confused, or arrogant old man.

[snip]

As newspaper editorials drew attention to Bunning's gaffes and strange behavior, the Republican began releasing a barrage of negative attacks on Mongiardo -- which seem to have backfired. In one ad, Bunning shows a luxury home and airplane that he implies belong to Mongiardo, whom the ad ridicules as a "Medicaid Millionaire" who gamed the federal healthcare program for the indigent. Problem is, the home and airplane didn't belong to the Democrat. And the ad neglected to mention that Mongiardo worked as a doctor in one of the poorest areas of Kentucky, where Medicaid is prevalent, and his billings were for more than a decade's worth of treating patients. Mongiardo deftly turned the attack back on Bunning, saying he was proud to have never turned away a patient just because he or she wasn't wealthy.


Now if Bunning, who happened to throw a no-hitter against the hapless New York Mets on Father's Day in 1964, a day which marks the beginning of my late, unlamented Mets fandom, is in fact in the early stages of some kind of senile dementia, it's not his fault, and he deserves compassion. However, if he's running for office and holding the fate of an entire state's population in his hands, then it's everyone's business, and he should step down.

Speculation and innuendo on George W. Bush's possible substance abuse relapse to come following Wednesday's debate.
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