Sometimes it seems like you can't catch a break as a Progressive. We get rid of Eric Cantor, but instead of doing a happy dance, we instead have to dread his seat being occupied by someone even more intransigent and obstructionist than he is, this tea party scion Dave Brat. But what to do? I mean VA-7 is gerrymandered to within an inch of its life to be a safe GOP seat, so the Republican primary is nearly the same thing as the general election. The key word here, however, is "nearly" as a wise politician once noted "even the safest candidate can lose if he is caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy".
In the modern era, even that is nor necessary. One or two truly stupid public comments and the 24 hour cable news cycle can often do the trick. Look art Todd Akin or Christine O'Donnell orSharon Angle
And Friends, if there is one thing I am certain of in this world, it's that a Tea Party devotee l
Like brat has said some TRULY stupid and outrageous things in his life, and like The North, The Internet remembers. All we have to do is find it. But we've got to hurry as Brat know this too. Case in point: campaign manager's Facebook page was MUCH more in testing a few day ago
Back then he was a pro-secessionist, who believed that you couldn't possibly be for woman's right to terminate her pregnancy and somehow also feel that Trayvon ZMartin was murdered.
And that's just HIS CAMPAIGN manager. Imagine what we will find if we REALLY start looking at David Brat. We already know he is that special kind of crazy that lets him maintain the cognitive dissonance sufficient to simultaneously believe he can be a "Libertarian" and a "social Conservative". He's also been completely "unvetted" by the GOP establishment, so they are many many rocks left unturned in his past. If we start doing the "deep dive" into things he has published, said online in forums, tweeted, said in class, etc, I will be VERY interesting to see what we uncover, and see if even VA 7 is comfortable sending this man to Congress.
This has worked before. My state had the honor of having Sen Jim Webb for a term thanks to an intrepid Kos contributor and his video camera drawing out George Allen's "Maccaca" moment we all knew was in him. To those who object to this as dirty politics, my response is twofold. Unlike Newt Gingrich, I do not consider using a candidate's own words in context against them as "dirty" in any way, shape or form.
And if you disagree, let me simply pose the same question Machiavelli once did. If a virtuous man refuses to do evil , and thereby allows evil men to take power, can he truly call himself virtuous?