Browsing the orange links this morning, I'm morbidly impressed with the scope of Republican efforts to keep people from voting in this year's election.
ID laws. Reduced voting hours and days. "Geography tests" in North Carolina. "Voter fraud" scare flyers in Kentucky. Goon squads in Florida. Koch flyers with the wrong election date.
"Win ugly" indeed. Only, when it reaches this level of ugliness, it's not even winning. It's...
It's like the US figure skating championships 20 years ago. Competition was intense between the two favorites, both very talented skaters bound for the Olympics.
One of those skaters wanted to win too badly. Her team stepped over a line. Since then, nothing she has accomplished has been untainted and, however long she lives or much she does, the first sentence of her obituary is already written.
So it is now with the Republican party, a once-great competitor boasting of championships and medals. Every "victory" they boast will be tainted, asterisked. Like the unreconstructed adolescent from the 1994 skating championships, they'll ignore it, deny it, pat themselves on the back at what they believe are deserved triumphs.
But true fans of the sport will ever avert their eyes and whisper behind their hands, "But they had to cheat."
Republicans have become the Tonya Harding of politics.