Karin Housley won the GOP primary to challenge Democrat Tina Smith in the second senate race for Minnesota. Although this will be Smith’s first senate election (she was appointed to the seat following Al Franken’s resignation), she has a number of advantages over Housley: this is a blue state, Smith is the incumbent, and Housley is a horrible person.
From 2004 to 2009, Housley wrote a weekly column called “On Riverside Drive” for the Twin Cities suburb-based Sun Newspapers’ Valley Life. It was labelled a “humor column” but there’s nothing humorous about Housley’s nastiness.
Typical of her malicious mockery was a 2008 effort entitled “Will the real candidate please stand up” (ironic given that, 10 years later, her own candidacy is 50 shades paler than those she was mocking in 2008). In the week before the general election, Housley decided to share with her readers a political party game she’d devised featuring the two most prominent politicians that year: Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.
She begins:
Every election year, my friend Diane and I get together for our big election debate. she brings her candidate’s signs and stances on the issues and I bring mine.
Sounds harmless enough so far. She goes on to say they had an audience that year when they decided, for reasons unexplained, to hold their debate at a dinner party. The game, she writes, goes like this:
...get your costumes first.
[...]
For Senator McCain, you need to do the obvious first, and that’s break your arms and shoulders, and if you can’t do that, put some cotton in your cheeks.
Yep, you read that right: she’s mocking John McCain’s six years of torture in the Hanoi Hilton and in case you missed that reference the first time around, she repeats it:
If you’re Senator McCain, and you’ve already broken your shoulders and arms for the role, your gestures will come naturally, but be sure to force a smile, and say “My friends” at least twice while stating your position. This is how you do it in enemy territory.
In the Minnesotan City Pages, Hannah Jones wrote:
Housley didn’t respond to interview requests, so it’s impossible to say what, exactly, she thought was funny about McCain’s injuries, which he says he sustained when one of his captors demolished his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and beat him unconscious for information.
A GOP senate candidate refusing an interview? Perhaps Housley noted that Jones’ request came just 5 days after John McCain’s death and that wouldn’t look good for her — I think we can take it as read that her refusal was not out of respect for John McCain. In that she shares an infinity with Trump who infamously mocked a journalist’s disability.
Jones did a little more digging and easily found other examples of Housley’s insensitivity which, unsurprisingly, included sexism and bigotry. She rounded off the list with a more recent example.
Most recently, after the news broke about the murder of Iowan college student Mollie Tibbetts, her first comments were condolences to her suffering family. The next were these:
“This was a preventable tragedy that happened because liberal Democrats and open border advocates are more concerned about protecting criminal aliens than protecting innocent lives.”
If there is something that unifies Housley’s diffuse comments, it’s their overwhelming cheapness. It costs her nothing to blame Mollie’s death on immigrants, or to make fun of McCain’s broken bones. Like all low-hanging fruit, it’s merely convenient. And tasteless.
Karin Housley, the quintessential republican candidate: callous, cruel and tasteless. All she’s missing in her GOP character résumé is “criminal” though I wouldn’t put that past her either.