It's time once again for the biennial contest between the two wings of the business party, and it looks like this could easily be the nastiest election since...the last one. As I mentioned in my rant in issue two, we are caught in an endless cycle between the ineffectual reformers and the shameless whores for big business. Get sick of one, you can try the other. Of course, there's plenty of corporate prostitution in the party of the reformers, too, but some of them actually seem to be ashamed of themselves when caught.In most elections-certainly in every presidential election since I came of age-I'm insulted by having to choose between the two candidates offered by the business party. And certainly we are in for a fairly bleak couple of years in terms of reforms that are not ineffectual, no matter the final division of spoils in the Congress.
Even if the business whores fall short of an actual majority in either house (which is by no means certain at this writing), they can still forge a coalition with enough Dixiecrats to stymie any efforts at righting the mess they left behind after their twelve years in power (six of them controlling the Senate).
So the normal stress of publishing my paper is layered in with a pervasive angst over the outcome of next Tuesday's balloting. As Ann Telnaes' cover cartoon points out, there are some awfully toxic people waiting in the wings if the ineffectual reformers should lose their grip. My fellow Arizonans seem poised to send one of them to the Senate, which would give us the distinction of having two of the most extreme rightwingers in the entire Millionaire's Club.
As the hour of doom approaches, I have to think not only of my adopted home state, but of my original jurisdiction, the Golden State, which seems poised to re-elect another smarmy weasel as governor, but may yet recoil at sending a vacuous oil millionaire to the Senate.
You natives of the Grand Canyon State have given the nation some relatively decent politicians from time to time. I can think of two tall craggy-faced gentlemen, both of whom were trounced in their efforts to become the standard-bearer of the ineffectual reformers. And you have voted some pretty incredible weasels into office yourself. But, I'm sorry, you can't hold a candle to my birthstate, which has given the nation some of the most amazingly surreal politicians ever to belly up to the trough, and damned few of the relatively decent ones.
Decency in politics is always a relative thing, since even the purest of office-seekers will inevitably be compromised to some extent by the system. It's also a fairly rare commodity, since most decent folks tend to steer away from a career in electoral politics. For that reason, my strategy has always been to identify the most dangerous politician in the race, and vote against him or her.
Once again, you folks here in my adopted home state have managed to further the careers of some relatively decent politicians, at least one of whom seems poised to win. I'm sure you can identify the ones I'm talking about by patronizing some of my friendly competitors in the newsprint business. But, as I mentioned, it's the other side of the coin which concerns me most. There are, in particular, two candidates on your ballot who are odious enough to be identified by name.
Thus, the Tucson Comic News anti-endorses Jon Kyl and Fife Symington. If you do nothing else on November 8th, I urge you to roll out of bed and go punch a hole next the name of someone other than one of these travesties. If, while you're at it, you manage to find someone to vote for, great. If you can make sense of all them propositions, more power to ya. If you can figure out how to retire our gun-totin', beer-guzzlin', woman-beatin' Official Weirdest Tucsonan of the year, hey, I'm with you.
But there's nothing on the ballot more important than exercising your franchise to vote against Kyl and Symington. They represent the two dominant trends of the party of the shameless pro-business whores. The Governor specializes in its morally bankrupt economic theories, while the Senatorial hopeful seems more concerned with the so-called "social" issues. So you have the worst of both worlds; Fife has his snoot in your wallet, and Kyl has his in your bedroom.
The Fifester is trying to take credit for being in office while the business cycle makes a modest recovery from the excesses of the last reign of the whores. He plays a shell game with your taxes, but the agenda is the same as it ever was: rob from the poor, give to the rich. Re-elect him, and we may be able to run my adopted home state into the ground almost as far as my birthstate.
Kyl has done a fairly good job, or as good as he needs to, of hiding his extremism. But make no mistake about it; he is an enemy of family planning rights, of tolerance, and of civil rights, he will ally himself with the most extreme elements in our national power structure, and make this world a meaner place.
Worst of all, he puts us all one Senate seat closer to the specter of the mean-spirited, one-armed guy from the Sunflower State running the Millionaire's Club, perhaps with that coke-dealin', lyin' megalomaniac zombie from the Old Dominion coming in for his rookie year.
Do us all a favor. Vote. In self-defense.