A Note on Family Values in Michigan

Yeah, that’s going to happen:

Two Michigan lawmakers who were forced from office over an extramarital affair and a convoluted cover-up scheme lost longshot bids Tuesday to win back their seats.

Tea party leaders Todd Courser, who resigned rather than be expelled, and Cindy Gamrat, who was kicked out, sought the Republican nominations in special primary elections, which came less than two months after their Sept. 11 ouster.

(Eggert)

The report from Associated Press also notes the tally; Mr. Courser, who failed to mastermind a scheme to discredit himself with a false story involving a nonexistent gay prostitute and a Lansing nightclub, drew four percent of the vote. That is to say, four hundred fifteen voters in Michigan wanted to send his hypocritical, lying family values back to the legislature. Mrs. Gamrat, by comparison, got nine percent in her district; nine hundred twelve voters want to reward her adulterous family values.

To the other, it’s not a fair indictment of family values in Michigan. Some values voters in those districts got the hint. And, besides, there are plenty of other reasons to indict values voters in Michigan; staining the lot of them with these two disgraces unto God and humanity alike is just piling on.

David Eggert continues his AP report:

“I told the voters they should have the opportunity to decide,” Courser told WWJ-AM. He said he could not overcome the “political headwinds,” which “were unlike anything I’d ever experienced.”

An emotional Gamrat told reporters that regardless of what voters heard or believed, “I worked really hard for them when I was there” in Lansing. “It was a tremendous honor to serve. … My infidelity was wrong, but I don’t think it warranted and merited the maligning of my character that I had on me and my family day after day in the news.”

It really is hard to feel sorry for someone who feels her character is maligned by her own awful hypocrisy. Look, ordinarily adultery is left to the people doing it. I really don’t care if Mr. Courser or Mrs. Gamrat cheat on their spouses. I really don’t care, except perhaps in that abstract way that such things aren’t healthy for the society, if these family-values Christians betray their children.

Except that’s the thing. They are family-values Christians who have denigrated and maligned many along the way in their quest to harm others in Jesus’ name. So, yes, Mrs. Gamrat would wisely better bet her critics are enjoying the hell out of themselves watching her flail cluelessly.

That she and her Mr. Courser are disgraces unto God is between them and God, except for the fact that they made it between them and the rest of Michigan and the nation, as well.

And then they decided to go and give it another try.

Mrs. Gamrat, especially, would be wise to remember that every time she tries to play herself off as some sort of victim someone, somewhere will haul out this pillory. And, really, the adultery wouldn’t matter to some of us at all, except that they asked it should.

____________________

Eggert, David. “2 disgraced Michigan lawmakers lose bids to win old seats”. Daily Camera. 4 November 2015.

A Clown Car Presentation: Insurevirentaderble

Never read too much into any one poll, but the lede from Associated Press is nonetheless troubling:

Republican voters view Donald Trump as their strongest general election candidate, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that highlights the sharp contrast between the party’s voters and its top professionals regarding the billionaire businessman’s ultimate political strength.

But wait, there’s more:

Seven in 10 Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say Trump could win in November 2016 if he is nominated, and that’s the most who say so of any candidate. By comparison, 6 in 10 say the same for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who, like Trump, has tapped into the powerful wave of antiestablishment anger defining the early phases of the 2016 contest.

And then there is the reality check: “Trump and Carson are considered among the least electable general election candidates by the Republican Party’s professionals, those who are in the business of helping candidates run campaigns and win elections”, explain Steve Peoples and Emily Swanson, and in truth one need not be a political professional to figure that out. Still, though, how superstitious do we really wish to be?

A Thought or Three About Thad

Before the conventional wisdom gets too confused—which, of course, requires presupposing that it has not already shown itself befuddled beyond function—it would behoove us to recall that there is nothing new, here insofar as some, when presented with bad choices, play chess instead of checkers. And in considering Mississippi, well, what, really, does anyone expect?

Last week, in a bit of a surprise, incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran survived a Republican primary runoff in Mississippi, thanks in large part to an unexpected group of supporters: African-American voters. Though many are Democrats, many in Mississippi’s black community saw Cochran’s right-wing rival as far more offensive.

Soon after the dust settled, many of those responsible for rescuing Cochran’s career, preventing him from suffering a humiliating defeat, had an idea on how the senator can return the favor: it was time for Cochran to support the Voting Rights Amendment Act, a bill to repair the civil-rights law gutted last year by conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court.

By some measures, the request seemed fairly modest. After all, Cochran had supported the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act quite recently. All his new-found African-American allies were seeking is support for a law the senator has already backed in the recent past.

It looks like Cochran’s rescuers may need to think of some other way for him to pay his debt.

(Benen)

It would seem the problem is that the Republican senator’s spokesman has shown himself insufficiently enthusiastic, which, in many cases, does not actually signify anything. The problem is that if Cochran is to deliver on any obligations to the Democratic voters who helped quash the McDaniel campaign^†, he will have to negotiate treacherous, shallow waters under stormy skies; regardless of whether the long arc of history bends toward Justice, the politics of a Southern white Republican bucking the Party in order to support minority voting rights would seem complicated insofar as having pulled off a spectacular feat of politics the Cochran staff must now try to plot a course to there from here. At the very least, we can expect this will take a little while, so perhaps it is unfair to expect the senator’s spokesman to know exactly what to say. These treacherous waters are also exceptionally unfamiliar to conservatives in the South.

Perhaps, then, Benen’s concerns are stated in too immediate a context. That is to say, it is not so much that he overstates a problem, but, rather, that in focusing on points like, “as of this morning, the Voting Rights Amendment Act still has zero co-sponsors”, we might accidentally undertake a myopic endeavor. The challenge would seem to be to keep pressure on Sen. Cochran to step up and make the policy change. And it might well be useful if that pressure is constructive. Cochran has dug himself something of a hole; refusing to pay this modest moral obligation has potential including the agitation and augmentation of the apparent racial divide in Southern politics. To the other, if the seventy-six year-old Mississippian son of educators can navigate the hazards and swing his policy argument in favor of the VRAA, he might well also open a route for dialogue toward reconciliation between the GOP establishment and black voters.

It is hardly the steepest of prices, but the need is immediate. Cochran just spent a lot of political capital on credit, and the lenders really, really need him to pay this back. And quickly.

And the professional hands know what to do, how to keep the heat up. Not only is the VRAA a big deal for those in need of its help, but this could lead to something even bigger for Republicans, minorities, and the nation in general. That potential return on investment simply reiterates the need for Sen. Cochran to put his hand to the helm, lash his courage to the mast, and find a way through the proverbial storm a-brewin’.

____________________

^† Jamelle Bouie dissects the obvious: “Black voters had to choose between the man they knew—a relative moderate who deals in earmarks and largess—and a new man. If you know anything about Chris McDaniel, this wasn’t a hard choice.”

Benen, Steve. “Cochran already rebuffing those who rescued him”. msnbc. 30 June 2014.

Bouie, Jamelle. “Why Mississippi’s Black Democrats Saved an Elderly White Republican”. Slate. 25 June 2014.