Politics in Kentucky: Hollywood Dem battles DC Strongman…
Sen. Mitch McConnell is unpopular in Kentucky right now. No, he didn’t bore his constituents with almost thirteen hours of bloviating browbeating like the junior senator from that horsey state. Mitch doesn’t have the bladder or colon for that. But his track record is not great. After promising in 2010 that Obama wouldn’t have a second term, he led the GOP to defeat in 2012, marching like a lemming right behind Romney over that electoral cliff, and, with other GOP leaders, wielding the paintbrush that painted the GOP into a tight ideological corner where they’ll be hard-pressed to escape. Now, he’s teamed with Boehner to bring the government to its knees, this deadly duo obviously thinking that small government means no government.
The Kentucky electorate is strange. They support main Southern attractions like the Kentucky Derby in Lexington and the Creation Museum in Petersboro, the former where handsome thoroughbreds are shot if they pull up lame and the latter where Bible lovers can revisit their dinosaur-riding ancestors. Not quite Disneyworld attractions, but close enough for coal-mining country. If the mining magnates let them, some Kentuckians could afford to participate in those wonderful, awe-inspiring attractions and feel right at home with their brethren from next-door West Virginia. Good, hard-working people they are, and they expect their senators to be the same.
That’s McConnell’s problem. Those heavy jowls and beady eyes make him look more like a mine-owning fat cat than a coal miner. He looks like his physical labor is limited to lifting a knife and fork to a fatty T-bone or, when he’s dieting, to chopsticks at a DC downtown sushi bar. He doesn’t work for the people. Few GOP senators and representatives do, but he has assured his place in history as one of the leading sycophants to Washington lobbyists and special interests. Voters in Kentucky who bother to think about that—mostly Dems, of course—believe he has gone too far and ripe for an election loss.
But how do you depose a pariah? Enter Ashley Judd, stage left. She’s a much better actor than her sisters are singers. She does most of her own stunts and has starred in roles where she really has to kick some ass. McConnell’s makes a wide target. People across the land and throughout the world generally like her as an actor. I would assume Kentuckians would too, but you never know. She’s definitely more pleasing to the eye than Mr. Jowls. She’s also better spoken than the bumbling butterball. In fact, she’s more qualified than either of the present senators because both of them are drowning in their own ideology—McConnell’s is small government, Paul’s is Libertarian voodoo economics, and both want big government to become no government.
I’m biased, but the negatives laid on Judd by the media for me are positives. She’s a feminist. McConnell (and Paul as well, but he’s not her competition) are misogynists. She supported Obama (but let’s face it—recent events have shown that he was just the lesser of two evils, as usual). McConnell’s goal was to destroy Obama politically. She’s fought and won her bout with depression. He’s an ideologue and an arrogant sociopath relative to the middle class, who is just plain depressing. She’s an actor who’s played the heroine, but she has no political experience. He’s a failed lawyer who’s played the roles of both court jester and villain, and he has so much political experience that he’s presently the minority leader in the Senate.
I hope Ashley runs in Kentucky. I don’t have high hopes that she’ll win because I don’t think the state of Kentucky has enough enlightened voters, but who knows? After all, isn’t that why Rand Paul moved there? But I do hope that she gives old beady-eyed Mr. Jowls a run for his money. He deserves a punch to the gut and uppercut or two, if only metaphorically. (Of course, Ashley could give him that physically too, and he deserves it). If she enters the race, I can just see the old bulldog start slinging the dirt, with the help of Fox News, the Koch brothers, and all the other ultra-conservatives that have retreated into their ideological corner but are still seething from Obama’s election win (in fact, the mudslinging has already started—is the GOP worried). Ashley had better be ready to return fire.
I’m sure Mr. Jowls has many skeletons in his closet. He’s vulnerable, if only from the fact that too many people are just tired of him. He’s a good argument for term limits in the Senate—just maybe Ashley can apply one electorally and send him to a well deserved retirement.
And so it goes….
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