I have little or so use for the Republican Party’s latest blonde.
Unlike Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, though, Georgia’s Kelly Loeffler was appointed to the state to fill a vacancy in December 2019 when Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned for health reasons. I’m not going to go into her issues or ever talk about why I’m not voting for her.
I have actually voted for a Republican for Senate before — in California. In 1998, when I was writing a newspaper column, I suggested that we needed to stop voting for candidates who lied about their opponents. I voted for Barbara Boxer in 1992 and again in 2004, but for some reason, she lied about her opponent’s stance on abortion rights in 1998.
Republican Matt Fong was pro-choice, but Boxer went after him by claiming a vote for Fong would be a vote to support Newt Gingrich’s anti-abortion agenda.
Well, Loeffler hasn’t done that, but in some ways her current campaign is even worse. I received a Republican mailer this week asking me to vote for her.
Why should I?
Two reasons.
To “SAVE THE SENATE.”
To “SAVE AMERICA.”
All that from one senator?
Well, there’s the other side of the mailer.
After all, Loeffler’s reasons might be a little exaggerated. Can electing one woman really SAVE AMERICA?
Maybe not this one, so the other side of the mailer pretty much says electing her opponent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, would be the equivalent of handing the keys to the country to ISIS.
That’s politics these days, and with the Supreme Court’s horrible Citizens United ruling a few years back, the money spent on campaigns is completely out of control. Forty years ago, it was considered scandalous that it might cost a candidate $1 million to finance a Senate race in a large state.
In the campaign just ended next door in South Carolina, Jaime Harrison spent more than $130 million in an effort to oust Lindsey Graham. Graham spent more than $100 million. South Carolina is not a large state.
It’ll get worse fast. Some estimates say that a billion dollars could be spent here in Georgia on the two runoffs that will decide control of the Senate.
And with such ridiculous amounts of money being spent, we are overwhelmed with all sorts of ridiculous advertising.
Sadly, we get the government we deserve.