| When we've talked about Congress the last year or so, we've typically talked about districts downstate. Oh, we got a bit into the 3rd District during the primary season, and we pondered how terrible is Mark Brewer's recruiting efforts when he couldn't field a candidate against Tim Walberg. Flying entirely under the radar has been our district to the North, which Democrats lost in 2010 to the Teabaggin' Surgeon Danger Dan Benishek, and which this year represents the most likely pickup opportunity for Democrats in the state. How "most likely"? As of last hearing, Democrat Gary McDowell was up a few points in polls. Keep in mind that these are real polls, not those fake polls that Republicans have increasingly resorted to because the other polls tell them things they don't want to hear. Anywhoo, But Benishek aimed to fully embrace the conservative ideal.And now after two years in office, he finds himself in an unusual predicament, a politician taking heat for staying true to his campaign rhetoric rather than failing to do so. Whether he wins a second term will offer clues about how well the less-government-is-better philosophy actually plays out in the countryside and small towns where the staunchly conservative movement has flourished.
This isn't the entire story, by the way. The rose came off the bloom of the teabagger rose shortly after Benishek took office, and tried charting a course between their very narrow ideology and a more pragmatic center line that required compromise (which, as we know with the teabagger set, is akin to when Benedict Arnold selling the keys to the Apollo moon lander to Goldfinger, which is why we lost the war with Mexico). That is, Benishek hasn't always been as rigidly ideological as this article makes it out, but whatever willingness he's had to be flexible has caused his relationship with his most likely supporters to fray somewhat, although I assume that by the time the election rolls around they'll forget all about that and cast votes for him with all the misfiring energy of the teabagger set (mostly because they appear to believe that channeling a lot of anger into your ballot somehow makes it equal to two votes by your typical latte-sipping liberal), because, dude ... Obama. |
