Posted on 07/26/2007 9:30:11 AM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The latest wrinkle in the recovery of Tim Johnson is his still-to-be-determined return to the Senate after a debilitating brain hemorrhage -- and the complications of it for South Dakota Republicans who are considering challenging him.
Two Republicans, Joel Dykstra and Sam Kephart, have declared their intent to challenge him, but many consider GOP Gov. Mike Rounds the most formidable opponent. And even Johnson's declared challengers carefully avoid any comments slighting the recovering senator.
In his absence this year, surrogates offer plenty of projections about when he will make his comeback. But their scenarios add to the uncertainty -- even for Democrats who might eye the seat.
In a lengthy interview last week, Johnson's wife, Barbara, told the Rapid City Journal that her husband remains committed to returning to the Senate, but she shied away from announcing whether the Democrat plans to run for reelection in 2008.
Barbara Johnson acknowledged in the interview that his recovery has been difficult and that his speech remains noticeably slow.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Too often our party fails to campaign as it should, we shake with terror that the media will label us “mean spirited.” Probably one of the most brilliant recent campaigns against an incumbent Senator that “was not supposed to lose” was Saxby Chambliss against Max Cleland in 2002. Cleland, of course, was supposed to be the highly respected cripple, and someone that no one dare challenge. Problem was, Cleland had a few issues that made him a liability in the Senate, #1, his health (rarely mentioned was that the Senator suffered from serious problems related to an inability to sleep properly, and for those of us who’ve experienced such problems at some point, your judgment can be in serious question when you suffer from severe fatigue), the other, and quite probably related to the first part, was that his record was moonbat and wholly not in line with the majority viewpoint of Georgians.
Chambliss ran an unapologetic campaign charging Cleland (and rightly so) with being weak on national defense issues (almost raising the rodent line of “How dare you question MY patriotism !”), and he walloped Cleland by 7%. The rodents predictably howled that he had “played dirty” to win and vowed revenge.
What needs to be done in SD is something simple. Just state the facts, run ads saying, “South Dakota needs 2 Senators.” Cut to a shot of an empty hospital bed with monitors all around it. “Late last year, our Senior Senator was stricken with a severe stroke and he has not been back to work since.”
Go around the state with a film crew and ask folks on the street what a seriously incapacitated Senator should do — hang on to his seat (for which he cannot do the job) or go home and spend time with his family recuperating. Say, “we thank the Senator for his 21 years of service, but at a time of an evenly divided Senate, in a time of war, international terrorism, illegal invasion, every vote matters, and our Senator is too ill to be able to cast a vote. His staff can run his office, but they can’t vote for him. We need someone who can devote their full attention to these issues today. We can’t afford to take the risk with someone who will say, maybe I’ll be able to tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next month... because it may not ever come. South Dakota is a small state, and it needs all 3 of its representatives working for it.” The GOP can run these ads without even mentioning Johnson’s liberal record.
The fact that Johnson can’t cast a vote, any vote, on any issue, ought to be of paramount concern to the voters of the state.
You know, you don't even have to take it there. Johnson is a Democrat in a Republican state. Had he not had his stroke then he'd still be number one or number two on the list of most endangered incumbents. So run as if the stroke never happened. Run on his record, tie him in with Pelosi and Reid, highlight his liberal leanings, and let the voters take it from there. People are already aware of the health issue, and enough can be done low-key to ensure that people don't forget about it, but if you make his health a major issue then it could backfire. There is, or at least there should be, more than enough to beat him with without bringing the stroke into it at all.
Constitution you say...HA...I thought senators per the constitution we’re to be selected instead of elected? That’s obviously been amended a bit. If an elected senator is unfit to represent his/her state...shouldn’t the governor and legislators of that state have the ability to rectify the problem?
Johnson could still be comatose for all we know. No photos and no interviews that I remember.
They tried that tack against him in ‘02, and it came up short... although, it was pretty much obvious voter fraud on the Indian Reservations stole Johnson a second term. I say try the health thing first, remind the voters, and then proceed with the issues, if necessary. The worst that can happen is that we lose, Johnson dies before long, and Rounds ends up in the seat, anyway.
Senators, per the Constitution, were supposed to be elected by the state legislatures. They never had any more power to remove Senators then they do now (can only be done through expulsion from the body in which they’re serving). But usually honor-bound to follow the instructions of the legislature, if they wished to vote a different way, they would step down before their terms expired and allow them to vote for a Senator who would the way the legislature preferred.
Of course, sometimes they’d refuse to do so (a good example of what happened in the South during Reconstruction with Republicans elected by the briefly-controlled multiracial GOP bodies that still hung on after the extremely and violently hostile Democrats seized back control of those states one by one — one Senator that comes to mind is that of poor MS Black Republican Blanche Bruce. Before he was two years into his term, the Dems seized control of the state, and he couldn’t even return back to his state to visit with his constituents for fear of getting killed, but he stuck it out the 6 years until his term expired and he remained in DC until his death. It would be 108 years after he left office until another Republican took his seat — a fella named Trent Lott).
Neither one of us knows the state so neither one of us can really know which tack will work the best. But I think that we can both agree that regardless of the strategy the GOP needs to enter into this to win. No pussy-footing aroung, take the bull by the horns, get a candidate in there who can beat Johnson, and go on the offensive. Devote money from the national party to the contest, make sure they're funded from the get-go, and take the seat. There aren't a whole lot of other ones that are as vulnerable, and if we lose this to Johnson or any other Dem then we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Well, yeah. By the 17th one.
If an elected senator is unfit to represent his/her state...shouldn’t the governor and legislators of that state have the ability to rectify the problem?
Perhaps. But they don't.
I’m familiar enough with SD, at least their dynamics, although even knowing that is no guarantee of success with respect to campaigns. The biggest problem we have right now is that Rounds is a no-go for the seat. We have a 2nd or 3rd tier (depending on how you view it) candidate with State Rep. Joel Dykstra (think along the lines of a candidate who would ordinarily end up with maybe 30-35% of the vote in a general). If the Republicans won’t even step up, how will we be able to win ? Rounds doesn’t even have anything to risk by running next year. His term doesn’t expire until 2011.
We’ve got the same problem with 2 high profile Republicans in North Dakota (ex-Gov. Ed Schafer and Gov. John Hoeven) that refuse to run for any of the federal offices. ND hasn’t elected a Republican to the House seat in 30 years come 2008, and to the one Senate seat since 1980 (and the other, 1958 (!)). ND is back to being a solid Republican state after being marginal if not mildly ‘Rat for years (from the early ‘60s until about 1992) with the Socialist Non-Partisan league abandoning the GOP a half-century ago to merge with the Democrats there. Absolutely no excuse for the troika of Conrad-Dorgan-Pomeroy (successful statewide rodents of the past before the rise of Schafer) to be holding those seats in a deathgrip. Only 3rd tier candidates have run against these guys in recent years.
Then again maybe this is a safe guard...kinda like the 60 vote threshold we all wanted changed...however, today we're glad it's still there. ;o)
Remember Strom’s death watch back when SC had a rodent Governor from ‘99 to ‘03 ? All the media clamoring to get us to talk him into stepping down and allowing the Gov to appoint someone himself ? To their chagrin, ole Strom made it past the finishing line. Too bad he didn’t have enough of his faculties to give the media the middle finger F-U on his 100th birthday to all those degenerates hoping he’d buy the farm.
Sure we would. And the media talking heads would be out there pontificating on what the founders really meant and all the rest. But it doesn't matter. Johnson could be even more brain dead than the average Dem currently is, but unless he resigned he'd still be senator. Absent impeachement the Constitution doesn't allow for any method for removing a sitting senator or congressman.
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