Cracker Barrel

I know that the Lamont/Lieberman Senate primary is the money race, not only literally, but also in terms of demonstrating where political clout and sentiment are actually trending in Democratic politics. However, an equally if not more important Senate race is heating up in Virginia, between former Reagan cabinet Secretary (and current disaffected Republican) James Webb and useless lawn ornament George Felix Allen, Junior. Webb is a serious policy guy and actual Vietnam veteran. Allen is a reliable street-walker for the current gang of pimps in charge, and started pretending to be a cowboy as a teenager in Los Angeles.

Guess who's leading in the polls.

Republican Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record) has a 16-point lead over Democratic challenger Jim Webb in the latest independent statewide poll, published Sunday, but a fifth of the electorate is still undecided.

The election is closely watched nationally as an off-year referendum on the embattled Bush presidency because Allen, one of Bush's most reliable Senate allies, is preparing a 2008 presidential bid. Last year, Allen voted in support of the White House more than 95 percent of the time.

Forty-eight percent backed Allen and 32 percent supported Webb in the Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. survey of registered voters likely to vote in the Nov. 7 election.

However, 20 percent of the 625 respondents surveyed statewide by telephone July 25-27 said they had not decided between Allen, a former governor seeking a second Senate term, and Webb, a former Republican who was President Reagan's Navy secretary.

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

So not only is Allen merely a butt-boy for an unpopular moron of a preznit, he also has preznitential aspirations his own self. And rest assured, like his urban cowboy boss, Allen will be just as clueless and out of his depth. Just like he is in the United States Senate.

At some point, we have to start assigning responsibility where it belongs, at the feet of the rubes who think a slug like Allen even belongs in the Senate, much less that he should be there instead of a principled conservative Democrat like Jim Webb. I understand that Allen has name recognition, because his daddy was a famous NFL coach. I understand that he has the money, and the perks of incumbency.

But we have to stop putting all the blame on the evil money machine of politics, the sordid lobbyists and the fabled backroom deals, and the lazy, diffident corporate media. There's plenty of blame to spread to the yahoos who are too lazy to do a little homework, who vote for a good ol' boy whose name they've heard, who piss and moan about partisan rancor and then cast their vote based on nothing more than ignorance and pure spite.

The midterms are more than a referendum on the power of the unwashed librul blogofascists who march in lockstep to Kos, or whatever the lazy-ass media trope is this week from brain surgeons like Lee Siegel (who, as a commenter at MyDD hilariously noted, is coming off more and more like Andy Kaufman's alter ego Tony Clifton). They are, and should be, a referendum on a failed administration, its failed policies, and its abysmal lack of respect for the most basic insitutional functions of this country.

If anything, the real barbarians at the gate are the goofballs who, by their petulant refusal to observe reality and be part of figuring out a solution to the mess their chimperor got us all into, continue to drag this country down into endless dipshit debates over gay married immigrant terrorists burning flags or whatnot. Apparently the need to affirm their projections and anxieties trumps the need of the country they supposedly love and revere to start setting things right. Either the Constitution means something, or these idiots are content to wonder whether it comes in two-ply. Either way, in the end they are every bit as culpable as the assholes they keep pushing in with their "fuck you" vote.