No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The Munsilly season

Lots of depressing stuff happening on the national scene, so I thought I'd blog on a more uplifting subject - the inevitable burial of Len Munsil in the November elections.

Munsil is the rethug candidate for governor in Arizona who offers an embarrassment of riches in the idiocy department. He is an extreme-right christocrat whose only leadership experience is as head of a fringe anti-sex, anti-gay group which preaches abstinence, though he himself admits he had sex before marriage. (He's also the author of a gay-bashing ballot initiative designed to drag out the neanderthal vote and get him elected. And his campaign manager is Nathan Sproul, who presided over the wholesale illegal destruction of Democratic registration cards during the 2004 election campaign. And his leading supporters are barking mad racists - but I digress.)

Even though Arizona is (ahem) a very red state, i.e. a fetid, miasmic swamp of Junior-is-Jeezus reactionary conservatism, Munsil is trailing badly in the polls to Democratic incumbent Janet Napolitano. So he recently tried to stir the pot by denouncing the state's 9/11 memorial, calling it "anti-war and anti-American", and vowing to tear it down if elected. He and other rethugs are also calling for a special session of the state legislature to tackle the vitally important issue of demolishing this monument, which was chosen by a non-partisan group that included 9/11 victims' families. (This after the legislature ended a session which was record-breaking both for its length and for its lack of accomplishments, with whole weeks wasted on gay marriage and other bogeyman wedge issues.)

Of course, this kind of bloviating buffoonery is red meat to the hard-right mouth-breathing fundo-fascists who are the bedrock of 'thug support. But even in the Arid Zone, Munsil's craw-thumping, hate-mongering and know-nothingism seems to be passing its sell-by date. Munsil's despicable little stunt has backfired on him, earning him well-deserved scorn and derision. And he's still way behind in the polls, while his hateful and divisive initiative is going nowhere.

Even in Arizona, there is still hope.