How is it that Republicans can take a barely literate woman from Alaska, doll her up and slap a $150,000 wardrobe on her, put her on Fox News and get the entire media to believe that not only is her jumbled syntax not a sign of dim-bulbyness, but to actually see her as a credible future president, but Democrats can’t get a textbook female candidate through a debate with a guy who, but for the grace of rich man’s justice, would be a felon, without screwing up?
You’ve almost got to hope the Florida Democratic Party is doing this stuff on purpose. Otherwise, I’m getting down with the conspiracy theory that party chairman Karen Thurman is a Karl Rove mole.
How else to explain this:
If you watched the debate, you may have noted Rick Scott accusing the Alex Sink campaign of slipping her a note against the rules. He’s correct. Violating their mutual agreement against notes, Sink makeup artist came in during a commercial break and showed her a phone with a message: “The attorney on Sykes suit said Alex did nothing wrong. Tell not to let him keep talking about her.”
The staffer who sent that stupid text, Brian May, has been dutifully fired, outed, and any extraneous limbs tucked under the bus.
Of course, the problem with this is that Sink’s entire campaign is predicated on demonstrating to voters what a crook Rick Scott is, so doing something like this is just colossally stupid. But what’s worse, is that the Sink campaign seems to be closing weak, after pulling it together this summer and running a pretty good race. First, they dropped the ball with black voters, culminating in their need to now seek forgiveness from the president of the Miami Dade NAACP … on the radio. And now this, which gives the Crook … I mean Rick Scott campaign a second act, and a fresh argument that CFO Sink might not be ready for prime time.
Bottom line, there’s nothing the media likes more than easily digested chum — nothing complicated like a banking scandal, or that’s a bummer like Medicare fraud — nice, simple, Cheatin’ Scandal! So now, Sink is finally getting some national ink. She’s even made the Drudge Report. And of course, the GOPers are filtering the “scandal” through their magical talking machine, blowing it up into a bonafide story of international import. — This from the people whose Titular Queen reads her cheat notes off her hand — But I’m sure Ms. Sink appreciates the attention. Maybe let’s book her daughter on “Dancing With the Stars???”
I think Peter Schorsch at SPB put it best:
Don’t tell me this whole frekin’ election is going to come down to some muffin showing Alex Sink a note on her cell phone!
Shorsch, who doubles as my yin-yang twin, is also reporting that the Sink team had Dave Aronberg — the man Sink probably should have picked as her running mate instead of old what’s his name, but who the Florida Democratic Party would never promote because he’s young, good looking and electable — play the Dread Candidate Scott in the debate prep. I would have loved to see if Aronberg was able to get the serial killer stare right …
Of course Democrats aren’t the only ones with the gift for stupid. But this cycle, most of the dumb has been committed by inexperienced tea party candidates like Sharron “Runaway” Angle, Joe “Thug Life” Miller, Christine “I’m Not a Witch” O’Donnell and now Rand Paul. And most of the gaffes by more doctrinaire candidates like Meg Whitman have been provoked by outside sources who stepped in to reveal Titanic hypocrisy on the part of the candidate.
But Sink was supposed to be the Florida Democratic Party’s dream candidate, after running dud after dud, after dud statewide, including Sink’s hubby Bill McBride.
With one week to go, we can’t expect Palin-style marketing, or the kind of Magic of Misdirection marketing wizardry that redirected public anger at George W. Bush and Wall Street onto Barack Obama and the Democrats. But can an exhausted Democrat get a week off from snarky blogging about my own side and go back to making fun of tea party people? Please???
UPDATE: Rick Scott is SHOCKED!!!