SNEAKY PETE'S PLAN REVEALED: BEQUEST "HIS" SENATE SEAT TO REPUBLICAN RUBBER STAMP HEATHER WILSON

Tweedledee wants to sell you Tweedledum

OK, so Domenici says he's retiring because he has dementia-- which he clearly does-- not because his poll numbers show he would lose a re-election bid (which they do) and not because the Purge-Gate investigation into the brutal, unwarranted political firing of David Iglesias would destroy whatever positive perception that is left of New Mexico's longest-serving senator (which it would). He's out and his equally tainted protege, Heather Wilson, has decided to check the congressional seat she was unlikely to win again and run for the Sneaky Pete senate seat instead.

Remember, Sneaky Pete's reason for involving himself in what became the U.S. Attorneys scandal had nothing to do with his own election. He-- and Wilson-- demanded that Iglesias aggressively pursue Democrats, regardless of evidence, in order to make the case before the Wilson's tough re-election bid that it isn't only Republicans who are corrupt and untrustworthy but that Democrats get in trouble too. When Iglesias told them that their was no basis for the case to go forward, they called Karl Rove and had him fired.

Sneaky Pete, who has become famous for his notorious "lapses of memory"-- like when he forgot to get dressed and went strolling through the Capitol in his pajamas-- knew he would have to retire soon. He, and his establishment supporters, felt the only possibility for the GOP to retain the New Mexico senate seat-- in a state that has been turning bluer and bluer-- would be to run the relatively "moderate" Wilson, not the extremely ambitious extremist, Steve Pearce (NM-02) who already ran and lost s Republican senatorial primary.

Now, if you take a close look at the actual voting records of Wilson and Pearce, they're not really that different, at least not in the real world. Both are, basically, rubber stamp Republicans who have reflexively followed the Bush-Cheney line on every hideous part of the far right agenda that has been shoved down Americans' throats in the past 7 years. A case can be made that Pearce is more extreme and more of a true-believer whackadoodle and that Wilson, while basically voting nearly as badly, at least wrings her hands and moans about voting like a true reactionary.