NEW JERSEY SENATE PRIMARY: PASS THE POPCORN

Jersey mishmash

This has got to be one of the craziest contests in the country. The New Jersey GOP has been trying to find a challenger for popular progressive Frank Lautenberg all year. And everyone they come up with turns out to be a dud. After all the first and second tier candidates turned them down flat, they started rooting around for something to stick on the ballot. One of the early disasters was someone's chatty right-wing dentist, Joey Pennacchio, who turned out to be so extremist that he had taken out his crayons and written a kooky 94 page manifesto calling for the Nationalist Party to replace the GOP (which wasn't far right enough for him). It is, basically, a blueprint for a new American Nazi Party made up of the less mainstream two-thirds of the GOP and some Confederates who still hate the Republicans because Lincoln took away their great grandparents' slaves. He turned out to be a bit much even for the whackos and wingnuts who run the state Republican Party. So they moved on to a slick, drunken, sleazy-- and most important, wealthy-- New York nightclub owner (who claims he will move to New Jersey), Andy Unanue. After his trial records came to the public's attention he did move-- but to Colorado, where he went into hiding and eventually, withdrew from the race.

Part of the reason he withdrew was because the same party leaders who talked him into running and then introduced him to the public in glowing terms asked him to take a walk when they started reading more about him. John McCain had also read about him and he went berserk and demanded the Jersey GOP get someone in there who wouldn't depress Republican turnout. He then personally talked a biotech executive, John Crowley, into running. Like many Republican businessmen interested in politics, one doesn't have to scratch too deeply beneath the surface to see that Crowley has some serious ethics problems and many people predicted that he would soon join the other New Jersey rejects.

This morning PolitickerNJ is reporting that Crowley-- McCain or no McCain-- is out of the race already. And what's worse (for the GOP) is that Unanue is threatening to jump back in. I have a suggestion. Why don't the Republicans just get behind right-of-center Democrat Robert Andrews, who is challenging Lautenberg in the primary? He may not be as extremist as what they normally like but he has been a dependable rubber stamp for Bush on the war and on several other important GOP issues.