Good News In Northern California

Dean Andal must have been in the men's room

If California Republicans were smarter they would have focussed all their energy and their meager resources to try to hold onto the seats of endangered rubber stamps like David Dreier, Dana Rohrabacher and Brian Bilbray. Instead, they foolishly blustered around northern California, as delusional as ever, thinking they could win back Pombo's old seat with a Pombo-clone and win the seat John Doolittle has so thoroughly disgraced with a Doolittle-clone. Wrong on both counts.

The GOP's hopes for recapturing CA-11 have been spiraling rapidly downward as Jerry McNerney and his constituents have gotten to know and like each other better and better. Even Republican-leaning media outlets that supported Pombo have to admit that McNerney has been providing the San Joaquin Valley district with the best representation its had in many, many years. The opponent the hapless Republicans have put up, right-wing extremist Dean Andal, is already rolling around in the mud of scandal-- even before the election! And then there's the little fundraising problem... Andal's got the stench of death all over him. No one wants to get too close.

A bit further north, is CA-04, a district specifically created for Republicans. But even a district like that can only take so much before they just say "no more." And, according to the latest polling, that's exactly what they're doing. Charlie Brown, already well known and well-liked across party lines, almost beat Doolittle in 2006, when Doolittle's massive corruption case was just a rumor. It's gone way beyond rumor and no one doubts that Mr-- and Mrs-- Doolittle will be spending some considerable time contemplating their crimes in federal prison. Doolittle announced he wouldn't be running again and the GOP let out a collective sign of relief... and then managed to find someone even worse! Tom McClintock is not merely a worse and more radical extremist than Doolittle, he's not even from the district! He's not even from near the district. He's an L.A. guy.

And for anyone whose attention span is so short that they can't remember much about the Republican Culture of Corruption that has so taken root in DC, Doolittle's crooked chief-of-staff, a close associate of Jack Abramoff's, was charged with "conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly providing lawmakers and officials with gifts to win favors for lobbying clients." (That's a polite way of saying bribery.) He has the nerve to even buy Dixie Chicks tickets for some of these crooks! What happened to the right-wing boycott! Why not buy them tickets to see Ted Nugent?

People who want more of that can vote for John McCain and vote for Tom McClintock. The two members of Congress who look likely to wind up in prison with Ring are Ernest Istook, former Oklahoma Republican congressman, once voted the most homophobic asshole in the House, and, of course, Doolittle. It's great that Doolittle wants to fight this-- he still claims that everything is just circumstantial and a coincidence and that he-- and the crooked wife-- didn't do anything wrong. The longer and harder he fights, the more he'll drag McClintock and the GOP down the toilet with him. Go, Doolittle, Go!