Will The New Republican Party Motto Now Be "The Party Of Sore Losers?" Jim Tedisco Meets Rick Perry

Which dittohead is the bigger clown?

Every day this week, the expanded vote count in NY-20's special election increased Democrat Scott Murphy's lead over confused reactionary Jim Tedisco and his team of professional election thieves (led by one of the architects of the Bush-Cheney Florida 2000 theft, Roger Stone). By Thursday evening Murphy's margin of victory had increased to 178 264 votes-- and Tedisco's best hope for a turnaround, Saratoga County, was all wrapped up, every vote counted and no salvation for the Secession Party.

Not that Team Tedisco thinks that should stop him. He went to the Dutchess County Supreme Court and demanded they declare him the winner. Desperate, nearly hysterical and frothing at the mouth, Tedisco is shrilly demanding that all votes, both machine and paper be recounted and re-examined-- except, of course for the hundreds of absentee votes from Democratic areas that he has challenged; those he demands stay forever unopened.

The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.

At this point Tedisco and the Republican Party know that, like Norm Coleman, he has been rejected by the voters. So the game plan is to tarnish his opponent's victory, keep him out of office for as long as possible with frivolous lawsuits and time-consuming challenges, and persuade the Republican grassroots that they're being robbed, adding to their sense of victimization and grievance, a world view-- as we saw in their teabaggery this week, in which they thrive. Meanwhile, encouraged by Rush Limbaugh's insistence that Texas' outgoing secessionist Governor is not a fringe kook, and despite being denounced by newspapers across Texas, Rick Perry senses that playing up to this sense of victimization is a good political move-- at least in terms of the Republican Party primary, a contest that polls show that he is currently losing by a landslide (56-31).

Real losers never accept defeat with grace and dignity. Life's real losers are assholes like Norm Coleman, Jim Tedsico... and Rick Perry, who, when they don't get their way, want to wreck the board for everyone else. And that's not your father's grandfather's Republican Party. I think Oklahoma, the most anti-Obama state in the Union, wants to secede too: