Weaver (left) is tantalizing Republicans with prospects of a county executive candidacy with enough Tea Party pizzazz to overcome the structural obstacles to any county-wide Republican candidacy (and the memories of Roddey's term as executive). The Tea Partiers position themselves as principled outsiders. It is an especially hollow claim in Weaver's case -- she is a member of the Republican state committee, and there is no available evidence of her activism while a conservative, white President was wasting trillions of borrowed dollars -- but local Republicans apparently see themselves in no position to quibble about substance.
Weaver reportedly is leveraging her Bristol Palin-like celebrity, demanding that Roddey guarantee millions of dollars in financial assistance from establishment sources for her grass-roots campaign and insisting of specified levels of party-supplied volunteer support. These negotiations are said to explain the on-then-off rally at which Weaver had been scheduled to announce her candidacy: When Roddey couldn't find enough spontaneously enthused political soldiers to populate the kick-off rally for Weaver's taste, she demanded that the Republican Party rescind the media advisories.
Weaver seems an unlikely candidate in several respects. She studied at Harvard but apparently avoided learning the definition of "socialist" and has exhibited weakness in mathematics. She proclaims civic passion but reportedly refrains from voting. Democrats claim to have identified other inconsistencies and flaws in her record.
She proposes barring from ballots candidates who have not passed an economics test. Her preferred economics professor? Glenn Beck. (You can expose a dogmatic right-winger to Harvard, but you can't make her think.)
Are Republicans desperate enough for Patti Weaver? We should know soon.
Infinonytune: Looking For A Love, J. Geils Band (with Magic Dick)
6 comments:
For accuracy's sake: I think if you check the records you'll find that Weaver has voted pretty consistently, missing an election only infrequently.
She's definitely cuckoo, though.
I wonder if she'll release records showing how much her dermatologist husband receives in payments from Medicare and Medicaid? She can argue that he is, in effect, acting as a contractor doing work for the government in such cases, and that he should therefore be adequately paid. But I doubt she'd apply the same standard to the pensions and health care benefits of actual government workers. Smaller government begins at home!
We will check; the swipes at her voting record have come from Republican (who roll their eyes, with a frown) and Democratic (who roll their eyes, with a smile) sources.
The "Professor Glenn Beck" endorsement comes from her own lips . . . so, unless the socialists have commandeered YouTube, her fringe credentials are solid.
Given that Jim Roddey lost his job for trying to fix something that the local Dems have spent three years in court to prevent, I find it hard to blame him that much.
Jim Roddey lost his job because he focused on petty partisan base-building and forgot to govern. After the failures of his Democratic predecessors, all he needed was a gentleman's C to look like a hero . . . but he couldn't make that grade.
Jim Roddey only HAD the job as county exec because the Ds nominated the only guy who could LOSE.
He wasn't necessarily the only guy; it seems well within the Democrats' capability to nominate another loser . . . but probably not this time, particularly if the Republicans choose Patti Weaver or an ever more obscure candidate (which is where they appear to be headed).
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