Who's "Over The Top" Now?

There was a time when I once respected Christopher Shays, the U.S. House representative from Connecticut. I distinctly recall the town hall meeting he held that was telecast on C-SPAN during the Clinton-Monica Whatsername business in which he appeared to be unsure about how he would vote in the upcoming impeachment proceeding, and he wanted to hear what his constituents thought about it (he ended up voting against impeachment).

I thought that was a class move and showed somebody who understood who he had been elected to serve and was trying to do the best he could.

Silly me.

Now, in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, it turns out (as reported everywhere in the universe) that he has likened it to the infamous bit of navigation Ted Kennedy conducted on the Chappaquiddick Bridge many moons ago with an automobile containing Mary Jo Kopechne.

Do you know who that immensely stupid remark appeals to?

Knuckle-dragging right-wing hammerheads who can barely construct a polysyllabic sentence, that’s who.

Mark Foley is the living, breathing testimonial to the fact that the morally bankrupt Republican congressional leadership considered holding onto power as a higher priority over that of ensuring the safety of congressional pages entrusted to their care (and now, as it turns out based on this HuffPo link to a New Republic article, Foley didn’t even want to run again, but the Repugs insisted that he do so to utilize the power of incumbency to the fullest possible extent despite his predatory behavior).

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with Ted Kennedy.

All of which is funny in a twisted way when you consider that Shays recently said that Cheney and Rumsfeld were “over the top” in their attacks against anyone who is trying to bring sanity to the Iraq nightmare.

Like all Repug “moderates,” it seems that, when push comes to shove, Shays tows the line on the bread-and-butter issues that fire up “the base” the most (such as Shays’ support for the so-called partial birth abortion ban noted here), as well as Shays’ preposterous claim a year ago that we’ve trained “hundreds of thousands of Iraqi security forces,” to say nothing of his effort, along with Dem Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, to limit Internet free speech.

Fortunately for the voters of Connecticut, you have a chance to send Shays packing along with Holy Joe on Election Day. We know about Ned Lamont and his amazing accomplishments, with the biggest prize of all still up for grabs, but this takes you to a U.S. News and World Report story about Diane Farrell, the Democrat running against Shays for the U.S. House.

Since Shays seems to know so much about tragic accidents involving deep water, I think it’s only fair that the voters of Connecticut elect Diane Farrell in a few weeks to submerge Shays’ career in public life also.

Update 10/13: I read that the campaign staffers for George Felix Macaca Allen have told their candidate to shut up. Based on this, I think the Shays staffers should probably do the same thing.

Update 10/26: It just gets better and better for Shays...might be time for Diane Farrell to start drafting her acceptance speech.