Stop Me Before I Vote Again

My closet dream boyfriend, Mark Engler, has a nice ponderation on tea-party election tipping -- a kissin' cousin of cow tipping.

First the good news:

Mark has a royal road way to insure the jackasses still get to graze for free on the top of the Hill after November:

"Are you a Democratic congressional candidate in a tight electoral contest? Here’s an idea: Help to recruit a Tea Party candidate to enter the general election and siphon off voters from your Republican opponent. Sure, you might be forced to debate a reactionary nut job. But this only makes you look more reasonable. More importantly, the new entrant splits the right-wing vote. You waltz to victory."

Hmm... that Spanish fly in his mojito didn't get me what I wanted out of Markie last night, but it did send him somewhere plenty weird.

What an innocent prat, eh? Makes me lick my chops, just to think about him capering about in self-delight: such a a Machiavel!

But these highs always wear off, as my hero Roman P knows all too well. And then what?

In this case that hypo-manic opening through fading course awinding ends up in what can only be called a final Hamlet-like interrogatory inner mope:

"Is there a downside to this type of thinking? Only the possibility that Tea Party candidates could actually win, in which case we’d be governed by the far Right."

I’ve worried about this with regard to Sarah Palin. Some progressives have hoped that, amid a weak field of Republicans, Palin will emerge as the Republican nominee for president in 2012. They have faith that she would be a weak and polarizing candidate in the general election, leading to an easy Democratic win.

I’m inclined to think that this strategy is playing with fire. Sure, Palin makes egregious gaffes on a regular basis.... Still, as a friend recently remarked to me, plenty of people thought George W. Bush was a bumbling, unelectable dimwit -- and look where that notion got us."

That not being enough, or should I say too much: to end it all with a stab to the heart, my boyfriend-to-be has to give us all a lesson in righteousness, brayed out like any confident schoolmarm might bray it:

"Electoral strategies that must rely on too-clever maneuvering can only conceal a party’s more fundamental weakness for so long. At the local level, you can make a case for trying to split the right-wing vote. But, at the risk of being trite, I think there’s a better case for progressives learning to defeat conservative ideas on their merits."

Bend over, Mark, and prepare for punishment.