Last week we noticed that GOP senatorial wannabe Sarah Steelman was attempting to ignite some enthusiasm for her candidacy by exploiting her mavricky resemblance to erstwhile rightwing star, Sarah Palin (e.g., they both love to play with guns). It must have paid off because this week she earned Palin’s endorsement. This turn of events has got the worshipful Steelman absolutely, gushingly giddy:

I am deeply honored and humbled to have earned the endorsement of Governor Palin, whose willingness to stand up and fight for what is right, regardless of the political consequences, has blazed a trail for conservatives who believe as we do, that the status quo has got to go. I am ready to join Governor Palin and lead the fight in the Senate to restore fiscal discipline and speak truth to power by putting this country back into the hands of the people!” said Steelman.

I can’t help smirking when she talks about “joining” Palin, whose selection as John McCain’s running mate arguably put the final kibosh on his inept presidential campaign, and who is now well on her way to the political dustheap she so deserves. Actually Steelman might get her wish and join Palin among the also-rans since Palin’s endorsements haven’t always delivered the keys to the kingdom in the past.

What’s even more amusing is the way that these fighters against the “status quo” always propose the most status quo GOP non-solutions to our problems: Gutting social programs in order to keep the tax rate low for corporations and the wealthy – check. Cutting public spending and in the process destroying public sector jobs along with our social and physical infrastructure – check. Privatizing successful government programs like Medicare and Social Security that serve the middle class – check. Fighting like hell to take affordable health care away from the uninsured – check.  Opposing government regulations that keep our food and water safe along with financial regulations that would have saved us from the 2008 recession had they been in place – check.

All in all, a strange way to “put the country back into the hands of the people,” but I guess it’s really a matter of which people you’re talking about – not that I expect either Sarah would have a clue.

Over at the Turner Report you can read press releases (here and here) from Sarah Steelman and John Brunner, claiming the laurels from the last GOP senatorial primary debate. Todd Akin, at least as far as I can determine, seems to think that squabbling about who won after the fact is beneath his dignity. Given the arguments his rivals put forward, he may be right.

It’s hard to know what Akin could add since the debate showed him and his two rivals singing in more or less perfect harmony from the same hymnal – the one favored by today’s more extreme GOP. The debate established that they all want to, what else, eliminate Obamacare, and insure that if the Bush tax cuts are extended, they are extended for millionaires too. None of them made any bones abut their preference to privatize Social Security (along with cutting some benefits). The Democratic incumbent, Claire McCaskill, reminds us in her post- GOP debate press release that their willingness to sacrifice seniors doesn’t stop with Social Security:

Akin, Steelman, and Brunner’s insistence on privatizing Social Security tonight follows earlier debates in which all three emphatically endorsed dismantling Medicare and turning it, instead, into a private voucher program.

So no big differences where it counts. Which gets us back to the GOP candidates’ press releases noted above and raises the question about what could distinguish one from the others as a winner in the debate – or in the election itself, come to that.  

Steelman wants to set herself apart from the group by claiming that she alone has “a plan.” Her release proclaims that “she was the only candidate who provided specifics and plans of action.”

If you’re inclined to believe this, check out her Website where she lists her “Show-Me Solutions for the First 60 Days.” You won’t find much that’s new – “fight” for a balanced budget amendment, get rid of the President’s “czars” (i.e.,  administrative personal essential to run the executive branch), implement an optional flat tax, put a congressional bit and briddle on the Fed, term limits, yada, yada, yada.  As clever as Steelman obviously thinks she is, we’ve heard all these ideas ad nauseum since they comprise what amounts to Fox-inspired, GOP orthodoxy these days – Todd Akin in particular likes to drone on about the putative “czars” – and they are all still very bad ideas. Nor did I notice any specifics about how she plans to achieve these goals – apart from the rather spectacular implication that Sarah will get all this destruction done in the first 60 days after she takes office. Delusions of grandeur much?

John Brunner, on the other hand, thinks that the way to distinguish himself is to point out that he has no experience doing the job he wants to take on. He somehow thinks that it doesn’t matter that most of his policy prescription are identical to those of his rivals since he isn’t, like them, a “career politician.” There is a certain class of American, I suppose, who thinks that all politics – or at least politics in Washington D.C. – are so evil that we have to continually sacrifice political virgins to the process in order to get a few months of uncorrupted leadership, but experiments with this philosophy usually only prove that folks who vote according to this belief deserve the inept politicians they send to Washington to represent them.

For his part, although he has little to say about the debate as such, Todd Akin is trying to stand out as the most popular kid in class. He is touting the results of the recent PPP poll that showed him one point ahead of Claire McCaskill. Well and good, except that he he completely ignores the Rasmussen poll that shows Steel leading McCaskill by a much larger margin. Note that I’m not saying that I endorse the findings of the notoriously inaccurate Rasmussen polls, particularly as regards Claire McCaskill – just that it’s premature to crown oneself a front runner based on one poll out of several, especially this early in the game.  

When I lived in San Francisco, I read the society gossip column authored by Herb Caen every day – not because I cared about the lives of San Francisco socialites, but because Caen was such a witty and lively writer and managed to beautifully convey the San Francisco ambiance. So far I haven’t managed to find in St. Louis a substitute for Caen’s evocation of the life and times of the denizens of Baghdad on the Bay, as he termed San Francisco in the pre-war days when Baghdad was evocative of the Arabian Nights rather than WMDs. However, today I found that it can pay for a political blogger to occasionally glance at the local equivalent, Deb Peterson’s “Breaking Schmoose” in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which informed me that Rep. Tod Akin, one of the dueling GOP senatorial primary hopefuls, was on the verge of becoming a movie star- at least among the die-hard fundamentalist evangelicals who form his most reliable constituency:

U.S. Rep. Todd Akin’s bid for the U.S. Senate may be experiencing some growing pains, but – thanks to a child star turned conservative crusader – he’ll soon be enjoying some face time on the big screen.

Akin, who’s slugging it out with fellow Republicans for a chance to take on the Democratic incumbent, Claire McCaskill, is featured in a new film by Kirk Cameron, the curly-haired cutey who spent the 1980s portraying the unctuous Mike Seaver on TV’s “Growing Pains.”

Now, Cameron and his wife, Chelsea Noble, a co-star on the show, are Christian evangelicals who promote projects aimed at like-minded people. Cameron’s latest undertaking is “Monumental,” the film in which he gets a little help from his friend Akin in retracing American history in search of the nation’s moral fiber.

It should be a good fit. Cameron, who has recentlly garnered attention for his homophobic pronouncements seems to have a lot in common with the Christian dominionist Akin who has been vigilant for opportunities to try to institutionalize homophobia in government policies, declaring that, “I oppose the attempts of homosexual activists to treat homosexual activity as a civil right to be protected and promoted by the government.” Of course, for folks like Akin “protected” always implies “promoted.”

Nor is it hard to imagine the nature of Akin’s contribution to the movie. As Peterson notes, Akin, who fancies  himself as an historical scholar, will share his views on U.S. history in the movie. Sadly, according to the evidence available to date, those views seem to be derived from fellow dominionist and pseudo-historian David Barton. People for the American Way charaterizes Barton as:

… a Republican Party activist and a fast-talking, self-promoting, self-taught, self-proclaimed historian who is miseducating millions of Americans about U.S. history and the Constitution.

Barton has been profitably peddling a distorted “Christian nation” version of American history to conservative religious audiences for the past two decades. His books and videos denouncing church-state separation have been repeatedly debunked by respected historians, but that hasn’t kept Barton from becoming a folk hero for many in the Religious Right. …

Peterson reports that the movie will be playing a limited engagement in St. Louis starting March 27. Since I like a good laugh as well as the next person, I’m tempted to attend – if the thought of giving good money to these charlatans isn’t too overwhelming. I may just have to wait for the DVD.

Finally, we get a glimpse of what GOP senatorial primary contender, John Brunner, actually thinks about some of the issues that Missourians are concerned about. So far, his approach to public campaigning has been like that of a burlesque fan dancer, tantalizing the audience with hints about what’s behind the fan while revealing almost nothing of interest.

Recently, though, Brunner lowered the fan for a tiny peak at what he’s got to offer. No tax hikes for sure – but we didn’t really expect him to endorse the popular desire to have the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share. He’s running for the nomination in today’s Republican Tea Party after all. Otherwise, he identifies problems he says he would address – like keeping jobs in the country – but seems unable or, perhaps, hesitant to let us know just how he would address them.

Most interesting is trying to figure out how Brunner reconciles his stated desire to “protect” seniors with his subsequent comment that the Ryan plan, which would privatize Social Security and decimate the Medicare, offers a “a fantastic step in the right direction.” To be fair, he adds that he would like to see a Democratic plan as well – seemingly unaware that it’s been on offer for some time. But, of course, financial stimulus to stabilize the economy, raising the cap on Social Security income, and endorsing those parts of ObamaCares that would slow the growth of health care and concomitant Medicare costs are all solutions that run afoul of GOP orthodoxy, and I suspect that Mr. Brunner would find them anathema.

I don’t know about you, but if this is all that Brunner’s got to show, it doesn’t strike me as particularly edifying. Nor does it deviate in any interesting way from what the other two candidates, Sarah Steelman and Todd Akin, have put on display. I hope he thinks that sinking a big chunk of his considerable fortune into the effort of getting himself to Washington so he can read from the same Republican playbook the other candidates have in hand is worth the price.

Photo by Michael Albov from Wikimedia commons