There was a wholly and entirely meaningless special election on Tuesday, in the state of Missouri.  A Heavily Republican district, not contested seriously by the Democrats.  So we get this headline, and quip, from the National Review blog.

Republican Ekes Out 40-Point Win in Missouri Special Election

This is what happens when national Democrats pretend a special U.S. House election isn’t happening: Republican Jason Smith wins 67 percent to 27 percent over Democrat Steve Hodges, 42,145 votes to 17,203 votes. Yes, it’s a conservative district, but this is a bigger margin than Romney’s win over Obama in 2012 in that district.

The strategists over at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t merely choose to not allocate any funds to help Hodges; they didn’t even mention the special election on their web site, Twitter account, or Facebook page.

I like the commenter that points out that the Weekly Standard and Human Events didn’t bother to report this story either.  Almost as much fun as the modest effort by the National Review columnist to point to the six or eight point margin of improvement over Romney as being… something.

More details on the contours of this election race.

National Democratic groups, viewing the 32-year-old Smith as the front-runner, provided Hodges with minimal assistance. Hodges billed himself as a conservative Democrat, promoting his anti-abortion and anti-gun control views.

Nonetheless, into the depths of commentland.

This was a slaughter of the Obama donkey!!! Smith will garner 69% of the vote and the Obamabot Democrat will get 26% of the vote. Worse then those numbers, is the remaining, outstanding votes were cast for a “constitution” candidate, meaning the good guys carried almost 73% of the vote!!! Ms. Emerson, the resigned candidate was a GOP moderate!!! Mr. Smith is a true Conservative Republican. Democrats, hang with Obama & beware of upcoming mid-term elections in 2014 with the Obama scandals tied around your necks!!!

(Blink.)  (Rub eyes.)  (Blink.)  Huh indeed.

Wait.  More comedy gold here.

Blocking the Democrats from enacting legislation that would end life as we know it is not “doing nothing”.

I guess the most interesting thing here is to stare at the third party candidates and see if we have anything to note.

The Constitution Party nominee, Doug Enyart, is at 3.6%. While that is not an especially strong showing, it is easily the best showing for U.S. House that the Constitution Party has ever made in Missouri. Until this election, the party had never hit as much as 2% for any of its U.S. House candidates in Missouri.

Not noted, even though his candidacy did about as well against the Constitution Candidate as the Democratic candidate did agains the Republican.
Bill Slantz  Libertarian  968  1.5%

What accounts for Doug Enyart’s landslide victory over Bill Slantz?

Also worth noting these write-in candidacies… none of whom got into three digits… and in one case didn’t even get a vote.  But this does beg the question…

Thomas Brown … 85 …
Theo (Ted) Brown, Sr. … 0

Is this the same person, counted twice for some reason?

I kind of don’t understand all the mechinations of the Chris Christie “Special Election date“.  He picked out October 2013 instead of November 2013.  Apparently to get it over with.  Because the Democrat, one Cory Booker, is expected to thump by a massive margin.  And if he had gone with November 2013, it might eat into his race, where he is expected to thump by a massive margin.  The same double dealing works with the Democrat, and is the reason that the November 2014 date would give the Republican some seniority to take on Chris Christie…

… though earlier speculation suggested that a November 2013 date might eat into Booker’s margin and give the Republican — sharing as he is the Chris Chrisitie ballot — a fighting chance.

All of which is to suggest some overthinking.  Either Chris Christie woule be sending Cory Booker’s 30 point margin spiraling down to a 20 point margin or Cory Booker would be sending Chris Christie’s 30 point margin spiraling down to a 20 point margin.

All of which is moot now.  We have an expensive primary race and an expensive general election, to proceed the regular November elections, with a nonsensical justification from Chris Christie.

The decision to hold a general election in October comes with a price tag approaching $25 million because every statewide election in New Jersey costs more than $12 million to execute, and the two parties will hold primaries before the election. Christie tried to head off criticism of the expense. “I don’t know what the cost is and I, quite frankly, don’t care,” Christie said yesterday. “I don’t think you can put a price tag on what it’s worth to have an elected person in the United States Senate and I will do whatever I need to do to make sure those costs are covered because all the people of the state of New Jersey will benefit from it and we’re not going to be penny-wise and pound-foolish around here.”

And we have that “How does this position Chris Christie for 2016?” question looming about.  (As soon as Republicans realize the ‘coalition with Obama” is pretty minimal — as Obama slides out of focus as “Figure to direct all political hate” — and that Chris Christie’s been an effectively conservative Governor, that may be enough to lose his RINO tag.  We’ll see.  He is the one person thrown out there that I can’t quite say “Will Never Be President”, unlike Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.)

And we have that weird spectacle of political figures, see Booker, who had previously given off barbed barely concealed insults at Lautenberg now praising him to the hilt as an inspiration.  It’s, I guess, what happens.

Hm.

Schweikert considers himself a guarded optimist, but interviews with nearly three dozen GOP lawmakers and senior aides revealed plenty of doubt. The majority is “adrift,” according to a longtime conservative. The top five leaders hail from blue states that voted for President Obama, making them out of step with a conference dominated by red-state Republicans. A junior Republican called it a “fractured” conference when it comes to the biggest issues.

So the problem with the top Republicans in the House is that they herald from Blue States, and are thus out of step with their red state caucus.  A common enough problem — how does a political party expand past its geographic base, which is busily entrenching itself in its geographic base?  And then comes the manner that John Boehner survived to retain his speakership.

The leaders have come under intense scrutiny. Barely 36 hours after the caustic New Year’s Day vote, Boehner faced a coup attempt from a clutch of renegade conservatives. The cabal quickly fell apart when several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker. Still, Boehner came within a few votes of failing to secure his speakershipon the initial vote, an outcome that would have forced a second ballot for the first time in nearly a century.

Determined by the Congressional figures who herald from these parts:

Last month, for the third year in a row, Louisiana’s Senate Education Committee killed a bill to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act. LSEA is stealth legislation that creates a loophole for creationism to be snuck into public school science classes. LSEA allows classroom use of supplemental creationist materials that “critique” evolution. […]

You might think that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Brown University biology major and someone who recently called on the Republican Party to “stop being the stupid party,” would not support nonsense such as critiquing evolution with dragons. You’d be wrong.

The torments of the two faced partisan figures.  I note that the Brown University biology major also was involved in an exorcism, which in some online discussion I’ve come upon the defense of “Letting college years be by-gone”s.  (See too, I suppose, Rand Paul’s weird “Aqua Buddha” thingy, but probably not the frequent obsession I occasionally see with a college professor for Obama or with Hillary Clinton’s college thesis.)

Tired of hearing that the campaign to repeal LSEA had been endorsed by 78 Nobel laureate scientists and multiple major science organizations representing tens of millions of scientists worldwide, Quinn explained that the scientists whose discoveries had built our way of life were just people with “little letters” behind their names whom she had no interest in hearing from.

Eventually we’re going to end up with an alternate regionally based Boy Scout organization.

A note about the up-coming blue (though easily revertable to red in doldrums of partisan narrowing — see 2009) state elections.  The Democratic governor for Virginia is none other than … damned Terry McAullife. :

After attention was drawn to passages from McAuliffe’s memoir revealing that he left his wife in the car to attend a political fundraiser — on the way home from the hospital where she had just given birth — Salon’s Alex Pareene called McAuliffe a “soulless political animal with no redeeming human characteristic.” People who know McAuliffe say he’s actually quite generous and kind in person, but has difficulty translating that on the stump.

The Republicans have a bit of a right-winger in the gubernatorial race.  But he’s nothing like the Lieutenant governor’s candidate.  Who is your Christianist nutcase of the highest order.  And will solve the Democrat’s “short bench” problem, by giving them a state wide office holder for the next four years.

Still, it’s early yet. Almost 40 percent of the electorate still doesn’t have an opinion of McAuliffe, giving him a big opportunity, while a quarter are still unsure about Cuccinelli. Right now, McAuliffe is ahead by 5 percentage points, but all eyes are on the June 11 Democratic primary, where McAuliffe will be formally nominated and find out who will be running alongside him in the lieutenant governor and attorney general slots.

Those races will be key to building out the Democratic bench in the future — whoever gets nominated to face off against Jackson is expected to cruise to victory. Which means Virginians might actually get some candidates they like next time.

On the Senate side… your red states …

National Republicans are already facing the possibility of trouble in two states where they should easily win back Democratic-held seats. In West Virginia, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito is seen as the strongest possible Republican candidate in a general election, though some conservative groups dislike her record on spending. In South Dakota, former Gov. Mike Rounds is the front-runner, though Rep. Kristi Noem is taking a serious look at running as well. On Sunday, Moran voiced support for both Capito and Rounds.

Doesn’t matter.  The Republicans will win both of them.
… Or tell me I’m wrong.

And the specter of ugly primaries is rearing its head once again. This week, Joe Miller, the conservative Alaska activist who beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a Republican primary in 2010 before losing to Murkowski in the general election, said he would run against Sen. Mark Begich (D) this year. National Republicans would prefer Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, who has formed an exploratory committee; most party strategists will confess privately they do not believe Miller can beat Begich.

In heavily Republican Georgia, three congressmen, a former Secretary of State and several other wealthy Republicans are running for retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss’s seat. The prospect of a primary divided between so many candidates trying to portray themselves as the most conservative possible option, some Republicans worry, could give Democrats an opportunity to make a close race out of what should be a slam dunk.

Doesn’t much matter.  The Republican will win Georgia.

On the House side, it’s all gerry-mandered so tightly we’re stuck with John Boehner to kick around.  Unless God changes his mind.

As for the party’s youth problem… “pop culture outreach” will do the trick, an earlier report from the party suggested.  Or maybe this doesn’t matter much either — young people don’t vote, do they?  And aren’t we just a few years away from the ground breaking analysis that the red staters have such a high birth rate that they’ll have us with heartland god-lovers who seek God’s guidance on John Boehner’s House speakership over the blue staters’ low birth raters who’ll stick alongside the soulless Nancy Pelosi she-devil?

Also isn’t the next Republican Senator from Michigan going to solve all this problem by taking the lead on pot?

Well, this is depressing.

At a fundraiser for Anne Arundel County Republicans, House Minority Leader Nicholaus R. Kipke presented Josh Welch with the membership, which cost $550, during a tongue-in-cheek presentation that involved a Pop-Tart fashioned into pistol and gun safety tips.
Josh’s March 1 suspension from Park Elementary School for chewing a pastry into the shape of a firearm captured national attention over how seriously students should be punished for such threats.
Josh, who was 7 at time he was suspended for two days, gave the NRA certificate to his parents at the Glen Burnie event and returned to playing games on a cellphone.

Hope it’s not a violent video game, or what the NRA head headed to in explaining Sandy Hook.

“Everyone keeps asking me why I did it,” Josh said. “I don’t know why I did it. … I wish people would stop asking me about it. It’ll probably go on for 45 years or something.”
Josh said he didn’t know what the NRA was or what it meant to have a membership, but chimed in when his parents were asked whether anyone else in his family belonged to the NRA.
“Nope, only me,” he said.

Wait.  Why’d they bring the kid up there then?

Josh also received an autographed photo of himself with David Keene, the immediate past president of the NRA and the keynote speaker at the fundraiser.

‘Cause what eight year old wouldn’t want an autographed photo of himself with David Keene?  Must be the thrill of a lifetime.  Wait.  There’s more!

Anne Arundel County Councilman Jamie Benoit announced he will fund another membership for Welch: the American Civil Liberties Union. Benoit says he wants the boy to have a chance at another point of view.

In theory, there isn’t any conflict between the NRA and the ACLU, though in practice it divides along partisan lines — largely.  And to Jamie Benoit’s credit, his part in the political football with the kid was only in response to the state Republican Party and NRA’s grandstanding here, and further — it’s a cause that better fits the ACLU than the NRA.  (The NRA supporters in the comments section gives it their best shot, though… I do like this comment, in response to one of them:

Can you possibly say “left wing” any more? You must be real fun at parties….

Waiting for PETA to drop the kid a lifetime membership.  (It was a pop tart; he wasn’t eating meat.)  Maybe we get the Syrian Electronic Army while we’re at it.   Who else?  I don’t know…