Lexington Herald-Leader editorial-writer Jamie Lucke was in near-panic mode with her offering of 14 February, to wit, that Ashley Judd might actually move to Kentucky from Tennessee and make a run for the Senate, figuring the incumbent republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to be the presumptive opposition. She thinks McConnell is fair game on the basis of a Louisville Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll indicating a McConnell defeat.
A “bluegrass poll” would apply mostly to Louisville and Lexington, where voters routinely vote democratic even in national elections. Lexington-resident republican Andy Barr was elected to the House from the Sixth District last November but lost his home county by some 7,500 votes. He nearly beat Ben Chandler (far less than a thousand votes behind) in 2010, so the Legislature tried to gerrymander him out of 2012 contention, shuffling counties and raising the district democratic registration from 68% to 78%, but he received over half of the votes anyway.
Predictably in—as Limbaugh would have it—feminazi-mode (getting in Governor Wilkinson’s face), Lucke explained all the reasons Judd would be an excellent choice for the spot, making her into the best thing since WD-40 and remarking that Judd (Harvard Masters Degree) was driving a champagne-colored BMW as far back as 25 years…so there! Lucke, however, insisted that Judd would be McConnell’s “dream opponent” if she should do what Hillary Clinton did back in the day—moved to New York and bought a Senate seat.
Lucke correctly claims that a Judd-McConnell race would be about her and not about him, “vulnerable, unpopular nationally and in Kentucky.” McConnell has been in the Senate since 1985 (also republican leader for last six years), leading one to suspect that, contrarily, he might possess a certain popularity in Kentucky, not to mention considerable clout vis-à-vis what he can do for the state. Who cares whether or not he’s popular nationally? Anyhow, it’s often the unpopular statesman who makes a difference—a good difference.
Included in the editorial was the Judd poster, wherein she acclaims Obama as brilliant and that she’s committed to him. Obama is anything but popular in Kentucky and his brilliance might be judged by his remark during a speech about a navy “corpse-man” (corpsman). Teleprompters should be phonetically-structured for the pronunciation-challenged (or maybe that’s the way it’s said in Hawaii). His nutty remark about policemen acting stupidly while doing their duty also remarked his brilliance.
The latter remark might make one wonder about Obama’s actions on the night of 11 September 2012 when, after being briefed by the Defense Secretary about a potential bloodbath in Benghazi at about 5:00 p.m., he made no further contact with either Defense or his own White House NSA and staff during the interim but managed to say the next morning that the carnage (four dead Americans and a seven-hour attack on the Consulate and its annex) was caused by a film made by—of course—an American, an egregious lie, which he knew and repeated two weeks later at the UN. In that episode, he gave the term “stupidly” a new meaning, not to mention honesty.
Lucke wonders if the Democrat Party “has a future in Kentucky.” Of course it does – just not in national politics. It controls the governor’s seat and the Kentucky House and most courthouses, and it’s probable that this will be the case for a number of years, though the republican Senate margin is not huge. A republican governor is virtually unthinkable (3 since 1931).
Lucke says about McConnell: “…whoever challenges him will be dragged through the mud… .” Well, of course! That’s politics on all levels. Judd would do the same if she should get the democrat nomination. Imagine the film clips or the photo-ops (perhaps some in near-nude mode). What a poster that would be! McConnell could be pictured as too old at age 70, complete with false-crutches, false teeth and the like. Mud is where all politicians expect to live periodically if not most of the time.
Lucke seems to think no other democrat would be willing to step up (as Calipari would say) and take on McConnell if the photogenic Judd (“Hollywood liberal,” according to her grandmother) should run. She’s dreaming. There most likely are a number of potential candidates, jealousy vis-à-vis Judd as incentive, though they may be more scared by McConnell’s war-chest than by an actress, whose greatest fame currently is derived from the inevitable and plenteous camera- angle TV-shots of her at Kentucky basketball games.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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