Minnick Could Better Serve His Constituents As A Republican

There’s a little game I enjoy playing. It’s called “Name that Party.” Usually I play my game when a politician is accused of committing some sort of crime or other indiscretion. To play the game, I count the number of words or paragraphs required before the politician’s party affiliation is mentioned in a news story. Typically, when a Republican is accused, it’s the first word in the story and the prefix is used so frequently that a visitor from another planet would likely conclude that “Republican” was the miscreant’s first name.

But, when a Democrat is accused, the word is never used more than once, if it appears at all. When it is mentioned, it’s typically well down in the story’s column inches. I’m still waiting for the party affiliation to be mentioned in the long-simmering story about Bell, California where the local government officials (all Democrats) in that impoverished city enriched themselves with 6 or even 7 digit salaries.

Name that Party could make a good drinking game: One swallow of beer for each paragraph that passes before the word Democrat is used. Although playing by those rules might end with a trip to rehab and a cirrhotic liver.

But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I could play Name that Party while watching a campaign commercial. But in recent days, it has happened twice and I believe that if I did some internet searching I would find numerous opportunities to play the game.

I saw a Walter Minnick television advertisement the other day that nowhere even hinted that Idaho’s First District representative was a Democrat. In fact, an observer ignorant of Minnick’s party affiliation could easily conclude that he was a conservative Republican seeking to exploit racial tensions. Had Minnick been a Republican, Hispanic advocacy groups would be calling for an economic boycott of Idaho.

Minnick’s advertisement criticizes his opponent for being soft on illegal immigration, eschewing his party’s preferred politically correct terms, “undocumented immigrant” or “undocumented American,” and pronounces his opponent’s Hispanic name (Raul Labrador) with sneering emphasis that makes his name’s heritage unmistakable.

Discomfort with their party affiliation has become epidemic among Democrats. One Democratic incumbent in Alabama even fantasized that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would improve his life and reelection prospects if she would just “get sick and die.”

I saw another advertisement from the other coast that seemed intended to fool the viewer into believing that he was watching a Republican. West Virginia governor Joe Manchin was considered the unbeatable heir apparent to KKK Grand Kleagle Robert Byrd’s Senate seat. But he had a “Democrat problem,” as the Washington Post called it, and had fallen behind in the poll.

His response was to produce a television ad that makes no mention of his Democrat Problem, but prominently highlights his National Rifle Association membership. In the ad he loads a round into the chamber of a high powered rifle and fires a bullet through the center of a sign with his party’s signature Cap and Trade carbon reduction plan lettered on it.

If he had an “R” after his name, this would be interpreted as advocating assassination.

The problem for both of these gentlemen is that, no matter how much they try to present a conservative affectation, in each case their election would enable their party’s extremist leadership. Nancy Pelosi would simply be a shrill, entertainingly insane back bencher instead of the power mad Speaker of the House and the nation’s second most powerful politician she is today if not for Minnick’s contribution to the Democrats’ majority. His promise to vote against her as speaker next session qualifies as porcine lipstick.

Considering that Walter Minnick’s campaign theme is based upon opposition to his party’s radical agenda, he could serve his constituency’s wishes by changing parties. There will be a new majority party in the House next year and he could be far more useful to his district as a member of the majority than as a member of a marginalized minority under the leadership of extremists.

Considering how radically leftward the Democratic Party has drifted in the last decade, Walter Minnick, a former Republican anyway, could give the same explanation for the switch that such prominent Republicans as Ronald Reagan, Jean Kirkpatrick and Bill Bennett invoked: They didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left them. Think of it as a homecoming Mr. Minnick.