GOP Forms Circular Firing Squad Around Stevens

In a spectacular display of personal abandonment for political reasons, Senator McCain and, even more gracelessly, Governor Palin have thrown Ted Stevens under the bus with such gusto it made some observers wonder how long they'd been waiting to do so. They were joined by a collection of other opportunistic GOP officials who couldn't wait to blast a far more distinguished member of their own party for incremental political gain. It makes one wonder how far in advance they had typed up their statements in anticipation of the day Stevens was convicted.

We can, as an informed electorate, have a genuine discussion over whether or not what Stevens did constitutes a deliberate and malicious misuse of power, or whether the Department of Justice took a big gamble in raiding Stevens' home, didn't find the smoking gun they were hoping for, and settled for some petty charges about not filling out menial Senate forms perfectly. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

However, by using one of their own party as political ballast, Senator Stevens' own colleagues have had this conversation for us. The Alaskan people were, I believe, ready to think hard about what's happened so far this historic election cycle, take this verdict into account, and make an informed decision. However, this delicate cognitive process was bowled over by a comically-amalgamated ball of clowns tripping over each other to denounce and demonize Stevens. Note that the loudest of the Pecksniffian weather vanes are, from Coleman to McCain, losing their respective races, or, in the case of Palin, watching their favorability ratings plummet towards Earth faster than Alaska's oil revenues. Someone should let the Governor know that Ted Stevens will not be her springboard back to legitimacy, and, while we're at it, neither will continually blasting a campaign she did more to ruin than anyone else. I can smell the desperate, manufactured sanctimony from Los Angeles, and it makes me sick.

Would Stevens have lost anyway? Probably. But that decision was Alaska's to make; it was never supposed to lie in the hands of an assemblage of overheated fools standing on each others' shoulders, grasping in vain for power and respect they will never have, but Ted Stevens has for forty years.