by Pa Rock
Missourian
Missouri's Republican (and highly self-righteous) secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, is coming off one of the worst political weeks imaginable for a right-wing politician who until recently probably harbored dreams of eventually making it all the way to the White House. Cancel the moving van, Jay, you aren't going anyplace - except maybe back to West Plains.
Jay, the scion of a prominent Missouri evangelical/political family and the son of John Ashcroft - a former attorney general, two-term governor, and US Senator from Missouri, as well as US Attorney General - seemed to think that his political pedigree could propel him into the governor's mansion, and was undoubtedly disappointed a week ago yesterday when he not only lost the GOP primary race for governor, but came in a very humiliating third place. The state Republican Party, it would seem, has undergone a seismic philosophical and political shift since Jay's daddy's day.
(Papa Ashcroft holds the dubious distinction of being the only incumbent US Senator in history to ever be defeated for re-election by a dead man - and Pa Rock is proud to have voted for the dead man!)
The primary election drubbing was Tuesday of last week. This week on Tuesday - yesterday - Jay Ashcroft, God's scribe in Missouri, was forced to issue an official statement declaring that a citizen initiative for a state constitutional amendment to restore abortion rights in Missouri had qualified for the November ballot. It is a proposed amendment that is sure to bring voters to the polls in greater numbers than usual - and one that is very likely to pass the simple majority necessary for approval.
The proposed amendment even has a clear and understandable title: "The Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative."
Missouri Republican politicians have tried a variety of dirty tricks to misrepresent the effects of this amendment, and the costs; to keep it off the ballot; to confuse it with "competing" legislation; and even an attempt to change the constitution in an effort to make it harder to pass an amendment - but ultimately basic fairness won out and the general population of Missouri will have the opportunity to reverse the near-total statewide ban on abortion that was imposed by our dunderhead and very patriarchal state legislature.
The people will finally have their say!
And all of those additional voters coming out to vote in Missouri in November cannot be good news for Republicans, the party that has held the show-me state in a virtual chokehold for nearly a quarter-of-a-century!
It just keeps getting better and better, but poor Jay probably doesn't see it that way!
2 comments:
I still have that dead man's campaign button. It says: I'm still with MEL.
What a great campaign souvenir! I have a personal Mel Carnahan story that I will post in this blog in a few days. He went out of his way to do me a big favor when I was a Democratic County Chair in Missouri forty years ago. Mel was a smart and caring human being - one who could even win a statewide election while dead!
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