Dana's Woodshed Part I: The Fruits of Their Fuckery

Gather round, my darlings, and help me take a few deserving souls out to the woodshed. The Smack-o-Matic 3000 is about to get the workout of its young life, thanks to you.

Our first spanking is administered to Congresspeople Behaving Badly.

Let us begin with Michele "OMG Libruls R Anti-Amurkin!" Bachmann, R. MN, who was thoroughly and lovingly savaged by Cujo359 on Sunday. His post includes several items I hadn't tracked down, such as polling data:

As you can see, there have only been two polls conducted publicly in the district. Both are by a Democratic polling organization, Grove Insight. Nevertheless, a couple of very interesting things are obvious:

1. Bachmann, the incumbent, is pretty unpopular with the voters. In neither poll did she garner more than 42 percent. Even adding the margin of error to that total, she has less than 47 percent, according to the polls. As I've discussed before, that's a troubling sign for an incumbent.
   
2. Tinklenberg is growing on the electorate. While I don't necessarily trust the magnitudes all that much, the trends in a poll are always interesting. Here, Bachmann's is no appreciable gain, and her opponent's is that he's gaining ground.
   
3. Even if no Bachmann supporters change their minds thanks to her latest bigoted tirade, her opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg is only behind by about 4 percent, with 15 percent undecided.

Michele has proven El's bestest fundraiser. And what is El doing with all of that largesse?

Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) Democratic opponent El Tinklenberg is taking advantage of the huge windfall of donation he's gotten in the wake of Bachmann's Red-Scare-inciting Hardball appearance -- he's raised $700,000 in the last few days, and counting -- and is spending $188,000 to air this new spot introducing himself to voters:

Viva la differance! You'll notice that instead of using his funds to engage in a culture-war style frontal assault, he's attacking obliquely by demonstrating massive accomplishments. Between that, the relentless loops of Michele's intemperate remarks, and what I'm sure is going to be a thorough beating by the DNC (which is gleefully unloading a $1 millon truckload of cash on this race), I do believe El might have this sewn up by week's end.

Note to Republicons: please say or do more stupid shit.

...

Well, that was fast:

Bill Sali, one of my favorite nutty Congresspeople, makes the news again:

"Congressman Bill Sali and his campaign staff disrupted a NewsChannel 7 reporter and a representative for his opponent during an interview Tuesday in Downtown Boise.

KTVB reporter Ysabel Bilbao was interviewing Walt Minnick's campaign director John Foster Wednesday afternoon. During the interview, someone loudly yelled and was laughing during the interview at the Grove plaza.

Bilbao and Foster initially ignored the intrusion, but quickly noticed the source of the heckling -- Sali and members of his staff. (...)

Foster said he saw Sali making faces at him and holding up "bunny ears.""

Sali, apparently, hasn't advanced past third grade insults. Of course, comparing him to third graders is an unforgivable insult to elementary schoolers everywhere - I seriously doubt many of them believe crude oil grows on trees, or demonstrate dramatic ignorance about the Founding Fathers' views on religious diversity in Congress. Unless, of course, they're raised by people like Bill Sali, who is so popular among his colleagues that some wish to definistrate him.

So how are those stunningly stupid personal qualities and remarkably infantile public behavior working out for him? Oh, deary me:

Poll: Democrat Leading Bill Sali

A new SurveyUSA poll shows House candidate Walt Minnick (D-ID) leading Rep. Bill Sali (R) by a 51%-45% margin. This deep-red district should be off-limits to Democrats, but Sali is a controversial figure due to various personal antics -- most recently he walked up while a Minnick staffer was speaking to a reporter, and proceeded to loudly heckle the staffer and give him the bunny ears. [emphasis added]

I do believe we're standing at the threshold of a new political era. Dems will no longer have to run attack ads, but merely stand bemusedly by while Cons attack themselves, and wonder what to do with the mountains o' cash generated thereby.