One Man’s Opinion. One Surprise in the Primaries but Florida, Arizona Look Good for November. Colorado’s Ken Buck Was Right the First Time.

  Feast of St. Louis IX, King of France.* 
     

                                         One Surprise: Scott. 

      By the time I went to bed…10:45 pm…there was mainly not entirely good news for conservatives in the primaries. In Florida the nomination of Marco Rubio for the GOP Senate  was a given—and it happened. Charlie Crist as the independent nominee has a problem: if he should happen to win, who would he caucus with?  If he says the Democrats, he is likely to lose the 20 plus percent of Republicans who have stuck with him.  If he says the Republicans he can kiss goodbye any chance that the large Democratic contingent that supports him will stay loyal.   

      I’m a little leery of the tea party’s Rick Scott victory over GOP A.G. Bill McCollum for Florida governor.  McCollum is as exciting as day-old warm Dr. Pepper but he could get elected.  Billionaire Scott the CEO of a health corporation had a run-in with federal authorities over fraud and had to settle.  So I’m not sure Scott can make it.  

      It’s too early for Alaska returns but I sure hope Palin’s endorsee Joe Miller beats pro-abort Catholic  Lisa Murkowski  for the Senate.  As I prepare to toddle off to beddie bye I’ll say a Pater and an Ave for Miller. 

      Arizona will renominate McCain who will win handily. Originally I was for J. D. Hayworth, a six-term congressman turned talk show host,   believing that Old John should retire and finally figure out how many houses…gratis his multi-millionaire wife…he owns.  But Hayworth stupidly got involved in a commercial instructing viewers how to extract more federal money for odd hobbies.  I’m glad it came out before the primary.  I guess I can live with John but he’s getting tiresome. 

      Obtuse Democrats are attempting to slug Colorado’s GOP senate nominee Ken Buck for one time saying that the 17^th amendment…the direct election of senators…should be repealed. So Buck disavowed his old stand rather than fight it through. While repealing the 17^th is not politick, the original idea that senators should be elected by the legislatures…changed by the 17^th…was judicious and should not have been tampered with.  The founders saw this as a balancing fulcrum ensuring that Senators would go to Washington indebted to preserving the rights of the states.  

       George Washington explained the difference famously. He had a hot cup of tea and poured some in his saucer to cool it off.  That is the role of the Senate he said which is one step away from direct election but represents the sovereign states. Meaning in the House the passions are burning and the Senate was made to cool them.  Not any more thanks to stupid progressives who wanted the Senate also to be animated by direct infusion of passion from the people. Since then the quality of the Senate diminished.  No Clay, Webster, Calhoun but Al Franken, Nancy Klobuchar a sports columnist’s daughter and who can forget Dickie Durbin who had to cry before the whole Senate in apologizing for linking U. S. soldiers at Gitmo with Nazi guards at Auschwitz?  Durbin is the nation’s top pander-bear.  

      Read the new biography of Henry Clay and you’ll see that the founders were right.  He served Kentucky in the House which of course was selected by popular vote and then the Senate where he went to Washington indebted to the sovereign rights of Kentucky as a state. It’s time to appreciate the fact that the founders were not popular democrats with a small “d” but republicans with a small “r.”   They wanted a republic where congressional representation would be balanced between a House where representatives are elected popularly and a Senate where the members represent the states.

   *: St. Louis IX, King of France [1214-1270]. “It’s good to be King!” chortles Mel Brooks in “History of the World Part I.” And even better to have been King and a saint entitling you to eternity in heaven and the Beatific Vision. This is the story of Louis who followed his  father Louis XVIII as king.  Not everything good happened to Louis.  His reign was not always an unqualified success. He was lousy as a crusade leader; he had bouts of temper.  But get this—he ruled France at a time of its greatest cultural achievements.  Gothic cathedrals and great universities were built. At his table frequently was none other than Thomas Aquinas along with the founder of the Sorbonne. As leader of one of the crusades he was taken prisoner and ransomed. Once freed he lived like a….a…king—what else? He was in the midst of negotiating the return of the Greek Orthodox church to Rome when he caught typhoid and died…being escorted on the wings of angels to heaven.  He was canonized by Pope Boniface in 1297.