We’ve got another Tea Party ticket-splitting special election in New York, and it looks like Jane Corwin, who stupidly endorsed Paul Ryan’s budget plan, is in trouble. Corwin is spooked because she’s polling within 5 points of the Democrat, Kathy Hochul. Jack Davis, an anti-immigrant flaming asshole millionaire who ran as a self-funding Democrat for a couple of cycles, is now re-tooled as a Tea Party candidate, and he’s polling in the low 20s. Hochul’s doing pretty good in a R+5 district where real Democrats (i.e., not Davis) usually get beat by 15-46 point margins.
Corwin has Boehner and Cantor coming to town, but I fail to see how their presence will do anything but draw attention to this deadly fact:
The poll found that 59 percent of respondents said they opposed reining in federal spending by cutting entitlement programs like Medicare. Only 38 percent said they supported such spending cuts to trim the deficit.
The best that Corwin can do to mollify pissed-off seniors is to pimp an award from Pat Boone. Old, angry Republicans who can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat apparently aren’t impressed by such a weighty endorsement, especially when they have newly minted Tea Partier Jack Davis to vote for.
When tranny-curious Chris Lee resigned this seat, I assumed it was a Republican lock. Now I’m wondering if it’s going to show us that the Ryan plan was a genuine suicide attempt, rather than a tear-stained cry for help.
Update: This is genius. Thanks, Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
It doesn’t help that she didn’t register janecorwin.org but the Green candidtae, Ian Murphy did for her. That has got her some attention but not in a good way. All heil, Queen Jane.
d0n camillo
Personally I hope the Republicans spend the next year complaining about how Obama should have killed Medicare not Osama bin Laden. If that doesn’t resonate with voters, I don’t know what will.
MikeJ
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: She was tired of herself and all of her creations.
BGinCHI
I’ve spent a lot of time in that district and if the Dems can win that one, the wind is definitely at their back. That’s a red district in a red region.
Dems will hopefully see that they need to hammer the GOP with their own record. Better party leadership this time ought to help.
Spaghetti Lee
Hah hah!
BGinCHI
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: Jesus, that spoof web site with her pic and name all over it is hilarious.
Click over there, ya’ll.
piratedan
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: that website (hosted on her behalf) is totally teh AWESOME! Powered by small asian children… indeed!
Spaghetti Lee
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Oh my God, that parody site is brutal. Murphy sure knows how to fight with his claws out.
BGinCHI
Required reading on the asshole that is Jack Davis:
http://wnymedia.net/buffalopundit/2011/05/jack-davis-outburst-contextualized/
Origuy
@Spaghetti Lee: Don’t forget to check out her Twitter feed.
jibeaux
There’s a lot of press paid to how seniors hate the Ryan plan and seniors vote and all that, and I don’t mind it a bit, but really it’s everyone but seniors who should be pissed about it. If you’re 55 and under, it’s YOUR Medicare that’s on the line. If it phased out Medicare for current recipients, my apolitical 86 year old grandmother in NC would have personally traveled to Wisconsin to berate seniors into voting him out. She loves Medicare, and the new knee it gave her.
BGinCHI
@Origuy: This was prolly my favorite:
26thskidoo
Internal polling by both major parties now showing a dead heat.
Zifnab
Someone just won the internets.
jacy
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
That is hilarious. I especially like “Together we can make delicious soup from the bones of the poor.” Finally, truth in advertising!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
I just about choked to death laughing at that! Good thing I was at the end of the slug of coffee I was swallowing or else…
If the Dem wins there then you know that the red tide is going back out to sea.
JCT
I saw this mentioned this morning at TPM under something like “Internets FAIL” because she forgot to lock up that URL. Can you fucking imagine whe someone showed this to her for the first time?
I have been howling all day over that site. Damned funny.
lllphd
ya know, this is not suicide on the part of republicans. i’d love to give them that much credit, respecting camus and all that – y’know – thoughtful, logical stuff.
but i fear the truth is that they really are (a) so blinded by their arrogant echo-chamber, blinkered myopia, and hubris that they truly believe the world thinks the way they do, and (b) just hopelessly incompetent.
it’s simply yet another daily example of classic fail. which, frankly speaking, is getting a bit boring.
ellie
That website is great! Bwahahahahaha!
PeakVT
@lllphd: I’m willing to be bored from here to November 2012.
MOAR REPUBLIKIN FAIL PLZ kthx
Valdivia
@Spaghetti Lee:
the best part is the people she follows on twitter. though the rolling comments on her pictures are full of win too.
RandyH
That Jane Corwin site is too funny. That must have been put together by Ian Murphy, right? He’s the guy at Buffalo Beast who prank called Scott Walker pretending to be David Koch.
April Daniels
Is there something especially shameful about Chris Lee flirting with a trans woman? It’s my understanding that the issue was that he was cheating on his wife and generally being a douche. Why do you have to throw in the possibility that the woman was trans as if it is some salacious detail that makes his behavior worse?
Svensker
Genius.
darkmatter
Wondering where that came from. Nice to see that I wasn’t hallucinating when I viewed that site a few weeks ago.
JCT
@RandyH: Yup, that’s the guy.
@Valdivia: HAH, 620 authoritorian fascists like Jane Corwin.
Valdivia
@JCT:
Yeah that had me laughing til I cried. Love the rogue gallery pics.
Jay C
So
Frick and FrackBoehner and Cantor (Jesus, they even sound like an oldtime vaudeville act!) are trundling up to the wild of Upstate to campaign for their gal Jane? Should be fun them trying to both run on, and run away from the “Ryan Plan”? Now there’s an act that’ll be hard to stage…Joel
@April Daniels: Considering the Republican modus operandi, the hypocrisy angle does make things worse.
water balloon
Republicans in NY are wildly incompetent, especially when it comes to these special elections.
I don’t see how Boehner or Cantor will help. Cantor is unknown, and Boehner is known more for crying than anything else.
April Daniels
@Joel Hypocrisy was not mentioned in this article, and unless Chris Lee was himself particularly against trans rights, it wouldn’t even be relevant. Being “tranny-curious” was how he was described, as if trying to pick up a trans woman on Craigslist was, in and of itself, distasteful. The fact that hypocrisy wasn’t mentioned, but a slur against trans people was used, I have a hard time believing that this is about GOP double dealing on trans rights.
This was about trannies being icky. Shame on the author.
Alan
@Joel,
Yeah, but just because he might have been a hypocrite, an asshole, or whatever doesn’t mean we get to write in an insulting way about marginalized groups. If you want to call him an adulterous hypocrite, fine, but I agree with April. I think the word “tranny” should be avoided.
Omnes Omnibus
The website is pure win.
Fleaster
Chris Lee was vilified because he was stupid enough to troll on Craigslist using his own name. Pretty dumb. Plus rumor had it he resigned quickly because more shit would have come out about his marital infidelity.
mistermix
Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a goddam Popsicle® stick, the reason I mentioned that Chris Lee was tranny-curious wasn’t because trannies are bad, but because Chris Lee, the family values hypocrite motherfucker who went to DC to cheat on his wife with women of color and transexuals, was so ashamed by his behavior that he resigned his seat less than 24 hours after his proclivities were revealed. Plus, every time I say that he’s tranny-curious, Baby Jesus makes a tight-ass Republican shart in his pants while receiving Holy Communion.
In other words, if Rep. Chris Lee had just owned his behavior, it wouldn’t be an issue, because there’s nothing wrong with being curious about pre- or post-op transexuals, FSM bless them both.
In case it’s not obvious, this is goddam Balloon-Juice, a fucking blog, not a source of white papers on issues of this day. If you want fucking disclaimer footnotes for every little piece of snark that might possibly offend someone somewhere you are absolutely in the wrong fucking place.
mistermix +3
General Stuck
What do you have against white papers MM? Or for than matter, issues of the day? Do you favor white paper? What about black paper? Brown paper?Ummph!! The insensitivity of it all. Let us have wingnut tranny sex be today”s issue of the day. And use rainbow paper for equality under dead trees, which can be the issue of the day tomorrow.
April Daniels
Wow. You sure are sensitive. Does it really hurt that much when people have their own opinions about your writing? I can only imagine how frustrating it is when people don’t recognize your peerless genius and see that when you used that slur, you actually meant it to be fun and affectionate, despite the sloppy phrasing and lack of any indication that you weren’t simply throwing in trans women to titillate your readers with more tales of Republican depravity.
I see now that despite you making absolutely no effort to differentiate your statement from the dozens or hundreds of identical trans-people-are-icky-sex-fiends-and-only-the-morally-bankrupt-would-want-to-sleep-with-them statements that can be found wherever trans people are a topic of discussion, you really meant it to be a show of solidarity with the queer community against the GOP.
But then, I suppose I should have been more generous in my reading. I can’t expect an author of your stature to bother think about what you write, or to make an effort to be clear about what you mean, or to try to step outside your own experience and imagine how your words seem to others. My bad.
patroclus
She voted to destroy Medicare??!! WTF!!!??? That’s just sick!
Cat Lady
@April Daniels:
I call spoof.
chopper
@April Daniels:
wow, you really nailed that blogger. he totally used the wrong phrasing. you can now go back to being irrelevant.
chopper
@Cat Lady:
truly, mix is worse than hitler.
April Daniels
@chopper Awesome. My work here is done.
WaterGirl
@mistermix: Being more generous in my reading :-) I assumed that you included the reference because the guy is a f-ing hypocrite.
i find that I am most offended when accused of something that goes against everything I’m about.
I hope +4 brings you some perspective, and we’ll hope april daniels is a spoof and not a person who has been hurt in the past.
General Stuck
I want black paper on the tissue of the day.
Alan
Thanks April for sticking with your criticism.
For mistermix and his defenders, let’s pretend that Lee was caught soliciting males and not trans-women. Would it then be ok to say Lee was “f*g-curious?”
Bill Murray
@jibeaux: Isn’t the coverage based upon the fact that the R’s tried to keep the seniors happy and they are pissed too? So the surprising extra fail portion gets more attention than the expected fail
TheF79
The details on that website really put it over the top. “Jane Corwin. Standing next to fire trucks. For some reason.”
Mark
@jibeaux: You’re missing the point. It doesn’t matter that the current elderly are exempted – the point is that the plan would end Medicare as we know it. Why would you do your opponent’s work by figuring out the subtleties in the proposal?
Arclite
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: OMG. So much win at that site.
Hugely
@April Daniels:
now you should go troll the sadlies they will play with you