My wife thought that the
Holocaust-denialesque press conference at the National Press Club yesterday held by a tinfoil hat wearer & attorney named
Philip Berg was the most amusing story in today's Washington Post, but
a page one story on Anh "Joseph" Cao tops it, IMHO.
Who is Anh "Joseph" Cao? He was the Republican candidate in the race to represent Louisiana's 2nd congressional district. Their election was held on Saturday instead of on November 4th because of various complications due to Hurricane Gustav (same thing with Lousiana's 4th congressional district).
To be fair to Mr. Cao, he's the first Vietnamese-American to be elected to Congress, which is significant, and his life story is quite admirable. He's apparently a hard worker and a seemingly upstanding guy........who had never been elected to anything before, was completely unknown outside of his district, and whose fundraising was anemic for a major party candidate (over half of his $112K raised came from HIMSELF....the rest, $42K, was just a little bit more than we raised for
Gordon Clark's Green Party campaign for Congress here in Maryland).
In addition:
--Mr. Cao defeated William Jefferson, a man who is under indictment for felonies, who is infamous in Louisiana and around the country for the $90K that was found in his freezer, and who was the unlucky recipient of an electoral obsession with change this year.
--This district's election had less than 30% turnout districtwide, and in heavily African-American precincts it was 12%.
--Cao was endorsed and shamelessly promoted by the paper of record in New Orleans, the Times-Picayune.
--A Green Party candidate who was well known in New Orleans and was expected to do well,
Malik Rahim, ended up polling 2.8%, which was more than the difference between Jefferson and Cao. As a result, Cao received less than 50% of the vote. This, of course, has gone completely unreported in the media. Would Cao have won absent a well-known (or any, to be honest) Green Party candidate?
--Louisiana's 2nd CD is about 70% Democratic.
Given all of the above, can anybody tell me under what scenario Mr. Cao will be reelected in 2010?Nevertheless, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, and a gaggle of other ancient white males are declaring Mr. Cao to be the crown prince of Republican Party saviors. They are wiping their brows and falling all over each other to come up with new superlatives to describe how the Republican Party _in toto_ has now been brought back from the brink of annihilation. I am not exaggerating about this. Do a Google news search on "Joseph Cao Republican Party" and see for yourself.
From today's Politico.com:
But ensuring that Cao is more than a one-term wonder in Congress will be a challenge for Republicans. He benefited from a low-turnout election, running against a congressman indicted on 16 counts of bribery.
Cao will be representing the most heavily Democratic seat of any Republican in Congress — his district gave Barack Obama about 75 percent of the vote against John McCain.Philip Berg's Obama-was-born-in-Kenya press conference comes in a close second to this gasp of hilarity by the Republican Party.