Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

By Miss Kubelik

Since nobody has an institutional memory any more, we cats will remind everyone of when Michael Steele ran for the U.S. Senate.

The time: 2006. The place: Maryland. Back then, very few people had ever really heard of this fool named Steele. He had held one statewide office in his career — lieutenant governor. (And by the way, his 2002 running mate, Bob Ehrlich, has tossed his hat in the ring for governor again this year. The state of Maryland should hold him accountable for ever thinking that Steele was qualified for anything.)

The reason we cats raise this now is that we'd like you to all think back and remember how enthusiastic the Republicans were about their Maryland Senate candidate in '06. Heck, Karl Rove had lobbied him to run in the first place. And Rove wasn't the only one. Liddy Dole, Kenny "Light in the Loafers" Mehlman and The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived (If Indeed He Were a Person) all thought that Steele represented an exciting, diverse and — most important — victorious future of the Republican Party. "We have a huge and important opportunity to offer people real choices," little Kenny burbled.

Of course, Steele got his butt kicked in November that year, as did the rest of the GOP — including his fellow minority "bright lights" Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell. In 2008, it was more of the same. So we find it incredibly interesting that the Republican talking heads are back at it again in 2010. Except this time the empty-suit candidates (some of them, out-and-out wackos) go by the names of Paul, Angle, McMahon, Scott, Kirk and Haley.

The lesson du jour? The Republicans are great at spinning their new nutcases as the real deal, and the media invariably fall for it. But sooner or later, these GOP rookies' inner wackiness will out. After all, early in his 2006 Senate run, Steele had to apologize for comparing stem cell research to the Holocaust.

If there's one thing we cats know about leopards, it's that they never change their spots.