Why Katherine Harris is a Perfect Republican Candidate
It’s so sad. Here’s hard-working, over-achieving, Republican-believing Katherine Harris trying hard to get the Republican Senatorial nomination here in Florida, and she is getting back-stabbed by the people who should be her most ardent supporters. No one else in public office embodies the Bush-era virtues of the Republican Party as well as Katherine Harris.
Let’s start with love of the Overmonied. This is a modern Republican given; that any policy that might help a non-rich person is evil, while at the same time Overmonied Americans should be able to pull almost any financial shenanigans they like, from cheating less-prosperous Americans in business deals to hiring illegal aliens to keep workmen’s wages low. And, of course, the Overmonied should pay little or no tax on their inheritances and capital gains. Income taxes should fall only on those who work for their (our) money.
Now and then, as a PR gesture, Republicans will come down on a few of their people, as they have in the Enron, Abramoff, and Cunningham cases. These situations got so far out of hand, and the schlurping sounds made by the principals as they sucked at the Money Trough got so loud, that something had to be done. So a dozen or so people will go to Federal Prison for a time — no doubt to the nicest prisons we have — and will return to private life with more than enough investment or pension income that they will live comfortably even if they never work again.
Ms. Harris is getting castigated for sharing an improbably expensive meal with Cunnigham’s briber, Mitchell Wade. This is unfair. In Harris’s Overmonied Republican world, a $2800 dinner check, including a $1000 bottle of wine or two, is normal. Sure, she took a bunch of illegal campaign contributions from Wade’s company, MZM, but it’s pure coincidence that she asked the Defense Department to give MZM a $10,000,000 contract — for a facility to be built in her own Congressional district, of course.
Halliburton gets no-bid contracts for Iraq construction and Katrina cleanup, and you don’t see Republicans withdrawing support for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, do you? Of course not! This is the way Republicans do business. It’s the way Sen. Ted Stevens (R -Alaska) gets megabucks for useless public works projects in his state.
Why come down on Harris for essentially doing what all good Republicans do?
Sure, she’s gotten a little weepy over religion, and some of her comments about how she’s spending inheritances from her late father and grandfather don’t seem to make much sense, but religious nuttiness is supposed to be one of George W. Bush’s major charms, and Republican donor Paris Hilton spends her inheritance in crazy ways without anyone trying to deny her a nomination.
The Mrs. Robinson thing with the college newspaper reporter was a little over the top, but male politicians her age have been leering closely at young females since…. I suppose you can say, “Since there were male politicians.”
Katherine Harris lives in a town (Longboat Key) where no working person can possibly afford to buy a house, and she has gotten mega-oodles of money through inheritance and marriage.
Naturally, Harris doesn’t want to pay taxes on her unearned income. The Overmonied never do. And, just as naturally, Harris isn’t going to help get rid of illegal immigrants; finding good housekeeping staff is hard enough as it is.
Republican by birth, Republican by choice
I personally support Katherine Harris for the Republican Senatorial nomination. No one else in Florida — not even Governor Jeb Bush — embodies Republican ideals as thoroughly as she does.
Indeed, I think the main reason the Bushes and others are distancing themselves from her is plain old jealousy. They try to be as Republican as they can, but once in a while they let their natural human emotions take over (or read poll results) and do something nice for the non-rich.
Harris sticks to her guns. (The NRA loves her.)
And this is why we, the voting citizens, must make sure Harris gets that nomination despite lack of support from other Republican leaders, most of whom would like to be like her, but don’t have the guts.