Disgraced Former GOP Gov. Eric Greitens Thinks Missouri Maybe Ready For Senator Grosser Than Josh Hawley
Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt is retiring in 2022, leaving an opening for another complete jerk along the lines of Missouri's junior Senator Josh Hawley. Former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens is considering running next year, which reportedly “alarms" Republicans who like to win elections. Greitens fucked up so bad he's earned the less-than-honorific “disgraced" before “former Missouri governor." He resigned in 2018, less than two years into his term, after allegations emerged that he'd "sexually assaulted a woman who was not his wife." (That's literally how Politico phrased it, which is just weird.)
Did he think everyone would forget?
The maneuvering, which follows Republican Sen. Roy Blunt's surprise retirement announcement last week, is giving Republicans nightmarish flashbacks to 2012, when they nominated a problematic Missouri Senate candidate, Todd Akin, who went on to lose the election.
Former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill defeated Tea Party Republican Todd Akin in 2012, which was a pretty good year for Democrats in general. However, McCaskill was an incumbent and outperformed Barack Obama on the same ballot by about 10 points. Akin was a terrible candidate, and perhaps we're too gracious to Missouri voters when we assume his moronic comments about “legitimate rape" are what sunk him. Republicans have sent worse people to the Senate since then, by which we mean Josh Hawley.
But if Republicans are scared, that's good news for us on the pro-democracy front.
Unlike Akin, Greitens did not claim women have magical vaginas that can bar “legitimate rape" sperm from entry. He did however allegedly sexually assault a woman and blackmail her to keep quiet. He was arrested and everything. He didn't actually resign as governor, though, until an investigation began into his sketchy campaign finances.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatchreported in December 2018:
Documents and testimony showed that Greitens ran an off-the-books gubernatorial campaign in 2014 and 2015, and lied about his campaign's acceptance of a charity donor list from the Mission Continues, a veterans charity Greitens founded in 2007
This guy's a winner, much like the former occupant of the White House is a winner.
If Greitens runs for Blunt's former seat, Republicans could simply support somebody in the primary who did not do all those things. That's apparently harder than it sounds, so Republican leaders are considering "aggressive steps to stop Greitens from winning the nomination." Is this anything like the aggressive steps taken against Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert? That didn't work out so well. Republican leadership should stop pretending it can control its Frankenstein-monster primary electorate.
"In official Washington, there's a lot of concern because this was originally a seat that would be in Republican hands to stop the left," said Gregg Keller, a longtime Missouri-based Republican strategist. "The easiest way to give this seat to a Biden acolyte is to have a divisive Republican primary, followed by someone incredibly damaged like Eric Greitens being the candidate in the general election."
Top Republicans are apparently worried Greitens could possibly win a crowded primary race. Which says a lot about GOP primary voters! If the left is so dangerous, surely Republican voters can get their act together and not support the credibly accused sexual assaulter? Dr. Seuss's life is at stake, after all!
"Greitens is a clear and present danger to botching the race for the GOP," said Scott Reed, the former senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
He's also a garbage human. That's the more pressing issue. Besides, we all know Republicans like Scott Reed and Gregg Keller won't hesitate to endorse Greitens if he somehow wins the primary. It won't matter if the Democratic nominee is a self-proclaimed sensible moderate, Republicans will still point and cry, “SOCIALIST!"
Greitens has fully embraced conservative victimhood. He's claimed a “liberal conspiracy" was out to get him. He's also a full-throated MAGA supporter, and the one-term loser's allies have encouraged his comeback. This includes former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Rudy Giuliani's son and former White House aide Andrew Giuliani.
It's only a matter of time until the twice-impeached thug endorses Greitens. Those sorts of guys tend to stick together.
[Politico]
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Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He writes make believe for Cafe Nordo, an immersive theatre space in Seattle. Once, he wrote a novel called “Mahogany Slade,” which you should read or at least buy. He's also on the board of the Portland Playhouse theatre. His son describes him as a “play typer guy."
