Posted by
Jim Drake on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 2:57:45 PM
Dear Mitch,
Can it be only ten months since the election? It seems much longer since the four adults in my home lined up at dawn to cast ballots for John McCain et al, then sat down at dusk to watch his defeat and your relatively modest victory. The same four people will read your name on a fresh ballot five years from now but it's unknown which spot will get the X that day. And that should concern you no less than your involvement in next year's senate race concerns us.
Mitch, honest advice is best from a stranger: Step back from the 2010 senate race and think more about your own in 2014. You see, Kentucky's junior senate seat isn't your possession. Jim Bunning's re-election question wasn't actually yours to decide. And you should have really waited for the primary results before anointing Trey Grayson as Senator Bunning's successor.
America’s summer brought cool weather but hot tempers at town hall meetings across the map. Perhaps you think Democrats alone are perceived as the problem while Republicans experience rebirth as a solution. Again from a stranger, Mitch, please accept the current political reality or you may experience it more personally down the road. Your Kentucky constituents are aisle-blind in their displeasure with Washington.
Sure, the nation elected an administration that leans so far to the left that only their hand in our pocket has kept them from falling over. But the previous Republican president "abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system" and the senate Republican minority leader supported that bizarre view. Yes, no one has forgotten your "Yea" vote on TARP.
Next year, after primary voters determine their candidates, Kentucky will decide its next senator. In the coming months, you have first amendment rights, of course, but a senate minority leader’s voice can be a little louder than the average citizen’s and Kentucky's next junior senator should be the choice of your constituents, not of your political machine. Last words from this stranger, Mitch: Take care with the volume of your voice or risk rediscovering just how soft it was twenty six years ago.
Jim Drake