Update 10:00pm: WTF?
The increasingly strange behavior of Republican Sen. Jim Bunning has led to speculation that he is suffering from some kind of dementia -- and tightened a race he once had in his pocket.
Over the past few months, Bunning has angrily pushed away reporters, exchanged testy words with a questioner at a Rotary Club and stuck to brief, heavily scripted remarks at campaign events, delivered in a halting monotone. The former major league baseball star now travels the Bluegrass State with a special police escort, at taxpayer expense. His explanation? Al-Qaida may be out to get him.
...At an annual Kentucky political event called Fancy Farm, Bunning was captured on videotape stalking off from a TV reporter after a Mongiardo supporter waved a campaign sign in view of the camera. The reporter gaped in surprise, her microphone still extended, as Bunning disappeared into the crowd.
...Also in August, Bunning got into a testy exchange with a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Paducah about military force readiness. Chick Ward, a Republican and a 27-year veteran of the Navy, challenged Bunning's assertion that U.S. forces were not stretched too thin with the deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bunning, apparently unused to such challenges, got red-faced and bristled. The club later asked Ward to resign, saying he had embarrassed the senator, according to the Paducah Sun and the Rotary Club's newsletter.
...More substantively, the incumbent would agree to only one debate with his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo. And the rules Bunning negotiated were bizarrely rigid: The encounter could not be live; the taping has to occur in the afternoon, not the evening; no audience could be present in the studio; and, under threat of legal action, Mongiardo could not use any sound clips or video of Bunning's debate performance in campaign advertisements.
...Saying falsely that he was needed in Washington this week for Senate votes, Bunning tore up his own carefully crafted debate agreement and refused to return to Kentucky on Monday for his one scheduled debate with Mongiardo. It was to have taken place at 2:30 p.m. Monday in the Lexington, Ky., studio of WKYT-TV. Instead, Bunning insisted on "debating" via satellite from the womblike conditions of the Republican National Committee headquarters studio in Washington.
The senator refused to allow a member of the Kentucky media to be present at the RNC studio to monitor whether Bunning was receiving assistance with his answers, according to Mongiardo campaign manager Kim Geveden and WKYT news director Jim Ogle. And Bunning refused to engage reporters via satellite in a previously agreed upon post-debate news conference, insisting instead that his 15 minutes of answering questions occur by telephone, without accompanying video footage.
...Mongiardo campaign manager Geveden said Bunning is "clearly afraid" of debating. "For six months we have been pursuing debates with Jim Bunning, and all he does is hide. He's hiding from the people of Kentucky, he's hiding from the press corps, and when he does on occasion travel into the state, he surrounds himself with bodyguards.
...The broadcast is slated for 8 p.m., right before the third presidential debate. To symbolize Bunning's retreat from the public square, WKYT's Ogle said he planned to leave the screen blank when airing the audio of Bunning's post-debate news conference. He said he would not fill the empty visual with a photograph of the senator.
Salon articleOver the past few months, Bunning has angrily pushed away reporters, exchanged testy words with a questioner at a Rotary Club and stuck to brief, heavily scripted remarks at campaign events, delivered in a halting monotone. The former major league baseball star now travels the Bluegrass State with a special police escort, at taxpayer expense. His explanation? Al-Qaida may be out to get him.
...At an annual Kentucky political event called Fancy Farm, Bunning was captured on videotape stalking off from a TV reporter after a Mongiardo supporter waved a campaign sign in view of the camera. The reporter gaped in surprise, her microphone still extended, as Bunning disappeared into the crowd.
...Also in August, Bunning got into a testy exchange with a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Paducah about military force readiness. Chick Ward, a Republican and a 27-year veteran of the Navy, challenged Bunning's assertion that U.S. forces were not stretched too thin with the deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bunning, apparently unused to such challenges, got red-faced and bristled. The club later asked Ward to resign, saying he had embarrassed the senator, according to the Paducah Sun and the Rotary Club's newsletter.
...More substantively, the incumbent would agree to only one debate with his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo. And the rules Bunning negotiated were bizarrely rigid: The encounter could not be live; the taping has to occur in the afternoon, not the evening; no audience could be present in the studio; and, under threat of legal action, Mongiardo could not use any sound clips or video of Bunning's debate performance in campaign advertisements.
...Saying falsely that he was needed in Washington this week for Senate votes, Bunning tore up his own carefully crafted debate agreement and refused to return to Kentucky on Monday for his one scheduled debate with Mongiardo. It was to have taken place at 2:30 p.m. Monday in the Lexington, Ky., studio of WKYT-TV. Instead, Bunning insisted on "debating" via satellite from the womblike conditions of the Republican National Committee headquarters studio in Washington.
The senator refused to allow a member of the Kentucky media to be present at the RNC studio to monitor whether Bunning was receiving assistance with his answers, according to Mongiardo campaign manager Kim Geveden and WKYT news director Jim Ogle. And Bunning refused to engage reporters via satellite in a previously agreed upon post-debate news conference, insisting instead that his 15 minutes of answering questions occur by telephone, without accompanying video footage.
...Mongiardo campaign manager Geveden said Bunning is "clearly afraid" of debating. "For six months we have been pursuing debates with Jim Bunning, and all he does is hide. He's hiding from the people of Kentucky, he's hiding from the press corps, and when he does on occasion travel into the state, he surrounds himself with bodyguards.
...The broadcast is slated for 8 p.m., right before the third presidential debate. To symbolize Bunning's retreat from the public square, WKYT's Ogle said he planned to leave the screen blank when airing the audio of Bunning's post-debate news conference. He said he would not fill the empty visual with a photograph of the senator.
Actually, it all sounds a lot like the Oaf of Office.
Reality has simply popped its garters, hasn't it? Maybe there was a threshhold, and Republicanism reached it - passed beyond it, so that all Republicans are now experiencing some degree of dementia. The hundredth monkey - or maybe that's chimp - syndrome.
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