Country Roads

Alan Mollohan is out in West Virginia. He voted exactly the way his party leaders wanted him to and that wasn't enough for him to win his party's primary: Mollohan Out

With votes counted in 342 of 670 precincts, Democratic state Senator Mike Oliverio leads 14-term Democratic Congressman Alan Mollohan 57% to 43% in a district that has been represented by a Mollohan for 48 of the last 56 years. The vote totals are Oliverio 20,601 to 15,788. Mollohan is losing all the population centers. I don’t see him picking up the votes in the remaining precincts.

The Associated Press has not called the race. I will. Oliverio beat him.

The media will surely say that this is another example of anti-incumbent fervor; pointing to Crist and Bennett (hey, they're Republicans! No one's safe!) with Spector and Murtha's old district coming up next week. And that's not to mention the Dodds, Obeys, Stupaks and Dorgans who retired in the face of terminal polling.

But, these DC lifers aren't leaving office because of an "anti-incumbent" mood. The voters have been consistent in voting out a certain type of incumbent: the appropriators and fake moderates who have been spending too much money, voting for trillion-dollar bills over the objections of a majority of the electorate, and betraying their principles (Mollohan, apparently was seen as a pro-life Democrat. Are people really that naive?). Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn are both running for re-election this year. Have you heard of anyone mounting a credible challenge against them? Me neither. If you opposed TARP, the stimulus, and Obamacare, you've got nothing to worry about. If you supported any of these...you might have to sit down with your kids for a "Daddy might be home a lot more next year" chat.

No, liberals are in the cross-hairs this year, especially those moderate Republicans and "conservative" (hah!) Democrats who talk a good centrist game on the stump and then vote to the left in DC. The Left has always relied on moderates to pass their agenda, but these moderates usually end up taking the fall, whether in France, the Soviet Union, or the US in 2010. If you know your history, this is not a surprise, but we know how much attention most people give to history.

The MSM loves the idea of a general "anti-incumbent" mood because it allows them to side-step the anti-left agenda in most voters' minds. This also shouldn't be a surprise, as the MSM is little more than the PR arm for the Party of Appropriators, who have been the real third party in American politics, and whose ranks are being thinned this year. Don Surber has a revealing history of the level of media support that Mollohan - and his father before him! - received from West Virginia news outlets, even as the tales of corruption and double-dealing became too loud to ignore: Mollohan Did Not See It Coming

I recall a Charleston Gazette editorial from September 22, 1985, about his Dad: “At least one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate are millionaires. Probably the number is substantially more than that How many millionaires sit in the House of Representatives isn’t known, but many lawmakers there are wealthy. Moreover some of the wealthy, like former Rep. Robert Mollohan of West Virginia, today a multimillionaire, have exploited their public trust to enrich themselves.”

And this from a Charleston Gazette on April 25, 1989: “All this sounds reminiscent of the way Rep. Mollohan’s father, former Rep. Robert Mollohan, D-W.Va., became a millionaire in Congress. He was notorious for self-enrichment deals with outside partners. “

That editorial called for Democrats to dump Jim Wright — another crook who did it legally — as Speaker of the House.

But Ned Chilton is long gone and the Charleston Gazette defended Alan Mollohan, brushing aside serious ethics lapses as the fantasies of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Sadly, as tough as the Charleston Gazette was on the old man, it defended the son.

We are not just watching an anti-incumbent wave. We are watching the political side of the DC Establishment - the Old Bulls and the Appropriators who have done so much to damage this country - taken apart piece by piece.