For Whom The Bell Tolls

The forced U.S. Senate Republican primary runoff in Mississippi that might being a lunatic talk radio host to the ballot in November (and snatch defeat from the jaws of the victory that Republican control for the Senate is fast becoming) and the nomination of a Republican woman to run for retiring Democratic U.S. Senator Tom Harkin's seat in Iowa - despite the fact that her only qualification for the office is castrating pigs (talk about a candidate who's not kosher!) got all the attention in last week's primary results. But there were a few results in New Jersey and California that deserve some extra attention.

In New Jersey, the Republicans nominated Jeffrey Bell to oppose Cory Booker for the Class 2 U.S. Senate seat Booker now holds.  If that name sounds familiar to you, that's because Bell first ran for the same Senate seat in 1978, back when the Bee Gees were on the charts and Steve Martin was still doing stand-up . . . and singing "King Tut."  Bell knocked out incumbent Republican senator Clifford Case in the 1978 primary as the conservative alternative to the moderate Eastern Republican establishment that Case represented; Bell's victory was one of the first shots across the bow of the American body politic from the right-wing destroyer that sailed into the elections of 1980.  (Bell lost to Democrat Bill Bradley in the New Jersey 1978 U.S. Senate general election.) Bell represented the Goldwater-Reagan-Gingrich revolution that has been in control of Washington almost as long as the Iranian Islamic revolution has controlled Tehran.  Low taxes, pro-business, disregard for different peoples - the whole nine yards.  These days, Bell is known not just for his also-ran status as a Senate candidate - he ran again for the Senate from New Jersey in 1982 but lost the primary - but for his 2012 book "The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism," which argues for the understanding that individual rights are given by the Creator and do not need protection or sanctification by the government.  The book essentially makes the case for establishing a code of ethics based on a Caucasian patriarchy that has long since become obsolete.  "Social conservatism," he writes, "has been in recent decades the only mass-based political persuasion that fully believes in and defends the core ideas of the American founding."

Core ideas of the founding? Like the idea that a black slave was three-fifths of a person and that only men with property could vote?

Bell has no chance of winning.  But the fact that he's trying for the U.S. Senate once again after two previous unsuccessful tries only underscores my point that Republicans who lose bids for office, unlike Democrats who do the same, refuse to take no for answer and keep coming back for more.  Democrats follow the "one strike and you're out" rule.  That explains why a defeated Scott Brown moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to win a Senate election and why Martha Coakley did not.

Meanwhile, in California, New Age guru Marianne Williamson - whose essential message is to do everything you do with love and an interest to serve humanity - ran for the U.S. House from the Golden State's 33rd District.  As contradictory as that sounds, Williamson - whose district is currently represented by the retiring Henry Waxman - was serious about going to Washington and bringing a moral, humane tone to the halls of Congress in order to push for the expansion of women's and minority rights, stop the firearm murder epidemic, help the poor, rescue the environment, and get members of Congress to think of something greater than the interests of K Street lobbyists.

Marianne Williamson ran as an independent in a nonpartisan primary, with the two top vote-getters going on to the general election.

She came in fourth.

How pathetic - a woman with such a great message and a positive agenda couldn't even make it in one of the country's most liberal U.S. House districts?  But, then again, she did compete in a field of seventeen, so you have to make allowances.

Full disclosure requires me to state that one of my friends in the modeling trade, Catherine Roberts, was a Williamson supporter.  She even appeared in a one-minute ad for Williamson with actress Marcia Cross and other notable women for Williamson's candidacy, which appears below.  (Catherine appears 41 or 42 seconds into the ad.)  The recurring tagline is that they "woke up" to the need to take urgent action to change America for the better.

Unfortunately, most California voters slept in.  Turnout in the primary statewide reportedly hit new lows, continuing a 20-year trend of apathy in the state's preliminary voting rounds.

It was so bad in the Democratic 31st District that the two top vote-getters were Republicans.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, dear American citizen . . . it tolls for thee. :-(