Tin Foil Hat not working
Make sure you test him for poison. You never know.
Hm. A not terribly notable Democratic Senator, so far as I know not in charge of any committee that may lead to Bush’s downfall. I assume he tends well to his South Dakota consituency — being nationally “not notable” isn’t a bad thing, so long as you don’t have presidential ambitions.
In 2002, Tim Johnson won re-election and staved off the national tide with about 500 votes off of, as absurd as this may seem, Tom Daschle’s coat-tails. The National Review had a cover story that gave the spurious claim that that election was stolen — some Native American precints were the final precints to report, and the rule of how one steals an election is to report your voting strong-holds where your people are in charge last so you know the number of votes you need to report to win. That, so far as I could tell from the article, was about the extent of their suspicions that Johnson’s election was invalid. I don’t think that this has permeated the mind of the general Republican partisan, though I do believe that Robert Novak believes this.
Nevertheless, the Republican Party probably believes that rightfully this seat is theirs. A razor thin margin in a Republican state, it looked like an aberration during a general Republican night, and Thune went on to defeat Daschle two years later. And mind you, the 2008 Senate picture presents slim pickings for the Republican Party — beyond Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and beyond a possible retirement by Jay Rockefellar in West Virginia… well, one termers are often obvious targets, but the one first term Democratic Senator — Mark Pryor of Arkansas — is a Democrat in a state with a lot of Democrats just like Mark Pryor.
I wonder about the Anthrax scare in October of 2001, a moment that invited and incubated conspiracy theory. That case is cold, even as the recent 2006 Anthrax Revival scare was traced to this Free Republic poster (and science fiction fan), whose venom toward Nancy Pelosi, Keith Olberman, Air America Radio and such apparently was all too real violent. I always assumed that the 2001 Anthrax threat was a similar type of culprit — Tom Daschle, “American Media” of the National Enquirer and Tom Brokaw at NBC News — the liberal media — and, Patrick Leahy chosen perhaps because of the issue of judicial appointments.
The conspiracy theory holds that Daschle and Leahy were at the time of the receiving the Anthrax threats deliberating on the Patriot Act. The Anthrax settled the matter for them… yes… Patriot Act… in its entirety. I suspect that they would have been no diffferent in their fealty toward the executive branch, since post 9/11 the United States had something of a “Unity Government”. But to consider that is to over-think the matter; it always makes sense to get the opposition party in line and frighten everyone generally for the purpose of gaining and maintaining power.
I don’t believe Mel Carnahan’s death created much conspiratorial speculation in 2000– though I may be wrong, and at any rate it was in the shadow of what would turn out to be a very controversial election. It resurfaced, though, as the back-drop to Paul Wellstone. I’ve looked at that bit of tin-foil hattery here, and here, and here, and here. 2002 was a good year, when because the conventional wisdom took Bush and the government so at face value, any deviations had it brandished one as “conspiracy theorist” or “lunatic leftist fringe”, so if that is going to happen one may go ahead and go all the way.
Tim Johnson gives me no grist for the mill, though. I noted a “prepare for the conspiracy theories” from a prominent blog of sorts. That is an overstatement. A quick glance and I don’t even notice anything on Alex Jones’s site. I suppose I may go ahead and look at more partisan picks for this mill — anyone post anything interesting at Democratic Underground? Mike Malloy? How does such a conspiracy work to select Tim Johnson? Is there a series of matrices that move through the state laws and elected state officials and state political climates to arrive at the optimum Democrat — or if you decide that this isn’t partisan simply general elected Senator — to off — to dissolve one part of the ‘checks and balances’ in overseeing the Bush Adminstration / Regime / Juanta?