Coming Back with the Dead. Some Republican diehards are hoping that a gravely ill Democratic Senator from South Dakota will die, or be so severely and permanently disabled that he would have to resign his seat so the Republican Governor, Mike Rounds, could appoint a Republican replacement, and thereby rob Democrats, and The People, of control of the U.S. Senate.
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Would any decent person do that? No. But far too many Republicans nowadays are not decent people, so need to be reminded of what is right as against what is just plain wrong. An article in The New York Times yesterday suggested that despite popular feeling that only a Democrat should be appointed to fill Johnson's unexpired term, the current Governor is so partisan he might eagerly appoint a Republican. I therefore sent today, by feedback form at his website, this message to South Dakota's governor:

It is not for one man to undo the will to change of a Nation of 300 million. If it should fall to you to replace Senator Johnson, it is your moral obligation to replace him with a Democrat. Otherwise you would be guilty of insurrection against The People of the United States, and tar the Republican Party with the same dirty-politics/usurpers brush that marred the first term of the current President. Last month, the national Republican leadership actively dissuaded defeated Republicans from challenging their defeats in needless recounts. You surely understand that they had good reason for doing that: they didn't want The People to be furious with Republicans for trying to steal the election. That same reasoning militates against your appointing a Republican replacement for Senator Johnson. Your party's national leadership wanted Republicans to learn from their mistakes and do better next election. They wanted Republicans to be seen as having class, and grace under pressure; to be seen to be good losers, as the surest way to keep the people from looking upon the Republican Party with indignation and disgust. If you don't heed that advice but insist on trying to undo the will of The People as plainly spoken loud on November 7th, outraged South Dakotans should drag you from your office, toss a stout rope over the nearest strong branch or streetlite support, and hoist you by the neck until you are dead. Then doctors should transplant every organ from your body that might conceivably be useful - into Democrats.

While most people in the Nation today think of South Dakota, if they think of it at all, as a Midwestern farm or ranching state, Deadwood, South Dakota was very much a part of the Wild West, and Governor Rounds surely knows about his state's rough-justice days. Being lynched by outraged citizens may be more thinkable to a South Dakotan governor than to an Eastern or Southern governor.
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I have been to the South Dakota capitol building in Pierre. There's a park right by it, and there may well be trees strong enuf to hang a tyrant from in that park, not far from the magical eternal flame of gas that emerges from a fountain — water! — to burst into flame in honor of the state's veterans.
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I have also been to Mount Rushmore, the wonderful, wonderful monumental sculpture group by Gutzon Borglum near Rapid City in the western part of South Dakota. It truly is a must-see. Mount Rushmore is not just Gutzon Borglum's largest work, but also one of the largest completed sculptures in the world, if not the very largest. My city, Newark, contains Borglum's largest sculpture in bronze, "Wars of America" in Military Park, Downtown. We also have two other Borglum sculptures, one of Lincoln and one of an Indian and Pilgrim. While those are fine works, nothing compares to Mount Rushmore. If you haven't been, go — unless Governor Rounds disgraces South Dakota by appointing a Republican to replace Senator Johnson, in which case all decent people should boycott South Dakota in every way until its voters get to speak in the next Senatorial election.
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South Dakota must do the honorable thing. Let Governor Rounds ask, "What would the Presidents on Mount Rushmore do?" Washington was not just nonpartisan, but actively hostile to "factions". He sought national unity and political consensus. Jefferson was a Democrat (tho the name was then "Democratic-Republican", shortened at the time to "Republicans"). Lincoln was a latter-day Republican, when the "Democratic-Republicans" had long since chosen to be called "Democrats". And Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, but a liberal! I suggest that not one of them would have tried to thwart the will of The People by undoing a change in control of the United States Senate effected by the electorate after a long, expensive, and hard-fought campaign in which tens of millions of people made plain that they want change.
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Think about that, Governor Rounds. Do South Dakota proud.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,946 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:03 PM