Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman! - by Carl Owen

Those old gray beards like me will recall the old, short-lived television program detailing the misadventures of the title character, Mary Hartman.  Clueless, amoral and dysfunctional she suffered through the trials and travails of an equally oddball group of family and friends. So why now has Congresswoman Mary Fallin now fallen into an unfavorable comparison of an obscure fictional character?

It's really not her fault. She just happens to be the victim of the current vocabulary of most political hopefuls. Every TV ad I've seen for all the competitors running for her soon to be vacant seat want to restore "integrity" or "honesty" or "competency" or whatever to Congress. Now in fairness I'm a Democrat. I rarely agreed with any of Congresswoman Fallin's policies or ideology. But I never questioned her integrity or honesty  and I'll let the competency thing stand since her power ranking of 400 odd Congress critters rarely edged above the bottom five (people not percent). Despite our differences I would have no problem leaving my wallet on her desk.

We have now set the standards to be a Congressman as nothing more than who can shout the same simple-minded slogans louder and more frequently than the others. We have "constitutional conservatives" or "principled conservatives" (oxymoron alert) and "extreme conservatives".  The Tea Partiers are people who have trouble spelling "conservative".  The only plan they have to right America is to overturn anything President Obama ever did or proposed to do. I hope the President doesn't issue a declaration of support for the Boy Scouts or they're goners. I always thought those little short pants wearing freaks were commies. Or socialists it's getting so hard to tell who is what anymore.

I guess I should be thrilled. After all who knew we had so many constitutional "experts" in Oklahoma? Now if you disagree with policy it's not just a wrong position, it's unconstitutional and thus illegal. Extremism is  the new black. It all started with Newt Gingrich and was refined by Frank Lunz.  Don't just disagree, ratchet up the language to a visceral level. Don't get people to thinking, just get them mad. Forget reasonable discourse turn people in pitchfork and torch carrying mobs storming the castle gates. Now it's advanced. Instead of clubs they start toting assault rifles wanting to overturn legal elections they don't like with hints of violence. Disclaimer Two. I'm a retired Army Reserve officer. The first yahoo who attempts an armed insurrection and I'll volunteer to return to active service to hunt the traitorous SOB's down.  You want your policies to run America? Get the most votes, that's how it's done constitutionally.

Which gets back to where I started. Why do all the Republicans running for the Fifth District of Oklahoma think it's high time to have someone with integrity replace the outgoing representative, Mary Fallin?  Why don't any of them want to claim they'll continue her exceptional service? More importantly what does this say about their collective opinions about what kind of governor she'll make?