Bye-Bye Bennett

Sen. Bob Bennett just got himself un-nominated for U.S. Senate.

Here's what you should notice about this:

First, that a whole parade of so-called "mainstream" Republicans endorsed Bennett-- Mitt Romney, Orrin Hatch, Jon Huntsman Jr.*-- and he still got the boot. A lot of these guys don't realize that people voted for them in prior years not because they just love them for who they are, but because they were the lesser of two evils, so they're vulnerable when somebody less evil steps up.

Second, that there are still people in the U.S. of A. will ignore all their mainstream media signals and vote their conscience, and a hell of a lot of them live in Utah. Local media endorsed Bennett too.

My impression of Bennett was that he's a good and decent man who I really don't want to send to the Senate. He just compromises too much. Now, I'm no fool; I know that if Senators were voting on a sandwich to give to the American people, and some Senators wanted a peanut butter sandwich and others wanted a ham sandwich, we'd end up eating a peanut-butter-and-ham sandwich. That's just the nature of politics. But when some Senators propose we eat a poop sandwich, Sen. Bennett's right there proposing a peanut-butter-and-poop sandwich. And today he's scratching his head trying to figure out why the heck we suddenly don't like peanut butter.

Case in point: CPSIA. Several Senators and Representatives proposed bills to amend it, and Bennett was among them. Bennett's "solution"? Delay its implementation by a year to give CPSC time to write the rules we have to use to comply. Wanna see how well that would have worked out? We're now months past the deadline Bennett's bill would have set, and CPSC is still not done writing the rules we're supposed to be following.

Sorry, Bob, but there's some things you just don't compromise on.

* OK, so he didn't endorse endorse him. But like MangledCat says at the link, what does it say about your view when you'd suddenly rather change the political system to one that favors Bennett? Think the guy's a Bridgewater fan?