Glory, glory, hallelujah! Rep. Andy “It’s Not a Sin to be White’’ Barr is marching on to save the republic from itself.
Just ask him.
Barr, of Lexington, the Republican nominee to replace the retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, attended a Republican gathering in Pikeville on Sept. 19 to warn that socialists are storming the beaches, or something like that, and, by golly, he means to stop them.
“If we lose a Republican seat from Kentucky in the Senate, we will lose the Senate,” Barr said, according to the Appalachian News-Express. “And if we lose the Senate, we will lose our country. That is what is at stake.”
Andy Barr responsible for saving our country? Boy, doesn’t that fill you with confidence.
Now, losing a landmass as big as the United States isn’t like misplacing your car keys, and it makes you wonder how it could get lost in the first place. The GOP currently holds a 53-45 advantage over Democrats in the upper chamber with two independents who generally side with the Dems. But analysts, 34 days before the mid-term election, maintain Democrats have a halfway decent shot at grabbing the majority in both houses of Congress, owing to a number of factors, mostly related to that unmitigated disaster identified as Republican President Donald J. Trump, the man our boy Andy, coincidently, has snuggled up to like a conjoined twin.
The News-Express article didn’t detail Barr’s explanation for how his potential electoral loss would result in America somehow magically transforming into something different and, apparently, distasteful, especially since the decision on the nation’s direction will be rendered by voters at the polls.
After all, a change in congressional control occurs every now and then.
Republicans regained the House majority in 2022 and the Senate in 2024. Things haven’t worked very well since then, to be honest, but the republic remains standing. Sort of.
Barr did allow that his Democratic foe, former state representative Charles Booker, of Louisville, presents a battle between his “common sense’’ approach and the “crazy’’ offered by Booker, whom he termed a “socialist.’’
So, it appears Andy believes the only way to assure we don’t lose our country, whatever that means, is to vote for him. A vote against him, then, means you can’t stomach the joint.
Andy has this thing about socialism – he hates it, which is fine and understandable.
But creating a fiction that the United States of America stands to become Romania under Ceaușescu if Kentucky voters side with Booker is silly. And it’s a theme he returns to at every opportunity, hinting it is the nation’s fate if it sides with the Democrats, and, coincidently, against him, on Nov. 3.
In an interview several months ago with the Commonwealth Policy Center, some right-wing outfit based in Frankfort, Barr said socialists represent “the dominant, ascendant wing of the Democratic Party’’ and “that’s scary, it’s scary for our country.’’
Barr said Republicans, independents and “soft Democrats’’ who believe “the socialist wing of that party has gone crazy’’ should “join us to save the country.’’
“The country’s on the line,’’ he said. “There’s no more important election than this one.’’
Andy Barr, the solitary hero. Only he can defeat socialism with the help of millions of dollars in campaign money, of course. He remains the odds-on favorite to succeed McConnell despite the falling GOP numbers around the country. Booker pointed to a recent poll from Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, that showed Barr with a 49-40 lead. Still Booker touted the results, noting the margin falls to a 43-43 tie after potential voters are provided with information on both candidates. Regardless, that ain’t much to hang your hat on.
Now, to be fair, a growing number of people who vote Democratic consider themselves Democratic Socialists, about 34 percent according to a CNN poll released in July. And that faction has experienced some electoral success, particularly in areas like New York where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-NY, is an emerging leader and Zohran Mamdani is a reasonably popular mayor in a city that grumbles about everything.
Most of the growth among Democratic Socialists is coming from young voters who likely are just socialism curious, if you will, acting in response to the ongoing horror of Trump, who now finds himself, at least in some polls, with approval in the 30 percent range.
But casting himself as the warrior who will defeat the heathens and save the country from circling the drain is ludicrous. America is a lot more resilient and adaptable than Andy Barr is willing to credit it for. It has survived a Civil War, a Depression, 9-11 and, at least to this juncture, the Trump administration. To think the whole thing will collapse unless Andy puts his thumb in the dyke is a) a prime example of self-glorification and b) selling America short.
The whole thing reminds me of Mark Twain explaining in one of his lectures his departure from the Confederate Army – I deserted, he said, and the South fell.
And why is Andy zooming in on socialists? What about Nazis, who seem to be gaining sway within his own Republican Party?
Before you get all hot and bothered, that’s not me saying that, folks. It’s Karl Rove, the acknowledged Republican mastermind behind former President George W. Bush’s successful campaigns in 2000 and 2004.
In an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Sept. 26, Rove, who served a Bush’s deputy chief of staff, said his old party has a Nazi problem that may wind up costing it dearly during the upcoming election.
“We didn’t labor in the wilderness to build a conservative party that was inclusive and welcoming … to see it taken over by a bunch of bigots,” Rove said.
In his talk, Rove bashed the influence of several far-right activists on the Republican Party, including Nick Fuentes who, Rove said, “goes to Dallas and meets with a bunch of Republican leaders. This guy is a Nazi. We’ve got all these people getting on their little podcasts and so forth, saying: ‘We’re just asking questions about the Jews.’’
Any number of White supremacist groups, like the Proud Boys, maintain links with the GOP and Trump. But in Andy’s view it’s the socialists, a minority within the Democratic party, that presents the most danger to the body politic.
America is America and will remain so after the election, regardless of outcome.
Barr needs to spend more time listening to Pete Townsend – Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.