Remember the candidacy of convicted coal mining company CEO Don Blankenship for the Senate seat in West Virginia? He was convicted of neglecting required coal mine safety measures when CEO of Massey Energy, resulting in the deaths of 29 Massey employees. He’s in the GOP primary and doing well – too well, and this is disturbing what passes for the mainstream GOP, according to Politico:
The Republican establishment has launched an emergency intervention in the West Virginia Senate primary aimed at stopping recently imprisoned coal baron Don Blankenship from winning the party’s nomination.
Late last week, a newly formed super PAC generically dubbed the “Mountain Families PAC” began airing TV ads targeting Blankenship, who spent one year behind bars following a deadly 2010 explosion at his Upper Big Branch Mine. The national party isn’t promoting its role in the group, but its fingerprints are all over it.
The 30-second commercials, which the group is spending nearly $700,000 to air, accuse Blankenship’s company of contaminating drinking water by pumping “toxic coal slurry,” even as the multimillionaire installed a piping system that pumped clean water to his mansion.
The primary result will act as a measuring stick for how far the GOP base has slid to the right. Are they willing to embrace a former coal mining CEO who constantly fought safety regulations for the mines, neglected those measures and therefore lost lives? He claims it wasn’t his fault, but the government’s, and of course I’m not in any position to evaluate such claims – but it doesn’t really matter. The incident and Blankenship’s attitude will be ammunition for the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin. If the base rejects him, all well and good, at least in proportion to the severity of the rejection. But if he wins the nomination, then it’s an indication that the base is continuing to slide to the right.
Just as importantly, there’s some irony here in that the Republicans have long run on assertions that add up to Too Much Regulation and Corruption In Washington. Blankenship is using those themes in his run:
He has far outspent his primary opponents, Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whom he castigates as pawns of the GOP establishment.
The GOP has sowed the farmland with persistent messages about the corruption of Washington, and then elected a President who personifies corruption. The entire situation bears a striking resemblance to, oh, cannibalism.
And cannibals often suffer from highly destructive diseases like kuru. Sure, this stretches the analogy into flab, but I think there might be some weight to it, even so.
