Wingnut Carpetbagger Strategy for Winning South Dakota Seats: Recruit Mel Gibson

Once again, I find myself wanting to respond to wingnut conservative blogger Brad Ford. Alas, since Ford is as bad a writer as Secretary of Agriculture Walt Bones, it's hard to formulate a coherent response. Both Bones and Ford appear to write from within an agenda-padded cell that keeps them from getting out and testing their words for logical consistency, narrative coherence, or civilized decency.

But as a teacher and a patriot, I feel obliged to respond.

Ford's latest obtuse rant opens by advocating kingship ("that is the governmental model of both the Old and New Testaments"). He then grumbles about how kingship continues to operate in South Dakota:

In some states like South Dakota, the concept of “kingship” partially survives in choosing candidates who can claim kinship to long-rooted or “historical” families. The continuity with the past may be illusory, but who cares. The same holds for a candidate’s agricultural connections.

But perhaps merit should be championed–to the exclusion of blue-bloodedness, homestead family ties, ranching or farming, race or ethnicity, or other identities [Brad Ford, "Merit, Carpetbaggers, and South Dakota Politics," The Right Side, 2012.12.15].

Ford's solution: carpetbagging à la Hillary Clinton. Ford seems to call for South Dakota Republicans to recruit Tom Clancy, Bruce Willis, or Mel Gibson to run for South Dakota's Senate seat.

Wow. This from a Republican whose party argued publicly that South Dakota native Matt Varilek wasn't South Dakotan enough to represent us in Congress because he'd gotten a college education and traveled the world.

Ford supports his argument by concluding with a link to a video by Mike Carroll, a black man who calls blacks who voted to re-elect President Obama "slaves," "savages," "bubblehead Negro[es]," and "monkeys." The video is consistent with Ford's previously expressed racist views. But how it justifies recruiting Mel Gibson to run for Senate from South Dakota on "merit" against M. Michael Rounds's bluebloodedness or Kristi Noem's farm and ranch ties escapes me.

There are three logical explanations for Brad Ford's ramblings. I offer them in ascending order of simplicity and plausibility:

1. Ford is offering public-service ink blots, vague pen spillage that invites us to find our own patterns and meanings.
2. Ford is a provocateur, saying wild things he doesn't mean to drive traffic to Gordon Howie's Web village.
3. Ford is a substandard thinker and writer.

I vote for #3.