GOPiggyWell, tomorrow is a big day in my state. Earlier this year, GOP shill and big business appendage Charlie Norwood (GA-10th District) died in office. This has opened a power vacuum, and now a delightful cast of misfits are vying for Norwood’s old job. There are more candidates in this “non-partisan” race than there are vying for the GOP 2008 Presidential bid, and of course, the wing-nuttiest, most deliriously stupid one is in the lead.

None of this would matter at all to me and the other denizens of my sweet little liberal college town had we not been gerrymandered into a much larger, conservative district last year, a decision that was made by the Republicans in the state legislature completely against the wishes of the people who live here. No one in Athens was consulted. It was just announced that as part of the 2006 legislative agenda, the bluest district in Georgia would be cut into pieces and subsumed into surrounding Republican-leaning counties.

Howie knows the score:

You haven’t heard much about the campaign, mostly because there hasn’t been much of a campaign. Everyone assumes tire salesman/state Senator Jim Whitehead (R), who’s been endorsed by the GOP establishment and the Widow Norwood, will win the seat.

(snip)

I was looking over the campaign platforms yesterday and it was pretty astounding. They’re all so extreme right back there. Each one tries to out-loon the other– especially when it comes to immigration, where you just can’t be crazy enough. One kook, Paul Broun, Jr., wants to build a wall not just from California to the Gulf of Mexico but one separating us from Canada too. And one of the other GOP maniacs, Bill Greene, claimed “we don’t know whether they’re here for a job or they’re here to slit our throats.” Meanwhile no one knows precisely what Whitehead stands for since he’s refused to debate the other candidates.

Ah, yes, Jim Whitehead, our Republican front-runner, is such a whack-job that his handlers are afraid to send him to public debates for fear of what he’ll say. He’s already made it clear that he’d like to see my town destroyed. (Too many liberals!)

His handlers have apparently advised him that the less he says in public, the better off he’ll be, and given Whitehead’s record, there’s wisdom in that advice. At one point, for example, Whitehead charged that “left-wing political activists” were “intentionally registering illegal aliens to vote, including known al-Qaida terrorists.” He has also argued that the war in Iraq isn’t a big deal in the 10th District, and in 2004 joked that liberal Athens, which is in the district, should be bombed while saving the University of Georgia football team.

And people wonder why I concentrate primarily on national and international politics. Why would I want to waste my time studying Georgia politicians when there’s already a perfectly good cage of poo-flinging, purple-assed baboons at the Atlanta zoo?

But bombing universities to kill the liberals inside isn’t even the most intriguing part of Whitehead’s platform. No, my favorite Jim Whitehead Prozac moment is this little tidbit that he seems to have picked up at the John Bolton School of Mythical Foreign Threats:

According to Whitehead “Venezuelan President Cesar [sic] Chavez is ‘teaching al-Qaeda and people like that, terrorists, how to come across the border, look like Mexicans, act like Mexicans and understand how to talk in this country. They’re coming across just as fast as the Mexicans cross.’… Terrorists receive training in Venezuela before crossing the border, Senator Whitehead said. But it’s more of an educational system than training camps, which would be targets for military action, he said. He said he would support a pre-emptive strike on Venezuela if facts justify it.”

I’m so happy that this guy is probably going to be my next congressman that I could just swallow an entire box of upholstery tacks, and chase it with a shot of Liquid-Plumr. There is a very slim chance that Democrat James Marlow will win enough votes to force a run-off. Of course, Marlow’s known in the area as something of a centrist Blue Dog-type, but electing a potted aspidistra would be preferable to having Bubba Whitehead up there in DC doing his damnedest to perpetuate the stereotype of southerners as pig-ignorant provincials who need to take night classes to evolve opposable thumbs.

Pray for North Georgia, my friends. Clearly, we’re going to need all the help we can get.