"Offbeat" GOP Candidates? Let's Look at the Democrat Party, Too

Politico ran a story Thursday entitled Will its offbeat candidates hurt the GOP?. The article focused on candidates like Rand Paul (KY-Sen), Sharon Angle (NV-Sen), Linda McMahon (CT-Sen), and a few others.

I have a few candidates I'd like to point out to Politico that are Democrats, but first, a few words from Rush Limbaugh, who I thought had a great response to this on his radio show:

The Politico could run a list of the offbeat legislation the Democrats introduced every day in Congress like Rangel's constant efforts to reintroduce the draft.  Maxine Waters today blamed Bush for her ethics problems.  We got Fortney "Pete" Stark.  These are normal people, all of these wondrous Democrats.  But of course The Politico has to go out and find offbeats in the Republican Party.  This Burns guy gets one thing right.  "It’s almost impossible to imagine a group of nominees like this emerging in any other election cycle, and the willingness of primary voters to embrace such downright strange candidates underscores just how violently the 2010 electorate has turned against political institutions and the would-be officeholders who belong to them." He's exactly right.  We've gotten so odd that somebody who wants to reform Social Security is a political offbeat.  Somebody who wants to shore up Medicare and fix it a political offbeat.  Somebody who wants to fix the Department of Education is considered an offbeat candidate.  Somebody who wants to bring the budget in line is an offbeat, oddball, weirdo candidate.  Somebody who wants to end the crime and the fraud and the waste in government is an offbeat candidate.

And now for a few "offbeat" Democrat candidates, starting down in Florida.

Florida Democrats have two main candidates for U.S. Senate (Marco Rubio is the GOP candidate, and governor Charlie Crist is running as an Independent). Jeff Greene is a billionaire, who made most of his money in a questionable real estate venture in California. But, that's not his only problem.

In 2005, his 145-foot yacht dropped anchor right smack dab in the middle of Belize's protected barrier reef (designated by the UN as a "World Heritage Site"). Greene was slapped with a $1.87 million fine by the Belize government... but he's not been back to pay it, and in fact denies that the event ever occurred.

Let's move to Texas.

Kesha Rogers is the Democrat nominee for Congressional District 22. Rogers is best known for being a LaRouche candidate.

Kesha, like all LaRouchers, believes that President Obama is a puppet for the British Empire and their imperialist bankers. Mhmm.

Moving on...

No list of "offbeat" candidates would be complete without the infamous Alvin Greene. Greene is one of the most bizarre candidates who actually won a primary in this election cycle.

The candidate has had disastrous, blooper-reel interviews with the media, and to top off all his other mishaps, he was indicted on Friday on two charges - a misdemeanor for communicating obscene materials to a person without consent, and a felony for showing pornography to a teenage student in a South Carolina college computer lab.

And yes, this guy won the Democrat primary, over the candidacy of a longtime Democrat politician.

And last, but not least, Oklahoma's own Democrat U.S. Senate nominee - Jim Rogers.

Rogers is a perennial candidate who never campaigns. He wears the same old red campaign sweatshirt, with "Jim Rogers for U.S. Senate 20__" ironed on the back. I saw the man when he filed for U.S. Senate in 2008, and he had taped "08" to update the shirt from his previous run for office.


I didn't even go into all the high-ranking Democrat incumbents who are facing ethics investigations, either. Just a closing, interesting note - these four candidates that I highlighted only have two last names: Rogers and Greene.