Republicans have had a good laugh at the expense of South Carolina Democrats, who nominated Alvin Greene to challenge for Jim DeMint’s Senate seat despite the fact that Greene didn’t campaign, has a pending felony obscenity investigation, and is barely coherent in his media interviews. (Wow, sounds like an Illinois race to me... Scott Lee Cohen, anyone?) But the tables are turned and now it may be time for Democrats to laugh at Republicans. The nominee for the Texas’ CD-22 has publicly called for Barack Obama’s impeachment and wants to abolish the UN. Democrats would have a field day making Kesha Rogers the face of the Republican Party across the entire nation … if it weren’t for the fact that Rogers is a Democrat: South Carolina’s unexpected Democratic nominee for the US Senate, mystery man Alvin Greene, says he wants to play golf with Barack Obama. But in Texas, another surprise Democratic primary winner, congressional nominee Kesha Rogers, wants to impeach the President. So while South Carolina party officials are still unsure of what to do about Greene’s success at the ballot box, Texas Democrats have no such reservations — they wasted little time in casting Rogers into exile and offering no support or recognition of her campaign to win what once was Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s old seat.
Rogers, 33, told TIME she is a “full time political activist” in the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement, a recruiting arm of the LaRouche political organization that is active on many college campuses. The LYM espouses LaRouche opposition to free trade and “globalism” (the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund) and it also calls for a return to a humanist classical education, emphasizing the works of Plato and Leibnitz. On her professional looking campaign website, kesharogers.com, she touts the LaRouche political philosophy — a mix of support for the economic policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the impeachment of President Obama — and calls Obama a “London and Wall Street backed puppet” whose policies will destroy the Democratic Party.
Well, maybe Texas Democrats in the 22nd district just got fooled from another Greene-like stealth candidacy. I’m sure they didn’t hear about Rogers’ nutty, LaRouchian politics before casting their ballots. Rogers probably got listed first on the ballot, right? Actually she was, but that’s not why she won:
Unlike South Carolina’s Greene, Rogers ran a high profile campaign, staking out a corner on a major intersection in the district to appear almost daily with a large sign: “Save NASA. Impeach Obama.” She garnered 7,467 votes, 53% of the vote, in a three way race that included a local information systems analyst Doug Blatt, who gained endorsements from local Democratic clubs and labor groups, and Freddie John Weider Jr., a preacher and onetime Libertarian candidate; Blatt came in second with 28% of the vote and Weider won 20%.
Now Democrats have refused to provide her any support, Time reports, accusing her of racism because of her connection to the LaRouche movement — which is an interesting allegation, considering that Rogers is African-American. Maybe someone should have looked at her picture before leaping immediately to the race-baiting smear. They would have been better off questioning her sanity.
Texas-22 will likely be a footnote in the midterm elections, with incumbent Republican Pete Olsen handily beating Rogers in the general election. It should draw attention to one widely misreported aspect of the Tea Party movement, however:
During the campaign, she was photographed carrying an oversized portrait of the President with a Hitler-style mustache penciled on his lip.
As those of us who have attended the Tea Party rallies and followed the movement know, it’s been the LaRouchies all along who have brought the Obama-as-Nazi posters along. The media, however, insisted on tarring the entire movement with those posters rather than report on their actual origin. I wonder whether they’ll be inclined to treat the Democratic Party the same — and in this case, Rogers won an election among Democrats based in part on that campaign imagery.
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