Hard to accept: Mitch as victim; Miller as ex-pol

The Lexington Herald-Leader political columnist Larry Dale Keeling, who once wrote under the moniker, “Kentucky Curmudgeon,” writes this morning of finding a kindred spirit in The RP.  Read on:

For someone who claims to be “The Recovering Politician,” Jonathan Miller sure has been active on the political scene lately. The former state treasurer and cabinet official in Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration publically talked up the industrial hemp bill in the recent General Assembly session (Miller is a member of the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission). He touted actress Ashley Judd as a worthy Democratic candidate to take on McConnell in the 2014 U.S. Senate race.

And in a couple of recent pieces written for The Daily Beast, Miller got a bit in-your-face with some of his fellow Kentucky Democrats, accusing them (mostly without naming names) of elbowing Judd out of the Senate race and of botching their response to the leaked tape by focusing on the mistakes of the leakers instead of responding to what Miller termed a “vicious smear,” the tape’s revelations about the McConnell camp’s plan to exploit Judd’s past mental health issues.

In the latter piece, Miller wrote, “The circular firing squad Democrats have assembled comes as no surprise to observers of the state, who have watched for decades as McConnell’s national rise has been aided by his utterly inept opposition” before going on to chronicle the infighting within the Democratic Party that at times has resulted in McConnell facing weakened challengers.

Miller is right. Kentucky Democrats have been their own worst enemies for decades. It’s a “me first” party, a party still living in the era when winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to winning office and, consequently, a party more interested in settling internal grudges than it is in choosing the best candidate for the fall. Also, consequently, a party destined to future irrelevancy if it doesn’t wake up.

But according to its mission statement on its Web site, “The Recovering Politician provides a civilized forum as an antidote to our nation’s toxic addiction to vitriol and demonization. Here is a place for debating and discussing the issues of the day … without the finger-pointing and blame-assigning that’s all too typical on the Web and among our more crass media.”

With all due respect, I would suggest to Miller that some of his recent writings might border on the “finger-pointing and blame-assigning” The Recovering Politician’s mission statement deplores. To put it bluntly (and with more than a dollop of good fun), he’s getting close to invading my space as a vitriolic and demonizing member of the “crass media.”

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