This Thursday will be the day on which we give thanks. But why wait? I'm thankful today that certain elected officials will no longer be with us come January.
Victorious candidates are always gracious and civil toward their defeated opponents, so I'd like to take the liberty of rubbing it in to six incumbents who I am delighted to see slinking away in defeat.
First place on my little list goes to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. For over a decade, DeLay was the most feared, most hated and most powerful man on Capitol Hill. Nicknamed ""The Hammer,"" he rammed legislation through the House with bribes, deals and, frequently, threats.
Once, when a congressman was undecided on a bill DeLay supported, DeLay told him that if he didn't vote for the bill, he, DeLay, would personally see to it that the congressman's son would never hold political office.
Last year, DeLay was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy and money laundering. The Republican conference forced him to resign as Majority Leader, and he resigned from Congress shortly afterward. A Democrat won his congressional district on Nov. 7.
Next, we have Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., the most powerful champion of the Religious Right. Over his 12 years in the Senate, Santorum has taken on America's deadliest enemies: evolution, gay marriage, sodomy and the city of Boston—claiming the pedophilia scandals with Catholic priests were caused by the city's culture of liberalism.
You have to hand it to him: He never pretended to be anything other than what he is. Santorum honestly expressed his views to the people of Pennsylvania. This year, the people of Pennsylvania honestly expressed their views of him too by dumping him, 59 to 41 percent.
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., took political opportunism to a new level during the Terri Schiavo debacle. Frist, a certified physician, never visited Schiavo but pronounced her mentally cognizant on the basis of video clips he watched in his Senate office.
His shameless pander to the Religious Right backfired in the polls and hurt his nascent presidential campaign. Rest assured, voters will convey to Frist, sometime early in 2008, that candidates who wrap their medical licenses in politics are unfit to be president.
In Wisconsin, we can all be thankful that Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo, will not be joining the U.S. House of Representatives. Gard's political priorities focused almost exclusively on divisive political stunts, ranging from the concealed carry law to gay marriage to the dishonestly titled ""Taxpayers' Bill of Rights.""
Gard declined to debate opponents on the Assembly floor, preferring instead to whip caucus members DeLay-style behind the scenes. The ruthless and pugnacious speaker finally met his match two weeks ago in Democrat Steve Kagen.
One state senator no one will miss is Tom Reynolds, R-West Allis. Reynolds' many bizarre actions included asking staff members if they are abstaining from sex until marriage, attending rallies on ""Homo-fascism,"" lobbying to create a German-style Autobahn with no speed limits, superimposing his family's faces over Jesus' family in a manger scene and refusing to debate Democratic challenger Jim Sullivan unless cameras were banned from the room.
Cameras or not, voters finally decided that they'd seen enough of Reynolds.
In the spirit of bipartisanship, we will also bid a not-so-fond farewell to Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga. For the second time in the last three elections, voters in Georgia's 4th Congressional District got sick of McKinney's act, which included criticizing Al Gore for a low ""Negro tolerance level,"" suggesting the Bush administration had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and punching a Capitol police officer at a security checkpoint.
McKinney lost in the Democratic primary to Hank Johnson, who has similarly liberal political views but brings one thing to Congress that McKinney lacked: sanity.
Voters ousted several dozen other incumbents in all parts of the country for reasons including corruption, scandal and plain old extremism. It's time to take one brief moment to revel in success. American voters should give thanks to themselves and to one another for finally voting the bums out.
