sisyphusshrugged | strange bedfellows

You've probably heard that Rodney Alexander (D-LA), who made it his business to be the first Louisiana politician to qualify for the ballot and did it as a Democrat, switched parties with fifteen minutes of the qualification period to go, pre-empting the Democrats from fielding a challenger.

He's refusing to give back what reportedly is a significant amount of donated money he collected from Democrats who were trying to help him in a tight race, and his entire staff has quit en masse.

The DCCC is on this, and there's not much I can add to what they have to say about the current state of events.

I can remind you who Rep. Alexander has decided to hop into bed with.

"Democratic state Rep. Rodney Alexander blasted his Republican opponent prior to addressing a Pineville Kee's Park community center meeting with veterans Tuesday night.

"Alexander, who is in a Dec. 7 runoff for the 5th Congressional District seat with Republican Lee Fletcher, addressed accusations of trustworthiness raised by Fletcher and countercharges against Fletcher made by former Congressman Clyde Holloway, who was defeated in the Nov. 5 primary. ‘Mr. Holloway is like I am. He feels like there are some things in life more important than winning a congressional race and one is just being a decent human being,’ Alexander said.

“‘We don't, either one of us, feel like that the campaign up to this point has been conducted that way, and Mr. Holloway just expressed his frustration over the whole issue.’

“Alexander said he also felt defeated candidate Rodney Barham, along with Holloway and himself, ‘were all kind of put out.’

“‘We were all targeted that last weekend. He even had commercials running on phone banks “let me tell you about Rodney Alexander's first wife.” Well, I'm still with my first wife. We've been married 35 years. So its just tactics like that that are extremely frustrating.”

“Alexander added he left his parent's home and went to basic training at age 18 fully expecting to go to Vietnam and expected to die then.

“Now, 38 years later, after rearing three children and having four grandchildren, ‘I would die for them today to protect their freedom,’ he said.

“‘And to have a guy who's never been in the service, never had a job outside of politics, to run an ad on TV at this time with a picture of Saddam Hussein implying that I might have something to do with him, that's as low as an opponent can get,’ Alexander said.

“‘And it's about all I can stand. I've bitten my bottom lip several times just to keep from exploding over the issue. It's just absolutely not fair.’