Just-defeated state Senate President Russell Pearce doesn't know when to keep his redneck trap shut.
First he's soundly defeated by challenger Jerry Lewis in the Legislative District 18 recall, then he's removed as Senate President by the Republican caucus, and now Pearce's margin of loss has widened to nearly 12 percent, and still, this vile, geriatric toad is on TV and any other medium that'll take him, blathering incoherently about Lewis, Citizens for a Better Arizona, the Fourth Estate, or what have you.
Sorry, old man, it's over. You're through. Your hatred and bully-boy tactics have been forced from Sand Land politics, and Arizona will never be the same. Read the latest count and weep: 43.61 percent for Pearce to a staggering 55.2 percent for Lewis.
In politics, we call that a landslide, ladies and gents.
And who did Senate GOPers choose as their first post-Pearce President?
Not ideologue Andy Biggs, who has been described as "Pearce with a brain." Rather, they chose Republican state Senator Steve Pierce, a conservative in a state party that has two camps, the crazies (wingnuts) and the sane Rs (non-wingnuts).
The Prescott Republican seems to fall into the latter camp (though just barely at times), his vote for Carl Seel's failed "birther" bill notwithstanding.
The mere fact that Prescott Pierce bucked Mesa Pearce's rule during the last session, voting against five anti-immigration bills the then-Senate President wanted, including a de facto revocation of birthright citizenship and an immigration omnibus package nearly as scary as Senate Bill 1070 in its scope, shows that Prescott Pierce at least doesn't wear his jackboots to dinner.
Pierce and the other state Senators voting against the Senate President at the height of his power handed Pearce an embarrassing defeat. Fellow Republicans called them "turncoats," and began plotting their downfall.
Which is why I have to disagree with Arizona Democratic Party Chair Andrei Cherny when he states that the only thing that will be changing -- as far as the Senate Presidency goes -- is one vowel.
Sure, there are still only nine Ds in the Senate, and the Republicans rule this state by fiat. But the man they all bowed down to -- an aggro nativist sandbilly who should have no place in public life -- has been put out to pasture. And not by the Democratic Party. Though, certainly, many Dems gave mightily of themselves to see Pearce defeated.
Pierce ain't no lefty R, not by a long shot. But he is an almost immediate (and albeit slight) shift toward right-of-center, and away from the far-right loony-bin. For this, you have to concede that our political pendulum has been stuck at midnight for many a moon now.
In any case, as the election is over three days cold, will someone take grampa Russ into the back room, change his diaper, and keep him there? You know, maybe for the next 25 years or so?