A Friendly Homecoming for Ted
By Morons, all of them:
There was undisguised hostility toward the federal government and the FBI at the Stevens event, with people wearing T-shirts that said “F*#@ the feds, vote for Ted.”
“Anyone who thinks you can get a fair trial in the heart of liberalism, Washington, D.C., is smoking dope. He was railroaded,” said Mark Kelliher, a retired engineer.
Talk radio host Rick Rydell told the crowd he knows Stevens, a D.C. jury doesn’t.
“I don’t particularly like it when outsiders tell me what to do,” Rydell said, before Stevens took the stage. “You can kiss my Alaska moose-hunting behind.”
Stevens reiterated his innocence, assured his supporters that he would be vindicated on appeal, and said he’s still the best choice for Alaska. Stevens said that when he filed his financial disclosure forms, he believed they were accurate and complete.
“The verdict was driven by prosecutors who were willing to do anything to win. If I had a fair trial in Alaska, I would have been acquitted,” he said.
I’ve had a difficult time explaining to non-Alaskans lately why it is that Ted Stevens stands a decent chance at being elected as a recently-convicted felon. The polls are still tilting ever so slightly in Mark Begich’s favor, but the last three close elections in Alaska — Frank Murkowski’s win in 2002, Lisa Murkowski’s victory in 2004 and Palin’s win in 2006 — have shown a tendency for Republican candidates to outperform the polls. In those cases, of course, the Republicans were leading heading into election day and emerged with wider margins of victory than expected. I’m not sure how well that trend (such as it is) applies to this race; a lot of Alaskans are embarrassed by Stevens, and his opponent is really competent and popular, so that might be enough. But there’s no way to overstate how solid Ted Stevens’ support is among a vast portion of the state’s population who are quite comfortable with Stevens’ efforts to “spread the wealth” northward from the Lower 48. It’s not difficult to run into people — intelligent, otherwise sensible people — who argue with a straight face and a pure heart that Ted Stevens somehow deserved $250,000 worth of free stuff as a reward for his four decades of service to the state. This is someone who has a international fucking airport named after him.
But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If Ted Stevens deserves a quarter of a million dollars worth of stuff as a reward for his years of public service, I figure that after six years of hard, underpaid labor on behalf of Alaska’s youth, I at least deserve one of the laser printers that I’m currently sharing with a few dozen of my colleagues.