Lucas Nails Debate


Democrat Ken Lucas and Republican Geoff Davis at NKU last evening

In the afterglow of last night’s televised debate between neck and neck candidates for Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District seat, local media, this morning, seems to be breaking its neck to not report the obvious; heavily funded freshman Republican Geoff Davis didn’t do so well.
Cincinnati’s WCPO television, while broadcasting last evening event from Regents Hall on the campus of Northern Kentucky University, devoted more airtime in their morning newscast to a group of young Republicans conducting some sort of Dean Scream-off than last night’s highly entertaining and informative confrontation.
The Cincinnati Enquirer’s political reporter Patrick Crowley managed to work the news lead into his 19th paragraph:

[Davis] stumbled badly when asked by a reporter if he knew how many American soldiers had died so far this month in Iraq. "I believe it is 17," Davis said. The number of soldiers killed in October as of Thursday was 71.

After the editor of the Grant County News, Jamie Baker-Nantz, corrected Congressman Davis, home viewers could hear a collective shocked gasp from the debate’s live audience.
In the following few awkward and televised seconds it was clear that the political and media principals on-stage knew Mr. Davis, in the second and a half it took him to answer Baker-Nance's question, had likely committed a potentially mortal error.
Mr. Lucas, currently being slimed by the Rove/Davis campaign for sending a letter of mercy, actually blessed the struggling Republican with a sample of that faux-controversial compassion by offering a joking aside that the former Marine “must be dyslexic” for simply reversing numbers.
Unfortunately, since last evening's Republican debate fiasco, the desperate Davis campaign has been straining the quality of Mr. Lucas’ mercy by trying to spin the use of the word “dyslexic” into some sort of northern Kentucky version of George Allen’s macaca.
Should Mr. Davis, with his lily-white and all male endorsement commercial, really be tossing stones from the doorway of his glass house?
As Ken Lucas regretfully stated last evening, Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate will do “anything short of murder” to get elected.
Even without his Iraq casualties error, Mr. Davis was clearly projecting the aura of a man whose game wasn't tight.
Slathered in make-up and sweating like a pig, the single-term congressman started the debate looking scared and ended it looking clearly defeated.
Lucas, no matter the social niceties current office-holding pols and their enablers find so important the moment scandal is made public, stated the problem clearly and directly...Mr. Davis "lies" and managed, in only a few months as the sworn representative of our 4th District, to beat a path directly to some of the most corrupt politicians in this past do-nothing Congress.
Where's the Foley money Davis took in 2005?
When he crawled to the microphones last week with Chabby, Mr. Davis carefully said the tainted $1000 "contribution" (scroll down to 'One More Update) from the infamous sex predator was from "this year".
Then there's the little matter of the Check 'n Go “contribution”.
Old Geoff was paid to secretly flip-flop on his own bill to restrain predatory high-interest loans to US servicemen and women.
Loans that panicked and cash-strapped military families might seek when discovering the US government wasn't paying for their son's battlefield armor.
Loans with hidden interest rates ranging between 35 to 500% all because Mr. Davis took $11,450 from his Mason, Ohio buddies from CNG Financial, the Check ‘n Go controlling corporation.
Are we all sensing a "predator" theme here?
As Mr. Lucas said in his closing remarks:

We've got a real mess on our hands. Congress isn't getting anything done that the American people really care about…My opponent has gone to Washington and fallen in lockstep with his political party's leadership. Folks, this country is going in the wrong direction.

Mr. Ken Lucas, who will advantage our area with 3 times more congressional seniority than his opponent, clearly won last evening's contest and deserves to become northern Kentucky’s next congressman no matter the potential Rovian surprises that may, yet, come.

Photos: Cincinnati Enquirer
- posted by Sean @ 1:20 PM