The Senile Senator

America's worst Senator is at it again. Jim Bunning, a baseball hall-of-famer and dementia sufferer, has an optimistic perspective toward conservatism in the upcoming months: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death.

Even most political opponents find it appropriate to wish Justice Ginsburg well since her pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Not Bunning, however -- he seems pretty overjoyed, according to this report at Deadspin.

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges "and that's going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg … has cancer."
"Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater. "Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

Forget about the tact -- where's the logic? In what bizarre-o universe will Obama nominate a conservative to the court? Oh, that's right, Bunning's. That one in which he is entirely tasteful and sane.

I've been a "fan" of the Kentucky Senator since his re-election campaign in 2004. At the time, I was in college taking a class on the electoral system and was assigned to write an essay on a race of my choosing. After having read an article about how Bunning was potentially legitimately insane, I chose to study his senatorial race against Dan Mongiardo. I had no idea I was in for the endless supply of entertainment that followed, however. Some of Bunning's greatest hits included:

• Claiming that Mongiardo was in favor of 9/11 and said that he looked and dressed like one of Saddam Hussein's sons.
  
• Admitting he doesn't keep up with the news and current events and when he does, he watches only Fox News.
  
• Spending taxpayers money on increased security out of fear of Al-Qaida attacks, cryptically telling a reporter, "strangers may be among us."
  
• Saying his wife was beaten "black and blue" by Mongiardo's staffers, but not mentioning it until months after the alleged incident.
  
• Cheating at a debate by insisting on taping his part from a remote location then very clearly reading from a teleprompter.
  
• Insinuating on multiple occasions that his opponent is gay.

So despite the fact that even the conservative publications were endorsing Mongiardo and pretty much everyone suspected that Bunning has Alzheimer's, Bunning still won the election, because it was Kentucky, where a mentally ill Republican is still better than a Democrat (even if said Democrat is pro-life and anti-gay marriage and more like a Republican in most respects.) If you'd like to read a more thorough analysis on how this transpired including even more of Bunning's nutty antics, I've posted my full essay on Google Docs. It's an epic tale of why democracy can suck.

In the present, Bunning finally released a lame public apology to Ginsburg in which he misspells her name. Ah, "Ginsberg" -- you could do more from your hypothetical deathbed than Bunning, who only seems to care about the use of steroids in baseball (AKA the biggest crisis our country is facing), could do in a lifetime of public office. Get well, Justice. You, too, Bunning. Please.