Aaron Blake’s headline for his Washington Post column on remarks made by former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer sums it up nicely: “The Brian Schweitzer presidential speculation was fun while it lasted.”
Those Democrats looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton are going to have to turn over a few more rocks and rotten logs; Schweitzer’s national ambitions disappeared as quickly as you could say “men in the South, they are a little effeminate.”
Schweitzer got a golden opportunity to show off for major media when the prestigious National Journal sat down with him to write a lengthy profile.
What came out of the former governor’s mouth is simply beyond belief:
In the piece, Schweitzer shared his perceptions on Cantor’s sexuality while discussing the Virginia Republican’s shocking loss last week against an unknown primary candidate.
“If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say—and I’m fine with gay people, that’s all right—but my gaydar is 60-70 percent,” Schweitzer said in the interview.
“Don’t hold this against me, but I’m going to blurt it out. How do I say this … men in the South, they are a little effeminate,” he said. “They just have effeminate mannerisms.”
Cantor, who represents central Virginia and is outgoing House Majority Leader, has been married to his wife for 25 years and has three children.
[…]
Also in the interview, Schweitzer compares fellow Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator from California who chairs the Intelligence Committee, to a prostitute.
“She was the woman who was standing under the streetlight with her dress pulled all the way up over her knees,” he said about Feinstein’s position on intelligence gathering. “And now she says, ‘I’m a nun,’ when it comes to this spying. I mean, maybe that’s the wrong metaphor — but she was all in!”
Democratic strategist Ben LaBolt, who was also President Barack Obama’s national press secretary for his 2012 re-election campaign, said Schweitzer’s comments will have consequences, “largely disqualifying” him from presidential run.
“This time the loose cannon was aimed back at the ship,” he said.
Schweitzer always reminded me of a Prairie Populist — indeed, the liberal American Prospect website identified him as such in a profile during his first term as governor. A liberal on economic issues, a conservative on some social issues, his personal style mixes bombast with western grit and country charm which proved enormously attractive to Montana voters. Some “Third Way” Democrats — those few who are left — eyed Schweitzer as a possible alternative to the polarizing Hillary Clinton.
But it was always a pipe dream. If Hillary Clinton weren’t a woman, she would be dismissed outright by the far left in her own party. Schweitzer is far to the right of Clinton and would be relentlessly attacked for many of his positions.
Since it is the radicals who are in charge of the Democrats at the moment, Schweitzer would have been out before he got in — even if he had never made those idiotic statements to the National Journal. The fact is, Hillary Clinton gives them the best chance to remain in power and they will swallow hard and support her, hoping to radicalize her agenda once she’s safely in the White House.
Schweitzer was fond of making the analogy, “If he stays longer than 24 hours in Washington, D.C., he takes a bath in tomato juice when he gets home — the classic home remedy for the stench of skunk spray.”
Who’s the stinky one now, gov?
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