When Scumbags Collide, pt 2: Scott and Dana Bash Each Other All Day Long!

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(The two GOP candidates prefigured in 16th-century commedia dell’arte culture.)

Some of my Democrat friends, paranoid or rather traumatized by past Republican conspiracies, suspected the Scott Baugh challenge to Dana Rohrabacher in the 48th Congressional District to be a planned shadowplay to get two Republicans through the June primary (which still could happen) and then Scott hand it to Dana by bowing out or not trying hard in the summer and fall.  I assured them, having watched these two closely for a while, that the bad blood is real.

Did I say “past Republican conspiracies?”  Yeah, like the one that launched Scott’s damn career in Republican politics way back in 1995.  It was Rohrabacher and Curt Pringle who plucked Scott out of his HB law office 27 years ago and orchestrated an election-fraud scheme that rocketed Scott into his 5-year assembly turn (culminating in Assembly Republican Leader) AND gave Republicans a brief majority in the Assembly, with Pringle as Speaker.  But it was (typically) their underlings who took the legal fall – including Dana’s aide and NOW WIFE Rhonda Carmony – which is probably why neither Scott nor Dana mentions the infamous episode in any of their mutual attacks.

Apparently attaining power through fraud is something OC Republicans are not so much ashamed of but rather proud of, as the OC GOP chose Scott as their chairman in 2004, where he stayed till 2015, moonlighting as a very powerful lobbyist, for developers, Poseidon, everything most of us love to hate.  But I digress! 

For years – maybe a decade now – it’s been common, accepted wisdom that Scott was gonna be Dana’s anointed successor in the Congressional seat Dana’s had since 1988 (where he famously promised to stay only six years.)  BUT every single election cycle, the mad, power-hungry dotard Dana found some new reason or excuse to stay on another term, on the public dole.  I recently compared Scott to Prince Charles, wasting away his whole life waiting for his mother to croak so he could be king. 

Finally this year, the rumor that Dana would serve yet ANOTHER term and then hand his seat over not to Scott but to the ditzy Michelle Steel (trophy wife of Dana’s powerful mentor Shawn) was too much for Scott to take, and he made the plunge into this race.  This was considered BRAZEN BENEDICT ARNOLD-LIKE BETRAYAL by not only Crazy Dana but most of the royalist lemmings who call themselves OC Republicans, although Scott has his few adherents in the crowd as well. 

Anyways, the two have been savaging each other in mailers and ads for a few months now, which is very entertaining to the rest of us!  Hey – a lot of what each one says about the other is true!  In this story I will randomly place up some of these mailers (collected by GOP Bloodbath Archivist Gina Clayton Tarvin) and discourse a bit about each one…

Well… while it may not seem fair to hold Scott’s candid and objective observations against him, it’s true that he always has been a lobbyist for the rich.  Just like Dana has always been a representative for the rich.  So how about only rich people (who wanna get richer and don’t care about anyone else) vote for either of them?

First, what is a “Never Trumper?”  That phrase refers to Republicans who, during the 2016 primary, thought that Donald Trump would be a terrible candidate who would hurt the Party.  I don’t know if Scott was a Never Trumper.  But there were certainly a lot of them (and for good reason.)  And what are the chances that some of them sent some money to Scott?  Slim to overwhelmingly probable.  Kind of a lame attack.  We’ll look at the “amnesty” thing later, I don’t wanna be sticking up for Scott, who is a scumbag in his own right.

Ah.  From Scott, a little more artistic.  The “Travel Postcard” series.

Yeah.  About Dana… he has been useless for 30 years from ANY point of view, but he does love to travel, feel like he’s doing something consequential and rebellious, and spend as much public money on it as possible … because somehow it’s in the cause of FREE-DUMB!!!!

Okay, we did “Never Trump” how about “Amnesty” now?  To nativist assholes who constitute much of the GOP base, “amnesty” is a buzzword for giving undocumented immigrants a “pathway to citizenship.”  (Even though both Dana and Baugh purport to revere Ronald “Amnesty” Reagan.)  And it’s true, even during those 20-something years while Dana threw out the anti-immigrant red meat, Scott did try to open up the OC GOP to Latinos, knowing that was the only way to escape the fate of Dinosaur Farts.  We documented this here.  But moderates should give Scott no credit for that, because in this election, and in the Age of Trump, he does not have the guts to stand up for what he used to believe in, and runs away from it.

“Dana couldn’t pass a bill about immigration.”  Not only true, but hitting him where it hurts!  Along with denying global warming, and half-heartedly backing marijuana, bitching about immigrants has been Dana’s hallmark.  But the few-ass bills he ever had the energy and concentration to put forward were so extreme and unconstitutional that he could never get more than a few votes.  Like one a little while back to deny medical care to the undocumented, which got like half a dozen votes.  DICK.

Oh WAHHH.  Scott is gonna start telling Dana to stop the “smears.”  If you can’t take the SMEARS, then stay out of Dana’s SMIRNOFF.  (Get it?  Get it?  It alliterates even better than Scott’s catchphrase, plus it alludes to both Dana’s habitual drunkenness and his Russia-love.)  Anyway WTF is a smear especially if it’s true?  DID YOU DO THIS MATT CUNNINGHAM?  Snowflakes…

Oh don’t worry haters.  Scott doesn’t have the cojones to stand up to Trump like Nancy would.  He’d be just one more of those 235 Republican Congressmen shamefacedly saluting Siegheil to the Orange Dictator … we can tell by his campaign.  Maybe he’d be a little bit less COLORFUL and GOOFY than Dana – does that really sound like a worthwhile change?

Yeah, that one reminds me of a TRUE story from about ten years ago – one of Dana’s constituents ran into him in an HB liquor store and … complained about something, I forget what, but the memorable response from Dana was:  “You know what the best thing is about being in Congress?  The pension!!”

That looks really stoopid with “chief lobbyist for sober living homes etc” stuck in as an afterthought.  And it’s true and it’s not.  “Chief Lobbyist” is Dana bullshit.  But Scott WILL take money from just about anyone, and this industry paid him to help them find acceptable areas to promulgate themselves in Newport Beach.  Number three, there’s gotta be sober living homes SOMEWHERE, no?  But Scott REALLY takes offense to this attack.  SO FUCK BOTH THESE GUYS.

Wah, wah, STOP THE SMEARS, you alliterating SNOWFLAKE!  Well, get outta Dana’s SMIRNOFF!

And there was heard a mournful keening, a Greek chorus of outraged lament – even The Moorlach was touched. 

W – WAIT!  An official ETHICS COMPLAINT?  Over Dana exaggerating your record in a brutal campaign?  What about the ethics violations that brought YOU, SCOTT, into the California Assembly, with the help of Dana’s wife?  Sounds like you’ve-ALL got ETHICS EGG ALL OVER YOUR FACE..

Well, ya know, let’s think about that.  Is 30 Years in Congress Really Enough?  Or does it kind of depend on what you’ve been doing, what you’ve accomplished, to what degree you keep up with new information and adapt?  Let’s rephrase – is 30 years enough for Dana?  Oh, TWO years woulda done just fine.

Ah, now this travel postcard has that certain je ne sais quoi … I’m all ears… what could Dana have been doing with those cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

Ya know, a little facts wouldn’t have hurt (would they?) in this series … what was (at least) his PRETEND reason for going to France?

Now THAT is HORRIFYING.  Not sure what it is … must be subliminable.

That HAZMAT label at the bottom is pathetic.  But really, what do we or anybody mean by “conservative” any more?  Scott’s made a lotta good points about Dana’s wastefulness, but in what way is SCOTT more conservative?  One thing “conservative” means to most folks these days, means “mean to Mexicans.”  Sure Scott is making mean faces now, but he wasn’t 3 years ago, and why should Mexican haters think he would keep his mean face if Trump is defeated in 2020?  So many questions, so few answers…

JAJAJAJAJA … a classic!  And true!  Like “Take my wife … please!”

Ahhh… too much bullshit here in this Scott ad that’s really questionable.  Mainly we’re supposed to believe that Scott would be a bigger more loyal adherent to God Trump than Dana?  Dana is attached to Trump like a barnacle, lips to lower parts.  They complete each other, they’re indistinguishable.  You blink and you can’t tell them apart.  Nah this one doesn’t fly.  (But still don’t vote for Scott, Trump opponents, because he doesn’t have the guts to stand up for whatever beliefs he has secretly in his heart.)

Yeah man, I can’t tell them apart, can you?  Especially from Pelosi, who also had something to do with sober living homes.  Fuck off Dana.

Like I said, yeah right.  Wait, has Scott always looked like a prairie dog?  He has, huh?

It’s true, Scott loves high-density housing.  And Poseidon.  So does fucking Dana.  And you know what, Scott ran the GOP that put my conservative Republican friend Erik Peterson through the wringer when Erik was first running for HB council, and Erik told them he was opposed to high-density development, and almost didn’t get the OC GOP endorsement, except that he was so goddamn cool and a Marine, they couldn’t say no.  The US Congress doesn’t need EITHER OF THESE WHORES.

Oh good, I was ready for another trip overseas.  Jolly old England, where our nation was sorta-born from?  What was Dana doing there?

They couldn’t put a BIT MORE BITE into the backs of these postcard?  Cunnigham, is this really your work?

There, this’ll be a little sexier and may even sneakily allude to some of the scandalous Dana travel rumors over the years?

That’s it?  Maybe Scott went with Dana on some of these tropical junkets, which is why he can’t get into detail.

Jajaja, we’ve discussed this before, but I do remember how eager Scott was from 2012-15 or so to open up the GOP to Latinos.  I remember his visiting Los Amigos and trying to be REALLY friendly and understanding, and then accidentally calling them “ILLEGALS.”  And a lot of this mailer is true or a little exaggerated.  But he GETS NO CREDIT FOR IT CUZ HE’S RUNNING FROM IT NOW!

Uh yeah ditto.

Um okay, old Erie, the birthplace of half my ancestors…

UGH, these “travel postcards” have to be the laziest cheapest effort of all.  Matt, give Scott his money back.

NOW WE’RE TALKING.  I could look at that for minutes.  All 1988, eh?  Yeah, I guess so.  And – what can I say? – this is when Dana Rohrabacher got elected Congressman, promising to stay no longer than 1994.  Well … I assume he accomplished a lot, no?

Damn.  OWNED.

Oooh … now Scott has crossed the line, pushed the Rhonda button!  But .. but .. wait … wasn’t she one of the ones who helped him get into the assembly in the first place, by secretly running an extra fake Democrat in the race?  I’m confused…

Drain the swamp for sure.

Oh.  Yeah.  I think I saw those two meeting clandestinely in a Costa Mesa Starbucks, talking quietly (eyes darting ’round) about their shared Scott Baugh problem.  Because Scott would change things so fucking much if he went to Washington.  ROTFLMAO!

Oh!  I’m sorry!  He really is saying that!  Scott, who has always run after big lobbying bucks, and is now acting like he has no problem with Trump, would somehow make SOME kind of bold change in our nation’s governance? 

Okay, enough of this nonsense.  Vote for Harley y’all.