Louisville Courier Journal's David Hawpe Joins The "Dump Jim Bunning" Wagon.

Candidate Jim Bunning and the uses of cliché
By David Hawpe

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's a cliché, of course, but then so is "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" -- and just think how useful Winston Churchill's description of Royal Air Force airmen's valor during the Battle of Britain has been over the decades. Since the observation first was made by the wartime prime minister in the House of Commons, endless numbers of quipsters and scribblers have paraphrased it and/or reapplied it.

For example, right now it accurately describes the relationship between American consumers and the major credit-card companies -- "never has so much been owed by so many to so few."

With slight revision, it depicts the partnership between all those failed bankers who have grabbed federal bailout money and all those American taxpayers who have supplied it -- "never has so much been owed by so many to so many."

Looking ahead, we may say of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, "Never will so much be owed by so many."

But since I prefer to write about things political, I want to apply the Churchill quote to what's happening in the nascent race for Jim Bunning's Senate seat. A few challengers are queuing on the sidelines -- not yet prepared to commit, but eager to toe the starting line.

Seldom in Kentucky politics has there been such a show of determination to push an incumbent luminary out of office.

And we ought to be grateful for this apparent demand that Jim Bunning (in the phrase first invoked by Cromwell, to dismiss the Rump Parliament of 1653) "in the name of God, go."

We should welcome all these prospective candidates for the Bunning seat, Republican and Democrat.

In 2004, our junior senator and his supporters embarrassed not only themselves but all the rest of us with shameful re-election tactics, including, among other things, anti-gay innuendo and anti-Arab stereotyping.

Bunning told diners at a GOP event that then-state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo looked like one of Saddam Hussein's sons. His campaign manager issued a non-apology: "We're sorry if this joke, which got a lot of laughs, offended anyone."

During the same campaign, Bunning supporters, led by Senate President David Williams, mocked Mongiardo as "limp-wristed" and a "switch-hitter."

Seldom has so much political muck been spread so widely across Kentucky by so many.

The kind of attention Bunning gets in Washington can best be illustrated by his making Time magazine's 2006 list of five worst senators. He was nicely summed up in an accompanying headline as "The Underperformer."

More recently, he has been entirely absent, during some periods of what everybody, Republican and Democrat, concedes is a national crisis.

What, Jim worry?

This is a guy who welcomed his party's nomination of Sarah Palin for vice president. He saw it as a political coup du ciel -- manna from heaven. He enthused that it "charges up the delegates" because "the conservative base has absolutely no complaints" about the choice. Never mind that it actually was the coup de grâce for John McCain's presidential aspirations.

The really good news is that in addition to now-Lt. Gov. Mongiardo, there are really good potential candidates with impressive backgrounds, personal toughness and political clarity, who could take Bunning on, including Secretary of State Trey Grayson, U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, Auditor Crit Luallen and Attorney General Jack Conway.

The best news is that even the dwindling number of top Kentucky Republicans seem quietly intent on doing what they can to toss the party's baggage.

If they succeed, never will so many of us owe so much to so few.

David Hawpe's columns appear Wednesdays and Sundays in the Community Forum. E-mail him at dhawpe@courier-journal.com.

Editor's comment: Jim Bunning has been a RELIABLE Conservative, but some of his antics have left me scratching my head -- literally.