03-14-2024, 07:39 PM
Reminds me of old Norm Coleman. Guy from out East; ran for Mayor of St. Paul as a Dem (which was the only way he could have gotten elected). Once he was elected, he promptly switched parties and became a Republican darling. Next he ran for governor, but lost to Jesse Ventura (!). He then ran against Paul Wellstone for Senate, and won when Wellstone’s plane went down and Paul was killed, like, a week before the election.
Had kind of an undistinguished single term during Bush II, mostly memorable for chairing a hearing where he accused a UK politician (George Galloway) of being on the take from Saddam Hussein (based on the kind of purely invented BS the Repubs used to “justify” the Iraq War). Watching Galloway rip him a new one on camera was pure pleasure. Normie lost his first-and-only reelection campaign to Al Franken in 2008.
Anyway, to the point: When he first showed up in Minnesota, he had a gap in his front teeth and a bit of a coarse look. After he switched parties, he decided that wouldn’t do, so a Republican dentist in my old neighborhood did a do-over on him (and, allegedly, Norm had some plastic surgery as well.) There was a real question whether Normie had to pay anything for the dental makeover, which would have been an undisclosed political donation-in-kind. But the cheeky dentist also used before-and-after pix of the Senator to advertise (see below) which was also against Senate rules (and made the pages of the Washington Post circa 2005).
The married dentist eventually left his wife and family and ran away with some floozie. Norm rode off into the cushy sunset of some wingnutwelfare consultancy job, IIRC.
A quintessential Republican story all around, I thought (and still think).
Senator Coleman, before and after.
Had kind of an undistinguished single term during Bush II, mostly memorable for chairing a hearing where he accused a UK politician (George Galloway) of being on the take from Saddam Hussein (based on the kind of purely invented BS the Repubs used to “justify” the Iraq War). Watching Galloway rip him a new one on camera was pure pleasure. Normie lost his first-and-only reelection campaign to Al Franken in 2008.
Anyway, to the point: When he first showed up in Minnesota, he had a gap in his front teeth and a bit of a coarse look. After he switched parties, he decided that wouldn’t do, so a Republican dentist in my old neighborhood did a do-over on him (and, allegedly, Norm had some plastic surgery as well.) There was a real question whether Normie had to pay anything for the dental makeover, which would have been an undisclosed political donation-in-kind. But the cheeky dentist also used before-and-after pix of the Senator to advertise (see below) which was also against Senate rules (and made the pages of the Washington Post circa 2005).
The married dentist eventually left his wife and family and ran away with some floozie. Norm rode off into the cushy sunset of some wingnut
A quintessential Republican story all around, I thought (and still think).
Senator Coleman, before and after.