Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
The GOP is divided over a humiliated Republican's attempt at a comeback.
Apr 13, 2000 | In the midst of the impeachment mess, on July 21, 1998, a freshman Republican congressman from New Jersey managed to do something so stupendously stupid it temporarily stole media attention away from President Clinton's own unseemly mess.
He sang.
On the floor of the House.
A song he had written about Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
To the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
"Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr," Rep. Mike Pappas began, "now we see how brave you are."
"Up above the Pentagon sting, like a fair judge in the ring. Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we know how brave you are. When subpoenas and lies are gone, when obstruction shines upon, then you throw your trump cards down, twinkle, twinkle, all brought down."
"Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we see how brave you are! Then the Congress in the dark, thanks you for your courage and spark; we could not see which way to go, if you did not lead us so. Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we see how brave you are!"
Even after experiencing the lyrics, it's still hard to convey how insanely clueless the decision to sing this little ditty seemed to anyone except for Pappas. Its repercussions are far more easily described.
To the campaign of Pappas' Democratic House challenger, a Princeton University physicist named Rush Holt who previously had been given zero chance of winning the Republican seat, Pappas' serenade was music to the ears. "Holt for Congress" soon began running ads featuring the Republican's "Star-Search-meets-C-SPAN" moment. With the tag line "Mike Pappas: Out of tune. Out of touch," and a $200,000 ad buy on radio and TV, Holt's ad against Pappas made the congressman's a cappella performance a local top 40 hit.
Sitting at home watching the evening news that July 1998 night was Dick Zimmer, a moderate Republican who had held the same congressional seat from 1990 until 1996, when he lost a bid for the Senate to Democrat Bob Torricelli. "I saw it that evening as it hit the news shows," says Zimmer. "I thought it was a mistake ... It was inappropriate and it was memorable.
"But I didn't think his career was over," Zimmer says.
Not many people did. "Holt raised a lot more money than anybody thought that he would and he had a real campaign, but I don't think anybody could tell you that they thought he would win," says Amy Walter, House analyst for the Cook Political Report in Washington. "The [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] didn't think so ... We didn't hear a word about this race."
In November, Pappas was one of only six members of the House to lose his seat -- to Holt, by about 5,000 votes.
"It was a dynamite ad," Holt now says. "It caught the essence of what the campaign was about: the fact that Congress was not dealing with kitchen-table issues, but instead was off on witch hunts and impeachment investigations."
The ads "were just brilliant," says Nick Acocella, editor of Politifax New Jersey, a nonpartisan Hoboken weekly newsletter. "Pappas was made to look foolish. He's not a foolish man, but he was made to look foolish. And on little such things do campaigns turn."
A year and a half passes. Members of Congress are once again running for reelection, and with a five-seat GOP majority in the House, every single swing congressional seat is being targeted for a war.
Re-enter Zimmer. And re-enter Pappas. They are squaring off in the Republican primary June 6 for the honor of opposing Holt in November. Both want what was once theirs. Both see in the other a flawed kind of Republicanism. And both are supported by Republican heavies in a race that illustrates the essential conflicts at the heart of the Republican Party.
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