Elizabeth Dole: Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Elizabeth Dole, it is time to click your heels and go back to Kansas. Senator Dole (R-NC), entered the U.S. Senate with great fanfare. As a former president of the Red Cross, an ex-cabinet secretary (Transportation under Reagan and Labor under Bush I), and a viable presidential candidate, Dole was supposed to wield unprecedented power for a freshman senator. Taking over the seat of Mr. Conservative, Jesse Helms, was supposed to somehow bring her an even greater authority.

Unfortunately, even for those who might agree with her politically, she has been an unmitigated flop. In her six years in the U.S. Senate she has sponsored no significant legislation and has exhibited little to no leadership. For those who disagree with her (as this writer most certainly does), she has proved nothing but an irritation and an embarrassment. Falling on the wrong side of almost every issue, she has been little more than a rubber stamp for Bush Administration policies. For that, she must suffer her worst condemnation. It was exactly the sort of politician, with the resume of Dole, who could have stood up and confronted Bush at his worst. When he undermined the Constitution, when he rationalized torture, when he abandoned Katrina victims, and when he decided to destroy the economy, where was Elizabeth Dole? Right there in the cheering section. It was during this time that Dole could have had her greatest effect, but instead she opted for political cowardice.

Letters to Dole (of which this writer has authored many) receive pro-forma responses that are nothing more than insults to constituents. Attempting to hide her actual positions, she typically responds with nothing but platitudes.

Of course, who would have expected anything different from Dole? Dissimulation and distortion are her primary political assets. When she first chose North Carolina as the state from which to nab a Senate seat, she assured us that it was only because she had to move here to care for her ailing mother. Yes, apparently we were supposed to believe that caring for her mother was necessary enough to require her to move here from Kansas, but that it afforded her enough free time to run for the Senate. On the face of it, those two things seem inherently contradictory.

Her mother, who died in 2004, seems to have freed her from the need to travel back and forth to North Carolina. Reportedly spending only nine (9) days in the state in the last year, when not campaigning, Dole is showing the people of NC where her heart lies.

It's time to send her back where she came. Time to go home to Kansas and back to Bob. Just click your heels three times, Liddy, and you'll be back on the farm in no time.