Hagan-Tillis has narrowed, Shaheen-Brown has narrowed, Roberts-Orman has narrowed, Tom Cotton has sustained his lead and Mary Landrieu is molded toast. Now, from Quinnipiac, comes news that "Iowa Republican State Sen. Joni Ernst is inching ahead among likely voters in the U.S. Senate race," 49 percent to 45 percent for U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (or, as Michelle Obama has called him, Bruce Bailey, a mythical creature who, as the White House once believed and promptly announced to the nation, was running for the governor's seat, not the Senate).
What's so shocking unsurprising about this news of Ernst's "momentum," as Quinnipiac's pollster labeled it, is that it comes in the revelatory wake of her deranged Sharron Angleism--which is to say, Ernst's publicly declared conviction that she has the right to use her "beautiful little Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter" against the very government she wishes to join. In its own right, this is clearly insane; but that a banana-republic mentality of the lowest anarchic order would (having doomed Angle four years ago) seemingly benefit Ernst is just frightening.
Meanwhile, Thom Tillis, Scott Brown and Pat Roberts have all reaped the electoral emoluments of unmitigated fearmongering, whether in the form of diseased Africans wading 'cross Obama's unsecured Rio or swarthy, dagger-clenching Middle East terrorists being sprung on innocent America, via Guantanamo, by the Koran-clenching, African Obama. Even the inebriate Joe McCarthy might have paused and asked our little trio, Are you sure you want to do this? But the old-school demagogues are gone, and in the GOP, all restraints have been lifted. As for Cotton, he's settled for the old-school reliability of mere hypocrisy, protecting big farm money while screwing food-stamp recipients in the name of fiscal prudence.
At least the midterm's drift can't get any absurder.