Schlesinger is pissed with the GOP and vows to fight

[CatWoman]

Schlesinger bets it all
Angered by the national GOP's support for Joe Lieberman, the real Republican in the Connecticut Senate race goes on the attack.

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Connecticut feels like a papier-mâché punching bag, he says, because of the abuse he has taken from the media and his own party. The press has often acted as if he did not exist and the GOP leadership has treated him like a bombastic nut with no chance of winning.

Schlesinger is running against Democrat Ned Lamont and Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman, the incumbent. Schlesinger gets angry sometimes, he says, when he thinks about the way President Bush "basically gave a wink and a nod for the big money to go out and support Lieberman." He also got angry when the state party publicly called on him to withdraw from the race over allegations of erratic behavior at our nation's fine gambling establishments. "I was thrown under the bus," he gripes. "That's what made fundraising so difficult."

And he gets mad at the media, which has been covering something it calls "the Lieberman-Lamont race," usually because it's just too exhausting to type in a long third name with three syllables for a candidate pulling about 3 percent in the polls.

But that 3 percent was before last week, back in the day when nobody interviewed Schlesinger or wrote about him, and he had no money for TV commercials, which are the modern Cartesian proof of political existence. I buy TV time, therefore I am.

Last week, a funny thing happened. He debated Lamont and Lieberman. Schlesinger, who debates the two front-runners again Monday evening, likes to call this new phase of his campaign "The Piñata Strikes Back."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/10/23/alan_schlesinger/