Republicans are running Kooks & Theocrats for Senate

This is beyond normal Republican wierd - I hope.

ALBANY - A Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is bizarrely claiming that the former first lady has been spying in her bedroom window and flying helicopters over her house in the Hamptons, witnesses told The Post yesterday.

Former Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen "KT" McFarland stunned a crowd of Suffolk County Republicans on Thursday by saying:

"Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures," according to a prominent GOP activist who was at the event.

"She wasn't joking, she was very, very serious, and she also claimed that Clinton's people were taking pictures across the street from her house in Manhattan, taking pictures from an apartment across the street from her bedroom," added the eyewitness, who is not involved in the Senate race.

Suffolk County Republican Chairman Harry Withers, who hosted the reception in East Islip, confirmed McFarland's paranoid statements.

"Yes, she said that," Withers told The Post.

There is the Kook-of-the-day. Next, from the Orlando Sentinal we get the Kooky Theocrat, Katherine Harris. This is the not-very-attractive two-term Republican Congressperson running to defeat Democratic Florida Senator Ben Nelson. You will remember that Ms. Harris was the Florida Secretary of State and Co-Chair of the Florida Bush for President organization who worked so hard in 2000 to reduce the number of Democratic voters so that Bush could get the Supreme Court to steal the election for him. This part of the story is a bit longer, so let me summarize.

First, she said that her long-time media consultant Adam Goodman leaked a report that he and long time Strategist Ed Rollins were leaving her campaign. She said this was incorrect. Only Adam Goodman was leaving. When asked if Goodman were still with the campaign, she responded with confusion followed by a "No comment."

Then later she called the Orlando Sentinal and told them she should not have said that Goodman had leaked the reports as she had first said. The Sentinal states that this has been typical of the confusion in her campaign.

But I said "Theocrat", didn't I? Here is more to the story. She is trying to recover from the confusion of her campaign by taking her campaign advice mostly from her "...spiritual adviser Dale Burroughs, founder of the Biblical Heritage Institute in Bradenton." This and the following come from the St. Petersburg Times.

Burroughs has been advising Harris for years, but lately has had a more prominent role as Harris stopped listening to other campaign advisers. Burroughs said she has little role in the campaign beyond helping reach out to religious voters and is merely a Bible study partner and close friend.

Friends and advisers say Harris has been deeply religious all her life, but religion recently has become a central part of her campaign. Campaign staffers warily describe Harris as leading a "Christian crusade."

"It was always part of the background, but it was never an integral part of the campaign. It never engulfed her," said former campaign manager Jim Dornan, who quit the campaign in November but keeps in touch with staffers. "She's grasping for a pillar she thinks this campaign can be raised on."

Her top campaign advisers, having failed to persuade Harris to drop her struggling campaign against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson, are preparing to leave. Those include Ed Rollins, a highly regarded GOP strategist and her top campaign adviser; Adam Goodman, her longtime Tampa-based media consultant; and campaign manager Jamie Miller. Harris has been aggressively campaigning for support among religious conservatives, hitting large churches and headlining a "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference in Broward County last weekend. She told hundreds of attendees she was "doing God's work" with her campaign.[Snip]

Though little known in Florida political circles, Burroughs is well respected among some of the country's most prominent Christian conservative political activists. She is a spiritual adviser, for instance, to members of the Arlington Group, a coalition of religious conservatives that includes James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Gary Bauer of American Values, Don Wildmon of the American Family Association and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell.

I guess when the rational doesn't work, then the only choice is to resort to the non-rational and hope for a miracle, right?

Many of the pictures of Katherine Harris seem to me to show a woman who has personal problems and tries to keep them under tight control. Frankly, I think she is simply wound too tight, and is trying to build her self-esteem by getting elected Senator. Unfortunately, it isn't working, either to resolve her personal issues or to provide a Senator who can adequately work for the needs of the people of Florida and for America.

Where do the Republicans GET these people?

[Thanks to The Swing State Project for the first item above about the kook in NY, and to TPM from Josh Marshal for the second two items above.]