Toddwatch: The Circus Continues

     It can't ever be that damn easy, can it?

     Just when you almost had the thought that this saga might finally be over, everybody's favorite disgrace to Lapeer County shows up at the courthouse late Friday afternoon to announce that, for reasons only known to him, he's running again, a week after stepping down from office. And his partner in crime announced earlier in the week that she would be running again as well.

     Far be it from either of them to let this go with any shred of dignity.

     Unfortunately, I can't sum up my thoughts quite as succinctly as they did in Cindy Gamrat's district, though I agree with the sentiment completely, but if you were looking for that, you probably wouldn't be here.

     Todd Courser joins an already-crowded field, with 11 Republicans and 3 Democrats vying for the position he resigned only a week prior, and could still be expelled from if he were to somehow be re-elected. Why, exactly, would he subject us all to another six months of this sideshow? Because, according to the man himself, his wife said "yes run!" Personally, I tend to think he might have misinterpreted that particular remark.

     And just in case you think he might have been humbled in the slightest by the proceedings of that last two months... well, there's no way you could think that, considering he's running again for an office he just resigned from last week. But more to the point, his Facebook postings of late prove beyond a doubt that he's learned nothing from all this. Despite having testified under oath that the House Business Office's accusations of misusing taxpayer funds were true, he went on social media today to assert that he essentially lied under oath and that "there was no misuse of taxpayer funds to cover up anything," and "there was no joint office," despite the fact that sharing his entire staff with Gamrat is the exact thing that constitutes a joint office. And apparently, what Todd did is completely acceptable because an employee of the House Business Office had recipes up on their computer.

     Have any of you made any sense of this yet? Because I sure haven't.

     From there, he sought to remind us of his voting record, and gave us a list of 35 accomplishments of his during his time in office, most of which barely count as accomplishments. Several of these go along with the ridiculous Tea Party assertion that the government doesn't need tax money to fund things the people want done; others towards his bizarre notion that forcing church involvement in marriage while still requiring government approval is somehow taking government involvement out of marriage; his absurd idea that there should be absolutely no restrictions on anybody having a gun at any time, or any sort of record of who owns said guns, because there's no way that could possibly end badly; and his belief that the 97% of services that Planned Parenthood provides so that women won't have to resort to abortion are null and void because they provide abortions at all, because clearly every single embryo ever created is already a living, breathing, human being.

     Then there's the actual "orphan bills" he proposed, which include a gas tax increase (not unreasonable, but didn't you just lecture us about how you fought an increase in the gas tax?), the aforementioned marriage bills, more bills to put more guns in the hands of anyone who wants one, and bills to ban Obamacare and eliminate the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the favorite targets of state Republicans. And in the only time I will ever defend anything he's done, he also proposed to let brewers self-distribute and eliminate straight-ticket voting, a bill which, ironically, likely would have spelled doom for him had it been in place before the last election. Gamrat's were much the same, save for a few extra bills to guilt, force, and cajole women out of abortions.

     The worst part of all of this? They stand a fairly decent chance of finding themselves right back in the offices they just vacated. With 10 other Republicans running, the vote might once again split enough for the lunatic fringe to carry Todd to the general election, where the Democratic front-runner lost to him in 2014, in a fairly conservative county, because only in Lapeer could a complete sociopath run for office and win because nobody looked any further than the 'R' next to his name. The candidates from both sides have been invited to a Lapeer County Tea Party-hosted debate this Friday, and I'll be reporting on that shortly thereafter and breaking down all the candidates here.

     One can only hope the voters do their homework this time.

     Because if he makes it back into office, we'll only have ourselves to blame.