Normally I would just scratch my head and wonder if he really just did that, but that my head is starting to bleed from all the scratching, so now when I see or hear things like this, I just have to calmly remind myself that Fletcher is an idiot.  To me it really is that simple, Fletcher is just too dumb to win this election.  Leonard made an interesting point in that if Fletcher had just stuck to his original line that his officials had engaged in some misconduct and he was sorry, he may be a in a much better position today and may have gotten a lot more done during his ternure in office.  Instead he resorted to pleading the fifth, resorting to an emergency legal defense fund, and making a plea deal with the Attorney General Stumbo to keep himself out of court.  Yet after all of this, Fletcher is still the moral man of the two. Please………..

 Fletcher seems to forget the original promise of his campaign four years ago. 

Yes everyone, the first Republican Governor in 28 years was going to clean up Kentucky politics.  Alas, Bluegrassreport.org reports in a recent poll that Kentuckians believe by a 7:1 margin that the Governor has not cleaned up the mess in Frankfort.  http://www.bluegrassreport.org/bluegrass_politics/2007/09/bluegrass-poll-.html  To add more sand in the Governor’s wounds, Kentucky Republicans by a 3:1 margin believe that the Governor has not cleaned up the mess in Frankfort.  To me this just quantifies the degree to which Kentucky Republicans have become disillusioned with Ernie Fletcher. 

In a state that is largely democratic with conservative leanings, you may just regard this as a reclamation by democrats of their original demographic, but a new report by BlueGrassRoots.org shows that this may not be the case. http://bluegrassroots.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=205  This article said that amongst people who go to church once a week, Fletcher and Beshear are almost even, but amongst conservative evangelicals Fletcher has 40% of the vote, Beshear has 53% of the vote.  For a republican trying to play to the conservative right, this is an ominous sign. 

While looking for a reason to how Fletcher could be losing ground even amongst his most staunch supporters I was provided the answer during a visit to UK by Kentucky State Representative Keith Hall, who supported Fletcher in 2003.  When asked why he no longer supported the Governor, he simply stated, “He doesn’t listen.”  You know what….he’s right.  Voters in 2003 asked Fletcher to clean up the mess in Frankfort.  He didn’t listen.  At the present, Governor Fletcher is banking a lot in his fight against casino gambling in Kentucky, going so far as to fight a memorandum on the issue in the next elections.  If he would just listen to the people he might see that the majority of Kentuckians agree with him, but they by an 82% majority want the opportunity to vote on the issue themselves.  http://polwatchers.typepad.com/pol_watchers/2007/09/a-plurality-of-.html

Sorry, I am going to have to end this here.  The scratch on my head just started bleeding again.

Yes, according to Mark Nickolas of BlueGrassReport.org that’s exactly what the governor said.  I raise the same question that he did, can anyone sense the desperation from the Fletcher camp?

 I must admit that when the first Republican Governor in 32 years was elected in Kentucky I was a bit excited at the prospect of what impact a Republican Governor would have in Kentucky Politics.  Almost four years later I have come to one conclusion, it’s not worth it.  It seemed to me that as soon as Fletcher took office, Democrats in the state were just itching for Fletcher to screw up so they could pounce on him, and who is Ernie Fletcher to not oblige them. 

They only had to wait to June of 2005 when Enrie decided to give the axe to certain members of the excecutive branch.  Now whether politically motivated by the Attorney General Stumbo or not, I think that Governor Fletcher should have known better.  By this I mean that he should have thought about the political climate of the state, and the effects upon it by the introduction of the first Republican Governor in 32 years.  Kentucky has historically been a democratic state and if it weren’t for the conservative movement that has been so active in the past 15 years it probably still would be.  In a state where the losers never let the victors enjoy the spoils, I think that if Fletcher was smart, he would have not done anything to try and encite the Democrats that were now united under the fact that if wasn’t one of them in the Governor’s Mansion.    So Dems waited and sure enough Fletcher fires some of his executive workers sparking a debate on the merit of these firings.  Two years later we are still hearing about this and Fletcher has had his entire administration paralyzed by claims of scandal, which he has more than helped with his blundering damage control.

Which puts us where we are today, with a completely desperate and overwhelmed Fletcher administration trying to stay in office by any means they can, including telling people that Casinos will mean that kids can only count to 21.  The problem with that is that in counting to 21, you need to say all the other numbers we have, you can also see the order to system of numbering, and could probably deduce how the rest of it works.

 But so exists the state of Fletcher’s re-election campaign.  Recent polls released by the Lexington Herald leader show Beshear up by 17%.  The saddest part about the whole thing is that Beshear doesn’t even have to say anything, he just needs to let Governor Fletcher keep saying the wrong things.  Like when he said that he had helped create 100,00 new jobs in the state.  The correct figure is more like 60,000. http://www.bluegrassreport.org/bluegrass_politics/2007/09/governor-why-do.html  If you can’t even get your talking points straight, I guess I will be telling my grandchildren about the last time there was a Republican Governor in the state.  Way to go Ernie!