The Ten Grinchiest Republicans in 2008

By Bruce Walker

From best to worst:

(10) Ron Paul -- Very good, very bright, very principled, but, sadly, very wrong. The congressman would have made a marvelous President Madison or President Monroe, but, unfortunately, the Barbary Privates are not in Tunisia now, they are in Toledo.

(9) Linda Lingle -- I like Hawaii's governor. I really do. But sealing the birth records of Obama just before the election? Right when the case was building that he was born in Kenya? It doesn't quite pass the smell test.

(8) Colin Powell - Okay, so no serious person ever really thought Powell was a Republican. Still, such calm duplicity and pandering to our first Marxist president deserves some note.

(7) Chuck Hagel -- You and McCain were simpatico. You wanted McCain. For years you blew him kisses...now you get a crush on Obama? Poor McCain is crying "Et tu, Chucke?"

(6) Arnold -- If the San Andreas Fault cleaved now, would anyone in Sacramento notice? Would anybody care? Are you trying to win the "Gray Davis Award for Responsible State Government"?

(5) "Maverick" -- Why not much higher? He likes Lieberman, he picked Palin, and he did support the surge. If it didn't look so much like he had been paid by Democrats to take a fall in the ninth round...

(4) Larry Craig -- Pled guilty...promised to resign...then discovered that your tenure as a disgraced lame duck Senator was somehow "indispensable" to the Republic. Yeah. Right.

(3) Mike Huckabee -- The weight loss king! The new television host! The social(ist) "conservative" who kept running for president (or for himself) long after McCain had won. Phyllis Schaflly told me you destroyed the Republican Party in Arkansas (She underestimated you.)

(2) Henry Paulson -- No, I checked: He really is a Republican. Why put him on the list? I can think of trillions of good reasons.

And...the Grinchiest Republican of all...

(1) Ted Stevens -- Gee, Ted, you personally lost Republicans an Alaska Senate seat in a Red state during an election cycle in which a very popular Governor Palin was on the bottom of the Republican ticket. Who would have thought it possible?