That’s the verdict from my one man jury after seeing the result of the U.S. Senate Republican Primary. This is our U.S. Senate candidate to take on Max Baucus this year.

He has a bit of an eyebrow problem and he’s 85 years old and he beat out four other candidates in the primary, not barely squeaking by, but by a 13 point margin. His name is Bob Kelleher. He has run for Governor in Montana as a Democrat. He has run for the U.S. Senate in Montana as the Green Party candidate. This year I guess it was his turn to be a Republican. He has a long resume of political failure and some ideas that are pretty far out there:

Since 1964, Kelleher, an 85-year-old Butte attorney, has run for public office 15 times, losing all but once. His single victory came in 1971, when he was elected as a delegate to the 1972 convention that rewrote Montana’s state constitution.

Kelleher’s lone rallying whoop then - as now - probably has something to do with his extended losing streak: Kelleher wants to do away with America’s unique system of representative democracy and replace it with a parliament.

Although Kelleher has launched most of his campaigns as a Democrat and dabbled briefly as a Green Party candidate in the early 2000s, this election marks the second time Kelleher has run as a Republican.

His parliamentary pitch, however, is unchanged.

“My position has always been the same,” Kelleher said in a recent interview. “Because 26 countries have a higher standard of living than we do, including health care, we should copy their form of government, which is a parliamentary system.”

The Billings Gazette

Kelleher reminds me of this kook I knew back in Pittsburgh that has run for just about every state and local office imaginable and manages to get his name on some ballot every year. Alex, Mark, and Dave know exactly who I am talking about.

I can’t believe that this is the current state of the Montana Republican Party. What the hell were these people thinking when they went out and voted? Honestly, I doubt anybody was going to beat Baucus anyway, but even a sacrificial lamb has some credibility and they don’t generally have one foot in the grave on their way to Election Day. Instead the Montana GOP took a lesson from the French and raised the white flag before the battle even began.

Remember last summer when the American people manage to shut down the switchboards on Capitol Hill by flooding them with phone calls to stop the George Bush shamnesty?  Remember how the powers that be in the GOP kept telling us we were wrong and that if we legalize the illegals under a Republican president they’ll vote Republican?  Of course, we knew they were wrong.

A new Gallup poll just came out showing Barack Obama getting 62% of the Latino vote while McCain garners only 29%.  Now isn’t that interesting?  Aside from Bush, who other than John McCain was the biggest face in this push for legalization?  According to the logic of Bush, McCain, and Martinez and others shouldn’t this poll be the other way around?  McCain was out there lobbying hard for them after all.