Political ugliness bites back violently at the pols’ own partisan derrieres

We’ve developed an ugly underside to our politics – one that is entrenched in the partisanship that can prevent anything from occurring. And now that ugliness is snapping at the people who some might say have caused it to exist.

With the Nationals in New York to play the Mets, Nationals Park was to be taken over Thursday by the Capitol Hill crowd for their annual congressional baseball game for bragging rights. And charity, of course.

I’m referring to the incident early Wednesday in which a man from one of those Illinois towns near St. Louis went to Washington, D.C., showed up at a practice that congressional Republicans were having at a suburban park prior to their scheduled Thursday baseball game against the Democrats, and began firing gunshots at them.

THE BIG BLOW to this story is that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who was in the infield at the time, took a bullet to the hip. A congressional staff member at the scene also was shot.

Two Capitol police officers who were assigned to protect Scalise also were wounded, but one of them managed to return gunfire – ultimately striking and killing the gunman.

What I find sad about the incident is that the Congressional Baseball Game for Charity (played annually since 1909) is one of the few moments in recent years where Republicans and Democrats are capable of behaving civilly toward each other.

Perhaps it’s something about the mutual experience of the politicos donning the baseball uniforms of their home cities (I still remember the sight of former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., trying to look all refined and dandy in a form-fitting Chicago White Sox uniform, and then-Rep. Rod Blagojevich looking kind of schlumpy in Chicago Cubbie blue) and taking the field, pretending that they’re still youthful and athletic and capable of doing great things on the ball field.

SCALISE: Recovery is expected

OR MAYBE IT’S the fact that they get to do this in a “big league” ballpark, Nationals Park, where for one day they assert their niche as the most important people in the District of Columbia.

But for whatever reason, Thursday night would have been an occasion on which the nastiness of Republicans feeling the need to stick it to their Dem colleagues in Congress would have been put aside.

The focus would have been on who could show off the mightiest swing, throw the hardest, or execute a perfect squeeze bunt to catch the other side off guard (and create the illusions in their own mind about how they could have been big leaguers, IF ONLY they hadn’t been distracted by the desire to run for office).

Which is what led the Republicans who planned to take the field on Thursday to gather for an early morning practice – trying to refine athletic skills they lost many years ago and probably never really had in the first place.

Bunning the ballplayer later became Kentucky congressman

INSTEAD, IT MADE those GOPers potential targets to a man who may have been motivated by his contempt for the hostility being spewed by these same political people.

The Washington Post reported that the gunman had a Facebook page indicating he was a supporter of Bernie Sanders’ presidential aspirations, but was more accurately described as a critic of President Donald Trump – calling him a “traitor,” amongst other things. While the Belleville News-Democrat reported on the 18 "letters to the editor" he had written that they had published, where he ranted about a corrupt tax system that he said Republicans created and Democrats were too weak to challenge.

Of course, it was Trump who elevated the level of hostile rhetoric as part of his own campaign strategy to get himself elected president; not caring how much it offended the real majority of our society.

Now, we have to figure out if one of those offended decided to carry out an expression of his anger against the Republican Party that enables Trump to have political power?

WE’LL NEVER KNOW definitively what motivated this incident, since it appears the only casualty of Wednesday’s gunplay on the baseball field is the gunman himself – Scalise bled from his gunshot wounds but is expected to survive. He even got a statement from Trump himself, referring to Scalise as “a patriot” for taking a bullet to the hip.

Was last year's Democratic team a fine batch of athletic specimens, or a baggy batch of pseudo-ballplayers? The only area Dem to be on this year's team is Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., of South Bend, while the Republican team would include Illinoisans John Shimkus of Collinsville, Darin LaHood of Peoria and Rodney Davis of Taylorville.

Oddly enough, the man who was the gunman’s congressional representative, John Shimkus of Collinsville, is amongst those pols playing for the Republican team, but he was absent from practice – thereby sparing himself any threat of injury.

As I was writing this commentary, there was speculation that the ballgame, a Capitol tradition, would be cancelled. Officials ultimately decided to play anyway, and a part of me is glad. This is one of the few times the political parties come together, and anything that encourages such thought is a plus.

And while it might be wishful thinking on my part, perhaps such an ugly outburst is what it will take to get some people to stop thinking so harshly in Dem vs. GOP terms and realize the need for us all to work as one for the betterment of the nation.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I always preferred the Springfield, Ill., take on this game, where our legislators play softball and the teams are the Illinois House vs. the state Senate. Dems and GOPers get mixed, but the desire of senators to put their junior colleagues in their place was just as intense when the two sides last played May 19.

Were Cubs minor leaguers better than Louisiana pol at IDing racial tension?

One of the stories making national news these days involves Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who some 12 years ago when he was a mere state legislator gave a speech to a conference of people interested in organizing themselves for political purposes.

At least that’s the way Scalise, who is about to become the majority whip in the House of Representatives, tries to tell the story. He didn’t know that the group – European-American Unity and Rights Organization – was affiliated with one-time Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist politician David Duke.

DUKE, OF COURSE, downplays the racial hang-ups his group’s members have, claiming they’re merely using their right to express their views and organize themselves for future electoral power.

But what caught my attention in the reports coming from the Washington Post and New Orleans Times-Picayune, which appear to be inspired by a report in the New Orleans alternative weekly paper The Gambit, was the fact that a baseball club took the situation seriously enough to back off of the conference.

That ball club was the Iowa Cubs, the Des Moines-based outfit that is the Chicago Cubs top minor league affiliate.

It seems the Iowa Cubs were in New Orleans the same weekend as the conference in 2002 to play a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs, and in fact were supposed to stay in the same hotel where the event was held.

THE IOWA CUBS at the time had six African-Americans among their 30 ballplayers and coaches who travel with the team, and Cubs management thought there was enough potential for an incident that they didn’t want their team subjected to being in contact with so many EURO (that’s what they call themselves) members.

“We would just as soon stay away from a group that will create controversy,” team general manager Sam Bernabe said to The Gambit back then. The Zephyrs, who according to Pacific Coast League rules cover the costs of teams traveling to New Orleans to play their team, found another hotel.

There wound up being no confrontation between racially-motivated ideologues and future Cubs ballplayers.

But what does it say that a minor league baseball team knew more about the group that Scalise was to speak to, than Scalise did himself?

FOR THE EXPLANATION that Scalise has given in recent days to the Post and Picayune news reports is that he was poorly staffed at that point in his service in the Louisiana Legislature and didn’t know what the EURO group was about,

He says now he never would have spoken to the group if he had comprehended what they stood for or that Duke (who served one term in that state Legislature and has tried unsuccessfully running for governor and president) was connected to them.

But the Washington Post reported that Scalise was invited to the conference by long-time associates of Duke, and quoted people who say that Scalise should have realized there was a connection – unless he’s truly clueless about the Louisiana political scene.

Although I also realize that the reason all of this is coming out now is because there are those people who want to have the new Republican-run Congress (both chambers) tainted with all kinds of unseemly allegations.

BURY THEM IN muck, and maybe some of it will stick and bolster the political opposition’s chances of making the GOP domination of Congress a mere two-year run. I’m not ignoring the self-serving reasons for this tawdry story coming out now.

But still, it appears that the Iowa Cubs management was more capable than Scalise of identifying a potentially ugly situation and avoiding it. Which makes me wonder how much the people of Louisiana are suffering from his apparent lack of a political IQ?

Perhaps Iowa Cubs management should be in charge of coping with racial tensions, instead of training future ballplayers? Since based on the performance of the major league Cubs in recent years, they haven’t exactly succeeded at the latter!

Although I suspect Scalise would be just as inept as Cubs management at running a ball club.

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