I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Sen. George Allen (R-VA) is a dope. In today’s Washington Post, Dana Milbank points out that the man can only speak through football metaphors, lest anybody forget his great accomplishment in life: being born to the coach of the Redskins. (Which reminds me of something often, and accurately, said about President Bush: he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.)
Last month on the Senate floor, Allen, a former quarterback for the University of Virginia and son of the late Redskins coach of the same name, said critics of Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, “have used some bump-and-run defenses and tactics against her.”
Sen. George Allen, playing catch while campaigning with Rep. Frank Wolf and Lisa Marie Cheney, refers often to “defense,” “game balls” and the like.
Talking about the Iraq war, he criticized Democrats for “Monday-morning quarterbacking.”
When the GOP won a Senate seat in Louisiana in November, he said it “was like a double-reverse flea-flicker and a lateral.”
As head of Senate Republicans’ campaign efforts in 2004, he called his candidates in the southern states the “NFC South.”
In Allen’s world, primaries are “intrasquad scrimmages,” his Senate staff is the “A-team,” Senate recess is “halftime” and opponents are flagged for “pass interference.”
The list goes on, and on, and on…and still on. Even Milbank rhetorically asks, “How many football metaphors can one nation stand?”
As Steve Minor points out, it’s a good thing his father wasn’t a proctologist.
Heaven forbid a politician should speak in a language that connects with ordinary people. Allen is as down-to-earth as any politician Virginia has ever seen, and that’s why he is so immensely popular.
You keep John Kerry and his nuances…I’ll take that dope Allen.
There’s down-to-earth, and there’s annoying. I’ve had coworkers like. It drives me up the fucking wall. Ever seen Office Space? It’s like George Allen is constantly asking me if I got the memo about the TPS reports.