“I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, and I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist. I'll butt it as long as I've got a head. I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old and fistless and footless and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition!” --Rev. Billy Sunday
The foregoing vow from a famed and clearly fiery evangelist not only evokes the vigor and resolve of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opposition to Barack Obama, but in the wake of her West Virginia primary triumph, it suggests another voter bloc on which Ms. C. may lay legitimate claim: the toothless. West Virginians in their sixties and older, it seems, are the most dentally challenged of all Americans. (If you doubt, check it out.) Judging from yesterday’s exit polls, it would appear that Hillary won nearly seven in ten of the votes cast by a portion of the electorate where more than four in ten are no longer sporting their natural choppers. This bodes well for her because the next big primary is the May 20 contest in Kentucky, which stands second only to W. Va. in the all-important dentally deficient demographic.
The Clintonistas are busily trying to put some teeth (Ouch!) in Hillary’s big win by describing West Virginia, with its five electoral votes, as a vital “swing state,” and pointing out that the last two Demo losers failed to carry it. Let me respond to this with a question. What do Adlai Stevenson (1952,1956), Hubert Humphrey (1968), Jimmy Carter (1980), and Michael Dukakis (1988) have in common other than losing their respective presidential bids? If you guessed “winning West Virginia,” then not only are you correct, but I like the way you think.
When I noticed that 48 percent of those polled after the West Va. balloting said that they would either vote for McCain or stay home on election day if Hillary was not the nominee, it occurred to me that the Democrats might be well advised to cut a deal with the Billarys. Why not offer to make her president of West Virginia? With the party’s control of Congress likely to be strengthened in November, the paperwork should be a snap. Certainly with her own teeth not only intact but pretty darn intimidating if you ask me, Ms. C. should have no problem subduing any mountaineer dissidents in short order. There would be the very real possibility, of course, that she might quickly rally her supporters for an invasion of the United States in order to claim the presidential throne she really wants and views as rightfully hers. The prospect of fighting off hordes of meth-crazed Hillaryites might be daunting for some, but not for me. Please don’t get me wrong, as the only member of my immediate family to live this long still chewing with the set God gave him, I don’t like to belittle anyone who has no teeth. Still, I find it difficult to figure out what I have to fear from a bunch of folks who would have trouble eating a Moon Pie.
