He's the Real Forrest Gump

GOP can't complain if Alvin Greene somehow wins
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 21, 2010 1:55 PM CDT
He's the Real Forrest Gump
Alvin Greene makes his first public speech during the monthly meeting of the NAACP Sunday, July 18, 2010, in Manning, S.C.   (AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain)

"Joe the Plumber, meet Alvin the Gump." So writes Kathleen Parker, who sees parallels between South Carolina's Alvin Greene and Forrest Gump (as well as Chauncey the Gardner from Being There). No one can quite believe that Greene became the Democratic candidate for Senate on his own, with nothing to "recommend him but sheer dumb luck" and maybe an alphabetized ballot, Parker writes in the Washington Post.

If he miraculously beats Jim DeMint, Republicans would have to smile and take it, because it would be the realization of "one of their favorite tropes"—William F. Buckley's assertion that he'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty. Parker, though, thinks HL Mencken would be closer to the mark: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." (More Alvin Greene stories.)

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