Charles Manson may have checked out too soon

The outgoing chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party said this week that former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship will have the party’s full support if he’s nominated for the U.S. Senate in next year’s May primary election.

“We welcome the candidacy of anyone who is anxious to beat Joe Manchin,” said Conrad Lucas on Thursday’s MetroNews Talkline. “That is the top priority in West Virginia for 2018 and I think that we’re going to do it.”

Don Blankenship for the U.S. Senate? Are you serious? I guess Charlie Manson was not available to run, seeing as how he just died.

I’d like to congratulate the Republican Party for sinking as low as it’s possible to sink this year with their campaign to deconstruct America, rape the poor and the elderly, empower criminals, collude with foreign governments and vote into high government office a slate of candidates who aren’t fit to be president of the PTA.

First, there was Roy Moore, the alleged child abuser from Alabama, running to fill a Senate seat in that state, and now Don Blankenship, straight from a 12-month engagement in a California federal prison, wants to join him in the Washington swamp.

In case you've forgotten, Blankenship, 67, was released in May after serving one year for misdemeanor conspiracy to violate safety regulations at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, Raleigh County, where 29 coal miners died in an April 2010 explosion. In its final report on the accident, the Mine Safety and Health Administration said flagrant safety violations contributed to the explosion, for which it issued 369 citations assessing $10.8 million in penalties.

Blankenship’s conviction was based in part on testimony from a former mine superintendent, who confessed to conspiring to impede the MSHA's safety enforcement efforts. A jury found that Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy at the time of the disaster, was guilty of conspiring to willfully violate safety standards, meaning they found him complicit in the 29 miners’ deaths.

That didn’t stop him from announcing this week that he will run against Congressman Evan Jenkins and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in the May 8 Republican primary in an attempt to unseat Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. With Blankenship’s entry in the race, the GOP is building a very interesting slate of candidates for Manchin’s job.

There’s Morrisey, a Brooklyn native who moved to New Jersey, worked as a lobbyist and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives before he was planted here in 2012 by the Republican machine to run against (and defeat) Darrell McGraw to become attorney general.

As AG, Morrisey inherited and continued a lawsuit against eleven major drug distributors, and filed a new suit against the nation's top drug wholesaler, McKesson, for flooding the state with 100 million pain pills in a five year period. However, as a lobbyist, Morrisey was paid $250,000 to represent a pharmaceutical trade group funded by some of the same drug distributors the state has sued. Records show he also took more than $8,000 in political contributions from Cardinal Health, a defendant in one of the state's lawsuits.

Not enough for you? Try this: Morrisey's wife is also a lobbyist, so see if you can guess who is one of her biggest clients? If you said Cardinal Health, you win the prize. While Morrisey has been in office, his wife's firm has made roughly a million and a half dollars lobbying for Cardinal, according to a report by CBS News.

Still not enough? Morrisey has been endorsed by Steve Bannon, the white nationalist executive chairman of Breitbart News and former chief strategist for President Donald Trump.

As for Evan Hollin Jenkins, about the only thing I can say about him is that he was a Republican before he was a Democrat before he became a Republican again as West Virginia was turning red in 2013. Apparently, any party will do for Jenkins as long as it leads to votes. Too bad the Whigs disbanded. Jenkins is currently our 3rd District congressman, taking the seat once held for 38 years by Nick Joe Rahall.

So let’s recap:

* In 2018, the Republican Party’s top priority in West Virginia is to defeat Joe Manchin, even if it has to drive a candidate home from federal prison to do it.

* In 2008, nationally, the top priority was to make Barack Obama a one-term president by stonewalling everything the president tried to do – even things Republicans tended to support.

* In 2017, the top priorities have been to take away our health care, which failed; rebuild our infrastructure, which never got started; and to keep their donors happy with massive tax breaks for the wealthy -- at the expense of the poor, the sick and the elderly -- which are now awaiting a vote in the Senate.

(Oh, and to allow Donald Trump to win something – as in anything – during his first year in office.)

It’s clear that the party’s top priority – back then and now – was and is not the welfare of the people of West Virginia or the best interests of the United States of America. Looking at their current candidates and legislative tactics, some have argued that it’s not even in the best interests of the Republican Party.

Time will tell but I, for one, am hoping that is true.