CAN MIKE McINTYRE BE CONVINCED THAT THE NC SEVENTH DISTRICT DOESN'T NEED HIM ANYMORE?

Mike appears to be telling this crowd to stop chanting
Republican slogans. Sorry the photo is a bit blurred.
It was free. You get what you pay for.

By Verne Strickland / December 14, 2011

One of my most adorable (I did not say ‘adoring) fans told me in an email recently that I am “terminally partisan” or something like that. I can’t remember the exact words. I did not see that as an insult, but as a badge of honor.

This gentleman, who claims he’s one of the two people who regularly read my vapid drivel (my words) says I should just leave Mike McIntyre alone.

But why? Mike is such a natural foil and fop – before an election, during a campaign, and even after an improbable win – that I, an inveterate conservative punster and renegade, cannot resist poking sport at the guy.

I ask again – why? Because, since my political schooling at the knee of Jesse Helms, one of my greatest pleasures in life has been skewering liberals, atheists, effete poseurs, cynics, Mormons with more than six wives, and most of all – phony politicians. 

Mike may fit into one or more of those categories, although I wouldn’t want to fathom a guess as to which ones might apply. I am fairly certain about at least one of them.

I used to also delight in trashing communists and communism, although I’ve become less fascinated by them since the rise of the upwardly mobile and infinitely more threatening radical Muslim hordes of the world, who have proven their affinity for insufferable arrogance, ignorance, ambition, deceit, killing, persecution of women and Christians, and world domination. 

Some things do change, don’t they? But not Mike. We’ll soon get to see the Robeson County flash – now an excessively incumbent insider Democrat – as he limbers up for another go at it. 

He’ll be back with the same old schtick – talking like Jesse Helms when he’s in the district, but acting like Nancy Pelosi’s lapdog when he’s on the Hill.

Can Mike be convinced that the Seventh doesn’t need his “service” anymore? 

Conservative GOP candidate Ilario Pantano, gearing up for a return match with the Mikemeister, will have plenty to say about that. And, after almost taking McIntyre down for the count in 2010, he looms as an even more formidable challenger when the starting gun sounds for 2012.

It promises be the shot heard from Leland to Lumberton. Can't wait.