Loons of the Northwoods

Andrew Sullivan has a good piece at Salon.com on the ludicrous notion being bandied about by the lunatic Left that perhaps Paul Wellstone's death was not an accident but rather an act of sabotage. As silly as it sounds there are those out there who take this quite seriously. Here in Minnesota I first personally heard mention of this far fetched conspiracy mere hours after the crash. You see Wellstone was a progressive, fighting against big business, against the looming war with Iraq, and so he had to be silenced. Or so the theory goes.

The fact is that for all the acclaim and glory that has been posthumously heaped upon Wellstone he actually didn't accomplish much of significance during his two terms in the senate. Certainly nothing that would cause him to be worthy of such crackpot conspiracies. Being on the losing end of 98-2 votes could be viewed as courageous by his supporters but what did it really achieve? Did he stop the Gulf War? Did he stop the Clinton welfare reform plan? Did he stop the Bush tax cuts? Of course not. In some ways having a real live Left leaning verging on socialist liberal like Wellstone around was good for Republicans including the Bush administration. They could point to Wellstone as an example of the what the Left was really all about and use him as a bogeyman to rally their supporters. What good could possibly come from "silencing" him?

I'm also curious as to what kind of person subscribes to a worldview that believes someone like Wellstone would be killed anyway. Can they not except the fact that life does not always make sense? Things don't always happen for a reason and every tragedy cannot be blamed on someone else. Part of the problem likely stems from ignorance as well. I heard a remark that "you never really know what caused these things" on Friday in reference to the crash. Actually you usually do know, in quite great detail if you choose to pay attention. When the National Transportation Safety Board investigates a plane crash they carefully go over every possibility and examine every piece of evidence before arriving at a conclusion. This meticulous work can't be completed in a few days and it often takes months before an official report is released. By that time your average Lefty loon has moved on to their next great injustice and doesn't have time for those pesky things called facts.