GOP Pantsless Madman Running for Governor in Missouri

by David NirFollow

Editor’s note:  It is refreshing to see a GOP candidate with a woman, an adult woman at that or even a human.

Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder is hoping his second shot at a gubernatorial bid goes a bit better than his first. In a campaign kick-off on Sunday in the town of Dellwood, Kinder joined the already-wild GOP primary to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon next year. It was an unusual place for a Republican rally: Dellwood is adjacent to Ferguson, and like its neighbor, it was scarred by riots after a grand jury declined to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown.
But Kinder, of course, was unconcerned about abuses of police power. Rather, he focused on the vandalism that followed Brown’s death, accusing Nixon of failing to deploy the National Guard “while Ferguson burned.” Kinder’s been saying this kind of thing all along: Earlier this year, he attacked Barack Obama and Eric Holder for participating in “incitement of the mob” and “encouraging disorder in Ferguson,” and even went in for some old-school red baiting by claiming the Department of Justice was “staffed with Marxists and black radicals.” So in that sense, Dellwood was the perfect spot for a Republican who wants to run on a bellicose law-and-order platform.

Kinder himself, though, hasn’t always walked the straight-and-narrow. His putative 2012 bid ended in a fiery wreck after a former stripper accused him of harboring an obsession with her a decade-and-a-half earlier, to the point that he became “very aggressive” with her during her performances and even “hurt” her physically. (It didn’t help that the story surfaced because he took a selfie with her, years after she’d broken off contact with him, at a bar known for its “pantsless parties.”) Around the same time, Kinder was also forced to repay the state for $35,000 in hotel bills he’d charged to taxpayers for trips to decidedly non-official activities like tea party events and even the World Series.

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