It's not a question of confidence, it's a question of sleaze.

If some GOP scam artist is having to recruit drifters and the homeless to run for key offices, are Republicans in Arizona feeling less confident about November than they're letting on?

Sadly, no. Ratfucking is what Republicans do, even when they are leading by double digits (see Nixon, 1972).

If they did that in Iraq, we'd add it to the list of reasons to invade, and install a real democracy there.

Steve May is well known here as an out gay activist who's willing to do dirty work for the Republican Party. He once graced the cover of Newsweek as a DADT casualty. He was in the state legislature about 10 years ago but coming out made him persona non grata among GOP primary voters in his conservative district. He's currently running for the legislature in (for Arizona) liberal Tempe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_May

I'm curious to know what address was given for these men considering that they are supposedly homeless and can only run if they can prove they live in the State. If a fraudulent address was provided, which seems to be a stipulation here, then surely that amounts to an indictable offense.

I'm also surprised there is no mention of the thousands of signatures required in order to get your name on the ballot, or is that not a requirement in Arizona?

They don't just want to win, they want to humiliate the other side. The worse they can beat an opponent the better. Yeah, ratfucking. It's what they do.

They do it because they want to win. Why not cover all the bases?

Nihilism is the ruling philosophy of the American right.

This way, they confuse, dismay and demoralize voters; in addition, they delegitimize the whole process; more voters throw up their hands and sit out future elections, making it easier to take over with fewer & fewer votes at their command.

They'll be happy when an even larger, overwhelming majority of the voting public just sighs, says "What's the point?" and stays home on election day.

On the plus side, the poor there an voting fodder, instead of cannon fodder.
To Republicans, government is a game you enter to win, not to accomplish anything besides getting elected.

Before he went batsh*t insane, Dennis Miller had a fine little rant about poor sportsmanship. Won't try to direct-quote, make with the silly or do too much paraphrasing, but the gist of it was, at a certain point, it wasn't enough for some athletes to want to win. They needed to make you lose. To make you feel silly for even thinking you could compete against them. To demoralize you into not trying.

When you think about how much Republicans glorify athletes, you can see how this sort of behavior goes hand-in-hand with the concept of "lack of sportsmanship."

Republicans are poised to make gains, serious gains, perhaps even take back one or both chambers of Congress. But that's not enough. They want to bully those who didn't vote for the Cranky Gramps/Looky No Touchy Pretty Lady Sass Mouth ticket of Aught Eight. They want to make our side feel like, even when we win, THEY MAKE SURE WE LOSE. So if you're not going to back the winning team, JUST STAY HOME. DON'T VOTE. EVER.

Vote suppression. It's how they get power. It's how they keep power. And as much as it sucks for those who are disillusioned by the past 2 years, it's why we have to GOTV. Yes, we need better progressive voices in the Dem party. But first, we need to break this cycle of assholery. If restoring democracy to America were like making a cake, they're the eggs we need to crack (and make sure they've not gone bad) before we add them to our mix.

" If some GOP scam artist is having to recruit drifters and the homeless to run for key offices, are Republicans in Arizona feeling less confident about November than they're letting on?"

Yes. SATSQ.

So much of the inevitable GOP takeover is simply a confidence game meant to discourage Dems. It will only work if Dems play along. We can do well this November if we work for it.

Gummo and slappy got it in one. It's not about winning this round. It's about voter suppression and voter apathy. America is a nation where, on a good year, barely half the population bothers to vote. During mid-terms in a lot of states 30% will be considered a 'high' turnout. Everything Republicans can do to keep that number low, like deligimizing the process, the better.

Because say what you will about the Tea-Party folks, they do show up at the polls. ALL the polls. School board elections, mid-terms, special elections, etc etc. They may make up only a small percentage of the eligable voting population (15%, 20% on the outside) but when 30% of the rest of us bother to vote, they win.

And of course these are American homeless, no illegal immigrant homeless...

In addition to the above theories, the R's might buy some billboard ads with these long-haired guitar strumming hippies on them. Even if they're in the *Green* party, the taint carries over to the Dem party. We're the dirty hippies - the environmentalists, who don't want war, who support assistance to the homeless.

Maybe they'll buy an ad showing the guitar-strummer with an Obama bumper sticker on his cowboy hat.

OR....

The might really be really stupid, and upon hearing the grass roots, activist lefties are dissatisfied with Obama for not being progressive enough, thought they could throw us a candidate we might be more amenable to voting for..

Another alternative explanation may be that they're trying to establish a precedent, or at least testing the waters for this sort of behavior.
If enough of a stink isn't raised about this, I wager we'll see this nationwide in the 2012 elections.

Bob Cesca raises a very good point about all of this: "My question is: Why? If the climate is so batshit crazy that Jan Brewer will likely be re-elected, why in the world would they need to engage in this sort of thing?"

Because the GOP slogan for the past 30 years has been "Fuck you," that's why. And, relatedly, because they will pay absolutely no price whatsoever for having been discovered doing this. No high-ranking Republicans will be called on the carpet, or even Meet the Press, to explain this, or distance themselves from it.

"... are Republicans in Arizona feeling less confident about November than they're letting on?"

Republican reminder to every candidate, daily:

"Belt AND braces!"

Ed

Two words: Alvin Greene.

This is Arizona. We have the Cactus League for baseball spring training and we have a bunch of single A republicans learning the ropes around election fraud. This is where William Rehnquist cut his teeth excluding 'certain types of voters' from the polls in the '60's. They start here in the minors because there's tacit approval from the knuckledraggin' authorities.

The Republican operative who recruited these homeless "Green party" candidates was on NPR earlier today, and he is truly one of the most vile, amoral, narcissistic sleazebags I've ever had the misfortune to listen to. He clearly thinks he's pulled a fast one on the "Democrat" party, but I think his tactics expose (once again) the house of cards that is the modern Republican Party. The Republicans have no real policies -- except tax cuts for billionaires and deregulation of industry -- so they have to rig elections and gin up fake controversies about birth certificates, death panels, and terrorist cells at Ground Zero. The Republicans can't win on the issues, so they have to do everything they can not to talk about them. And the Democrats let them get away with it.

The shameless Republicans, once again picking on/using the marginalized in society for political gain. They pick on kids on S-CHIP, kids who lose their moms, those who have lost their jobs, and now are using the homeless. They are beyond contempt. Sub-human, if I might.