The Alabama Education Association is the 800-pound guerilla of Alabama politics. Long a (perhaps "the") dominant player in the state Democratic Party, the AEA is branching into this year's GOP gubernatorial race in a major way. Its objective is to try to ensure that Bradley Byrne is not the GOP nominee. Byrne's claim to fame is a fairly short tenure as head of the state's community college system, whose employees are members of AEA. Byrne was effective enough as a reformer of the community colleges that he earned the AEA's undying enmity. Now that we're in the runoff campaign, the AEA is supporting Byrne's opponent, Robert Bentley. At least, that's what appears to be happening. A series of slickly produced anti-Byrne radio ads are currently running sponsored by an outfit that calls itself the "Christian Coalition for Alabama." Their overall message is that Byrne is not conservative enough for Alabama -- which is rich, coming from the de facto teachers union. This morning I heard one that pointed out that Alabama will need to squeeze BP for big bucks, but Byrne would not be up to the job since he has been "a trial lawyer for Big Oil."

What a phrase.

Hearing the ad brought to mind one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotes: "[T]he true charm of democracy is not for the democrat but for the spectator. That spectator, it seems to me, is favoured with a show of the first cut and calibre. Try to imagine anything more heroically absurd! What grotesque false pretenses! What a parade of obvious imbecilities! What a welter of fraud! But is fraud unamusing?"