While I’m sure we all respect Sen. Carroll’s 175 years of service to the commonwealth (did you know he helped Daniel Boone pick out the curtains for the old Capitol?), his logic (or lack of it, evidenced here) regarding America’s glorious and efficient two-party system is troublesome: Instead of trying to change Kentucky’s closed primary system — which has the effect of entrenching corrupt, senile “legislators” whom will remain nameless for the purposes of this post —  Carroll suggests that independents should instead seek to create their own party and leave him the hell alone.

We shouldn’t have to break out the Groucho Marx quotations to understand this, but the independent’s raison d’etre precludes party affiliation. Or, to put this in language that Sen. Carroll would understand:

YOU ARE KILLING ‘MERICA NOW GO TO BED YOU SILLY OLD FART.

You have the chance to be, to have growth — significant growth in your suburban areas. And the question becomes, as it was in the old City of Louisville, we were a city that was, we were getting poorer, we were getting more minority — we were getting poorer, blacker and older. And so as I was saying earlier, every time we lost merger in our community — the city always voted for it. The county was the one that voted against it. And at that time, when it would lose, it was people living in the suburbs who didn’t want the problems of the city.

I just got off the phone with Chad Carlton, a spokesman for Abramson, who had this to say:

He was trying to encapsulate in shorthand the demographics. If that was offensive to anybody, it was not his intent. His intent is nothing but to promote the positives we have in this community and the diversity of the people here.