Musician Kid Rock said Wednesday that he plans to run for U.S. Senate in 2018 in his home state of Michigan. The bid was first launched as a website, kidrockforsenate.com, which the singer just validated and shared on Twitter. He also tweeted, “I will have a major announcement in the near future.”So far, it doesn't seem legit:
Rock, whose birth name is Robert Ritchie, has been suggested as a possible Republican candidate to challenge Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who was first elected in 2000.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there appears to be no Federal Election Committee records filed under "Kid Rock" or his legal name Robert James Ritchie or Robert Ritchie.And while we're informed that "The Michigan Republican Party ... told CBS News that they have no knowledge of Kid Rock's possible desire to run against Democratic incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow in the 2018 midterm elections," Roll Call reported in February that his "name came up as a possible candidate at a Michigan Republican Party convention" that month.
... The website logo reads "Kid Rock '18 For US Senate." Page visitors can also purchase swag, including stickers, shirts, lawn signs and caps that read "Kid Rock for US Senate." The link to purchase apparel redirects visitors to the musician's Warner Bros. Records website.
If this is serious, can you say with certainty that this guy couldn't win?
I realize that there's plenty in his life that, in a pre-2016 America, would have been disqualifying. He has a song catalog that ranges from "Balls in Your Mouth," "Killin' Brain Cells," "Fuck U Blind," and "Blow Me" in the early '90s to later songs such as "Rock n Roll Jesus" and "You Never Met a Motherfucker Quite Like Me" (which includes the line "I met the president when I was half stoned"). You can watch a sex tape that features him along with Creed's Scott Stapp and four women. He had to pay $40,000 after getting into a fight with a guy at a Waffle House. And he doesn't seem to have a particularly profound grasp of politics, as we learned from this early 2016 Rolling Stone interview:
What do you think of the Republican field?Also, here's a photo he posted on Facebook just after he jokingly-not-jokingly announced his candidacy:
I'm digging Trump. I feel like a lot of people, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, feel like if you get Hillary or Bernie, or you get Rubio or Cruz or whoever, there's going to be the same shit. Has that much fucking changed when anyone's in office, whether it's been a Republican or a Democrat in office, in our lifetime, anyway? I haven't really seen this big, like, fucking change. Obviously some people fucked up. [Laughs] That's a long debate. My feeling: let the motherfucking business guy run it like a fucking business. And his campaign has been entertaining as shit.
... To me, I'm just like, "We gotta try something else," and ... I'm not an expert at political science or anything. I do try to follow things, obviously. I'm a pretty good, tax-paying citizen of this country. [Laughs] Let the business guy in there. It's not really working too well running it not like a business. I mean, what business fucking survives when they're fucking broke?
That guy's going to beat a three-term incumbent? It would have seemed crazy two years ago -- but after Trump, what have I listed that's disqualifying? The ignorance? The obscenity? The brawling? The sex tape? No, no, no, and no. Dude, he's not a politician! He has authenticity!
Let's face it, the guy would start with pretty close to 100% of the straight white male vote. Everything he does -- rap, country -- turns into classic dad rock. He unironically calls himself "American Bad-Ass." He's just at the sweet spot where he seems like a big rock star, yet he also seems like a drunken fuck-up whose act anyone could do. Sure, every lummox in Heartland America wants to be Trump, but all those lummoxes would probably settle happily for being Kid Rock, and they probably imagine they really could be him.
So I really hope this is a joke. If it isn't, he absolutely could win.
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