Fifteen term Republican Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana has recently announced he will not run for re-election, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. It turns out Burton’s decision was facilitated by a group called the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a group that thinks that long term incumbency is harmful to the proper governance of the United States, and tries to find challengers for long term incumbents, regardless of party, in the primaries. The driving force behind this effort is a wealthy Texas construction magnate named Leo Linbeck, who says he wants to take a wrecking ball to the unhealthy system where 99% of all incumbents are re-elected.

 

 

Incumbents may be hurtin’

If the case of Danny Burton

Doth presage the death of long term in the trough

All because a man named Leo

With amazing charm and brio

Has put fear of God in Dan and seen him off

It is long past time eliters

Who spend lifetimes as repeaters

Have to face the voters and to prove their worth

‘Stead of rich from hanky panky

And then getting old and cranky

Laying long in Congress ‘til they lay in earth

But now Leo has the answer

Like an old time gandy dancer

He just swings his hammer and the buzzards fall

Just a guy who’s in construction

Who’s just giving some instruction

On just how to swing that big old wrecking ball