A guest opinion

With his permission, I’m going to reprint an e-mail I received from my fellow Central Committee member and Wicomico County Republican Club officer Dave Parker. It pertains to the negative tone of the First District race, and I found myself nodding in agreement many times during the course of reading.

*****

At the outset I apologize for being so wordy – but I’m really upset by the tone of the First District GOP campaign. If I get on my soapbox again, I’ll probably have to start my own blog – and I don’t have time to do that!  (Besides Monoblogue.us is already out there!) So here’s why I’m upset.

I was really irritated a couple of months ago when the League of Conservation Voters started running ads attacking Harris. It was the first really negative ad I’d seen, and the claims in it seemed to be outrageous. (I’d have felt the same way if the ads had attacked any of the other candidates.)  I kept an open mind, and I decided to start checking the ads myself in an attempt to clarify – for myself and for the WCRC – what was really going on. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep up with the subsequent flood of claims, and cracking three ribs just before Christmas slowed me down even more.

Not surprisingly the League endorsed Gilchrest, for his record on the environment is really good. In fact if the environment is your main concern, then he’s the best of any of the candidates, Republican or Democrat. But the League isn’t even a group of Republicans, and they interjected themselves into OUR primary – not by supporting Gilchrest but by going on the attack against his strongest opponent. That really hacked me off! Moreover their claims were distortions and less than half-truths. (That much I easily verified, although sharing the details would make this long e-mail even longer.)

Arminio and Banks aren’t really factors in this primary since neither managed to capture enough support to generate money. Arminio’s platform is also much too complicated for most of us to embrace – although he could easily be absolutely correct in everything he proposes. But the general public isn’t going to take the time to study his theories. As far as Banks is concerned, I haven’t seen much of anything about him down here on the Lower Shore, so I really don’t believe he’s a factor in Tuesday’s primary.

So the race is between Gilchrest, Harris, and Pipkin.  It disappoints me to see these Republicans attacking each other by distorting their opponents’ voting records, platforms, and positions, and all three have done so. (The Easton Star Democrat endorsed Gilchrest a few days ago, claiming among other things that Gilchrest had NOT resorted to mud-slinging, half-truths, or distortions.  Want to bet?  Some of his recent ads, approved by him personally, have picked up the spurious, distorted claims of the League as well as some of the silly attacks made against Harris by Pipkin.) None of these three is “clean” in this area, and that really disappoints me. Is this the way Republicans should run for office?  Absolutely not!

Until Pipkin jumped into the arena, the race was clearly between Harris and Gilchrest. Both of them are now running ads distorting things their opponent(s) voted for (or against), usually appropriations bills that are rancid with silly pork. Yes, Gilchrest voted for the bridge to nowhere. (He also got some pork for the District in the same bill.) Yes, Harris voted to fund the renovation of a dance studio (called a “dance hall” in attack ads) for school children. (This amounted to a itty-bitty drop in the bucket in an appropriations bill, passed by unanimous vote – obviously not controversial! – in the MD Senate.)

I’d prefer to have the candidates telling us what they have done and what they plan to do, rather than distorting their opponents’ records. I’d also like to keep the darned PACs – particularly the non-Republican ones – completely out of our Primary! But in the post-McCain-Feingold world, campaign-finance-reform has increased the number of attack ads. (Now THERE’S an example of successfully reaching across the aisle! Think about that if you vote for McCain on Tuesday!) Campaigns are getting more and more filthy, and there’s more money than ever before being thrown around. I’m truly upset by the whole process. Why would anyone run for office?

Gilchrest votes with Pelosi and the Democrats more than any other Republican in the House. That statement appears to be completely accurate, and that has led to his being labeled a RiNo by many of his conservative constituents. A couple of MD GOP conventions ago there was a movement to draft Harris to run against Gilchrest, and the “Run Andy, Run” stickers were everywhere. Harris eventually decided to run, and he immediately located lots of financial support. For a time we had a clear choice:  Gilchrest, the environmental champion whose voting record is considered to be much to liberal for the District, versus Harris, a staunch conservative leader from the MD Senate. When the ads began to distort both men’s positions, I was worried. But then Pipkin jumped in and things got even worse.  Now I’m angry.

I’ve been completely disgusted by Pipkin’s campaign. Even the Salisbury Daily Times (hardly a conservative paper) repeatedly documented the lack of veracity in Pipkin’s ads in the paper’s Wednesdays and Sundays “Politically Correct” columns.  But he want far, far beyond distorting the records of Gilchrest and Harris. In his ads, Pipkin called Harris “dishonest” and a “liar.” Even if we accept distorting opponents’ records as acceptable politics-as-usual, Pipkin crossed the line into character assassination. I’ve tossed all of his recent mailings directly into the trash, and I refuse to watch his ads on TV.  For a Republican to behave the way he has is disgraceful!

Politics is probably a blood sport, best fought in the gutter. That certainly is an accurate characterization of the First District congressional campaign so far. But Pipkin took things from the gutter to the sewer, completely abandoning any semblance of personal integrity. His I-did-such-and-so, not-Harris ads belong in primary school campaigns, not here. As the final pre-primary weekend approaches I shudder to imagine what he’s planning to say next as he attempts to posture himself as being more conservative than Harris. Surely he’ll do something even more stupidly insensitive than his “Three Amigos” ads!

I’m probably too old to be as naive as I am, but it’s still hard for me to believe that Pipkin is really trying to help the Republican Party. It seems to me that, after his unsuccessful run for the US Senate, as soon as he saw that Harris had a chance to beat Gilchrest, Pipkin decided to go all-out in attempt to finally get himself to the big leagues in Washington. He appears to be so desperate to be in D.C. that he’s willing to do and say anything to get there. For example, several weeks ago I e-mailed the Pipkin campaign and asked them to explain precisely what made Harris “dishonest” (as Pipkin claimed).  Not surprisingly I’m still waiting for a reply. Gutter politics by Pipkin?  No – sewer politics.

I believe that either Gilchrest or Harris will win on Tuesday. Shortly thereafter we’ll be treated to Pipkin’s words again, as the Democratic candidate uses Pipkin to attack the Republican. It’s hard for me to understand why, after this campaign, any reasonable Republican would vote for Pipkin – ever. It’s even harder to me to imagine how I could vote for him – for anything. He’s doing his best to destroy the Republican Party from within, and it sickens me. He’s playing the role of spoiler to perfection. Talk about RiNo’s! His ego transcends common sense and respectability, and he’s hurting the Republican Party.

Harris and Gilchrest don’t come away clean, either. I haven’t yet seen either of them do other than use distortions, half-truths, and misrepresentations. That’s the gutter. But there are several days left, so who knows?

Then there’s what Gilchrest said. At the Wicomico County Republican Club meeting in August, he addressed us. He stated that none of the Pelosi-backed Iraq-war resolutions for which he voted were binding upon the President. He stated that he’d never voted in favor of any resolution that specified a date to withdraw US troops. Both Harris and John Leo Walter (who withdrew from the race in favor of Harris) disputed Gilchrest’s statement. In fact it seems that Gilchrest voted with the Pelosi-crowd to require US forces to cease combat operations by a certain date if specific benchmarks were not met. While that is not quite the same as pulling troops out of Iraq, it’s the sort of hair-splitting that we’re more used to hearing from the Clinton’s, not Republicans. Several weeks ago I e-mailed the Gilchrest campaign to explain what appeared to me to be an attempt on Gilchrest’s part to misrepresent his own record.  I have not heard back from them. (Apparently that’s either something that’s hard to explain or something that isn’t important. Well it’s darned important to me since setting a date like that helps our enemies!)

As I said at the top, if the environment is your primary concern, then Gilchrest is probably your choice.  But some of us are deeply concerned that the anti-Iraq-war votes that Gilchrest supported emboldened our enemies and likely endangered the lives of our troops. Some of us see his cooperation with the liberal left-wing as dangerous to our future security, and we want to have a real conservative voice in the US Congress.  Harris is the only conservative choice in this election as far as I’m concerned. Pipkin is more conservative than Gilchrest, but Pipkin doesn’t deserve anybody’s votes because of his conduct in this campaign.

Gilchrest is a likeable, sincere, principled man – but he’s not a conservative, no matter how loudly he proclaims he is in his ads. I’ve long admired him, and I’ve voted for him every time he’s run. But this Tuesday I’m voting for Harris. Yes, I’m concerned about the environment and the Chesapeake Bay. But the Bay won’t matter if we suffer another attack like 9-11. Because he’s voted with Pelosi so many times, I’ve lost confidence in Gilchrest’s views concerning Iraq and the war on terror, both huge issues of concern for me.

It’s incredibly difficult to unseat an incumbent in a primary, but Harris has a chance. He had a better chance before Pipkin muddied the waters with his inane, ego-centered, whining, personal-attack campaign. Should Pipkin happen to win, it will be a case of noise overwhelming the truth. I’ve always done my best to support my party, but I probably couldn’t hold my nose firmly enough to vote for Pipkin. He’s ripping the GOP apart in his zeal to be in Congress.

So let’s choose between a liberal-leaning environmental champion and a true conservative. Let’s ignore all of the ads from non-GOP sources, and let’s decide who will best represent us in Congress. Let’s ignore all of the distorted “facts” featured in the mailings and TV spots. Most importantly, let’s ignore Pipkin’s rants and whining. The GOP is big enough to embrace both Gilchrest and Harris, but the GOP doesn’t need any more Pipkins. No party does. We also don’t need any more attack ads of dubious veracity.

*****

To that I say, “amen!” With thoughts expressed like that, if Dave changed his mind and got into the blogging arena we’d all have some stiff competition.