It's less than 700 days to the 2008 elections, and with the seat being vacated by a lame duck President, it seems like everyone but Lyndon Larouche and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man have tossed their hats into the race. This is good news, as it provides voters with a diverse field to choose from. And it's better news for would-be powers behind the throne, as there's lots of would-be throne owners to stand behind.
Not that all such powers are the sort of people you'd want on your side. Former Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards had a bit of a kerfuffle when it turned out two of his campaign hires were bloggers whose past work was a bit foul-mouthed and histrionic. The Right Wing blogosphere had a field day – however hypocritical – with the twosome's back catalogue of astute observations ("f@#$ Bush-Co!" being one of many). And in the end the two bloggers decided to slide out, stage far-left, while the getting out was good.
An early campaign victory for the Right against the ridiculous excesses of the wacky, far-Left? Perhaps. But the first rule of karma is that everything balances out, and now it's time for some payback, times three.
Enter Duncan Hunter: Republican Rep. from California and candidate for President. He talks tough on illegal immigration and fair trade, thinks hate crimes shouldn't be punished any worse than other crimes, and has Chuck Yeager's vote.
Who's Dr. Henry Jordan? Rep. Hunter calls him a "great conservative, Republican leader." However, ten years ago Jordan was proving himself to be a pathetic religious bigot.
Of course, he apologized when the heat was turned up under his bottom, but he kept his post. And four months later, he insulted a Muslim who wrote to criticize his comments, saying "If you are not smart enough to read through the news and see what really transpired from this news event, it is no wonder you think salvation can be obtained by good works and having faith in Allah."
Has time moderated him? Well, no. When he ran for Lt. Governor of South Carolina, last year, Jordan told the AP "I mean you've got to be stupid to believe in evolution, I mean really," which no doubt endeared him to the reality-based community of his home state.
Rep. Hunter says he is unaware of Dr. Jordan's comments. And a look at where Hunter stands on a number of issues shows an environment in which such comments really shouldn't thrive... unless he's not serious about protecting religious freedom here and abroad.
But then, Hunter seems one of those conservatives who think religious freedom means the majority religion should have the right to impress itself on all minority religions within its sphere of influence. And yet he has the chutzpah to say "The greatest protection of human rights in this decade has been the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan"!
What makes this worse than the John Edwards blogger debacle – other than Catholic League president Bill Donohue staying mum about Dr. Jordan's past indiscretions – is that Edwards' now-former people were just staffers. Sure, they'd get to press virtual flesh (and whistle up virtual money – big virtual money, at that) but in terms of actual power over the campaign's direction, it's doubtful they'd be higher than maybe 9th or 10th banana. "Thrallslave! Write me a blog entry... and order some mocha latte while you're at it, okay?"
Dr. Jordan, on the other hand, is one of Rep. Hunter's campaign advisors: perhaps 2nd banana, for all we know. And is that the sort of person we need advising someone who may actually show at the Republican Primaries, and could be tapped to be Vice President if he makes a strong enough showing?
If you're the sort of person who thought our current Veep should have been called out by his colleagues for dropping the F-bomb on the Senate floor, the answer should be no. But just as one wonders where the Right's indignation was when Dick Cheney lost his temper, one has to wonder when they'll ask Rep. Hunter to reconsider his powers behind his throne.
Wonder loudly, and often.
http://rant-farm.blogspot.com/
J. Edward Tremlett is a lot of things, currently. He's back in the states after a seven-year stint in Dubai, UAE. He's been published in such diverse places as The American Partisan, the International American, The End is Nigh, Pyramid Magazine and Worlds of Cthulhu. He has a story in the "Echoes of Terror" horror anthology. He's also ready to get back in the saddle and kick some ass after too long of a radio silence.
Sometime, during the week of 2/19, a small, underfunded, longshot conservative Republican candidate for President, made two bad choices with regard to his campaign in SC. (Jordan was not named a national campaign co-chair. He was named as a SC co-chair. VP? Come on!)
"Sometime, during the week of 2/19, a small, underfunded, longshot conservative Republican candidate for President, made two bad choices with regard to his campaign in SC. (Jordan was not named a national campaign co-chair. He was named as a SC co-chair. VP? Come on!)"
{Good point - I missed that distinction, and it's a bad thing to miss, even if it was worded somewhat obliquely in the article. However, I'm still worried about someone like Jordan being a chair in any respect in such a campaign, be it state or national. That's too close to the throne for my liking.
{Speaking of obliqueness, I'm not sure what you mean by (VP? Come on!) I didn't think Jordan was going to be VP on Hunter's ticket. I thought that Hunter might be a VP candidate on SOMEONE ELSE'S ticket, with Jordan as a personal adviser. You yourself, a "Duncan Hunter Supporter" according to your authors page
"On 3/2, you get around to bashing him for the choice, with no mention they no longer had their position."
{I submitted the article on either 2/26 or 2/27 and went on to other things, figuring there wouldn't be any movement on it for at least a week, given how slow campaigns can sometimes be to remove or comment on troublesome members. I didn't see that Jordan had been booted off until it hit the news media on the 1st... and then the column finally posted on the 2nd.
{When articles you post don't go up right away, sometimes the story changes. These things, they happen. But I'm glad Hunter seems to have done the right thing. Whether he did the right thing for the right reasons remains to be seen.}
Credibility is hard to maintain. You need to guard it more carefully if you expect to have any.
{This is true, and I screwed up my credibility somewhat by thinking Jordan was higher than the SC level. Maybe that will teach me to read more carefully next time.
{But if you're going to do more on this site than comment on others' articles, you might want to be aware that it sometimes takes a couple of days for articles to post, and sometimes things change in the interregnum. I'm not sure there is anything I could have done to change or nuke the article once it was in the queue. I'll have to see if there's some way to kill an article, edit it and resubmit it in case something like this happens again.
{And while we're speaking of credibility... what credibility can Duncan Hunter claim now that we see he would have had someone like Henry Jordan on the campaign at any level? That wasn't just a "bad choice" on his part - that was outright foolish, and sent a really bad message as to what his campaign was about, and who he would want as advisers and constituents if his long shot actually got somewhere.
{You're quite right that credibility is hard to maintain, and needs to be guarded carefully if one expects to have any. So maybe you can ask Rep. Hunter what the hell he was thinking when he took Jordan on as an SC Adviser and get back to us with his answer. Failing that, maybe you should back a more credible candidate before questioning others' credibility.}
by
J. Edward Tremlett (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 60 diaries, 76 comments)
on Monday, March 5, 2007 at 10:04:16 PM
2 comments
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