OH-5: A little change...
...so, I live in Ohio's District 5. You may have heard our representative to the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Gillmor, died a month ago. If you didn't: Paul Gillmor, the U.S. representative from Ohio's 5th District, died last month. That means a replacement has to be voted on (and will, on December 11th, with the primary on Election Day). And that also means...those damned political ads.
Two, to be in fact, between the two main Republican candidates, Bob Latta, BG's state representative, and Steve Buehrer, the state Senator. Last week, Club for Growth tied Latta to higher taxes...proclaiming that he did it for "tax and spend governor Bob Taft". And this week, Latta is tying Buehrer to Coingate and accusing him of taking money from Tom Noe.
By the looks of the ads, you'd think that Bob Taft was one of those eeeeevil, Rush Limbaugh-type libruls.
He's not.
That's the problem.
More specifically, that's the endemic problem with the Republican Party, especially those who can't let it go that it's been hijacked by the neoconservative movement. The truth is, both Latta and Buehrer are part of this problem, and neither will do anything different if they're put into Gillmor's seat. The corruption is endemic to the neoconservative movement, and those Republicans who find the neoconservative movement distasteful can't divorce themselves from it unless they, well, divorce themselves from it. By voting for someone different.
If that means voting independent, that's fine. If that means holding the ol' honker and crossing the aisle to vote for the Democrat, more power to you.
I, being of the opposition party, have no compunctions about that. Odds are anybody from my party that I choose to go up against one of the cronies that will undoubtedly come out of the Republican side will be an underdog who has less political experience. But, with that lack of experience also comes a fresh eye, a lack of corruption, a new way of looking at things. And sometimes, you need it. You need to have that change that a 9-term representative just can't bring, and that State Assemblymen who were around and implicit in the administration of the worst governor in Ohio history can't bring.
Which is why Robin Weirauch will be my choice for the Ohio 5 slot in both the primary and the special. She's experienced enough in elections, but has been blocked by Gillmor. So she at least has the experience of campaigning, but not the experience of the "big time", as it were. She's not "inside the Beltway" or "tied to Columbus" or anything like that. She's a fresh set of eyes outside what you'd call the "establishment" (which is one of the reasons why I was so pissed that Paul Hackett deferred to Sherrod Brown in the Senate race in '06). If you want change, sometimes you have to change things up. And change is really what we absolutely, desperately need in Washington right now. And I'll try and do that, in my own small way.
Two, to be in fact, between the two main Republican candidates, Bob Latta, BG's state representative, and Steve Buehrer, the state Senator. Last week, Club for Growth tied Latta to higher taxes...proclaiming that he did it for "tax and spend governor Bob Taft". And this week, Latta is tying Buehrer to Coingate and accusing him of taking money from Tom Noe.
By the looks of the ads, you'd think that Bob Taft was one of those eeeeevil, Rush Limbaugh-type libruls.
He's not.
That's the problem.
More specifically, that's the endemic problem with the Republican Party, especially those who can't let it go that it's been hijacked by the neoconservative movement. The truth is, both Latta and Buehrer are part of this problem, and neither will do anything different if they're put into Gillmor's seat. The corruption is endemic to the neoconservative movement, and those Republicans who find the neoconservative movement distasteful can't divorce themselves from it unless they, well, divorce themselves from it. By voting for someone different.
If that means voting independent, that's fine. If that means holding the ol' honker and crossing the aisle to vote for the Democrat, more power to you.
I, being of the opposition party, have no compunctions about that. Odds are anybody from my party that I choose to go up against one of the cronies that will undoubtedly come out of the Republican side will be an underdog who has less political experience. But, with that lack of experience also comes a fresh eye, a lack of corruption, a new way of looking at things. And sometimes, you need it. You need to have that change that a 9-term representative just can't bring, and that State Assemblymen who were around and implicit in the administration of the worst governor in Ohio history can't bring.
Which is why Robin Weirauch will be my choice for the Ohio 5 slot in both the primary and the special. She's experienced enough in elections, but has been blocked by Gillmor. So she at least has the experience of campaigning, but not the experience of the "big time", as it were. She's not "inside the Beltway" or "tied to Columbus" or anything like that. She's a fresh set of eyes outside what you'd call the "establishment" (which is one of the reasons why I was so pissed that Paul Hackett deferred to Sherrod Brown in the Senate race in '06). If you want change, sometimes you have to change things up. And change is really what we absolutely, desperately need in Washington right now. And I'll try and do that, in my own small way.