It appears that earlier yesterday, Jim Doyle was out targeting one of his base constituencies: the mentally ill.
As Steven Walters of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, Doyle campaign “workers” were caught on tape handing out trinkets and courting the favor of residents of a mental hospital during bingo hour last week.
Apparently, Doyle’s people became alarmed when some cameras from WTMJ-Milwaukee showed up at the Dayton Residential Care Facility in Kenosha to grab footage of the event for the evening news.
WTMJ then proceeded to film Doyle’s minions distributing “soda, kringle and quarters” to the assembled patients.
Doyle campaign director Bill Christofferson told the Journal Sentinel neither he nor Doyle were aware of the event. Walters reported Christofferson said two people identified by WTMJ as campaign workers are not on the campaign’s payroll.
Well, that’s all well and good, Bill, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t taking their marching orders from your office. Last I heard, campaigns recruit volunteers and interns to do most of their grunt work and, apparently in this case, their dirty work as well.
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This particular incident touches a new low in a campaign otherwise marred by vicious mudslinging and attack ads.
Outside of likely being illegal and incredibly disrespectful of our most disadvantaged citizens, Doyle’s little snafu specifically brings to light an approach to campaigns and elections that unite to form the bulk of my reasoning for being a conservative.
We could begin with the AG’s background: Madison boy, the child of a politician and a judge. Then a lawyer. And still a lawyer, but more on that later.
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A couple of weeks ago, New Jersey Democrats decided their boy Robert Torricelli was under a little too much heat to stand up to his challenger, a relatively unknown Republican businessman named Doug Forrester.
So, the operative strategy appears to have been “pull the sleazy incumbent in favor of someone with enough name ID to get by without a campaign, or an agenda, for that matter.
The man of the hour just happened to be 78-year-old former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who was in all likelihood forcibly removed from a good game of shuffleboard and planted on the stump by some Jersey mobsters and their lackey Tommy Daschle. Throw in an utterly complicit state Supreme Court, and you’ve got a recipe for assembly-line interchangeable candidates that would make Henry Ford proud.
Anybody remember Al Gore’s famous flag speeches? I’d be curious to see data on all the minutes he spent doing interviews pleading for support and justice and from the American public versus how often we saw President Bush on television during the Florida fiasco.
I, cable-news addict I became at the time, recall hearing from President Bush a brief address on election night, a speech from the hall of the Texas Legislature and the inauguration at which I stood in the sleet at the edge of Washington Mall and got frostbite. And that’s it.
Nowadays, Gore is working as vice chairman of some big investment firm in Tennessee and pulling down some pretty serious coin. Not a bad gig for a guy who seems to be on television yacking at the president and soaking in the subsequent applause four days a week.
Bottom line: Gore lost, whined, got fat, forgot how to shave and still doesn’t do anything more than raise political money. Gore in ’04? Forevermore. Gore in ’08? Won’t hesitate. Gore in ’12? Well, maybe not. I can’t rhyme that one.
Hillary Clinton? From the White House to the Hill with little in between but a short ride north on the broomstick.
Bill Clinton? I’ll spare you the obvious.
Jean Carnahan? Carrying the torch? More like carrying the urn, not to mention the burden of incumbency when the Democrats’ top dogs can’t afford to lose a seat in an otherwise-conservative state.
Paul Wellstone? From a political science professor busy filling young brains full of mush to a laughable nut job in the Senate to reneging on a promise to leave after two terms and now holding onto his seat with white knuckles as well.
And how about Tammy Baldwin? Very few people outside of the island actually like her; that’s fairly obvious. She doesn’t have a great command of the issues, which in an interview is blatantly obvious.
Her pie-in-the-sky, single-payer health-care proposals died with Lenin, and no one inside the beltline cares how courageous she is about her sexuality. Frankly, I’m not sure what she’d do if she hadn’t been elected to Congress, other than, well, teach political science.
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Now, to add some sensibility and temper the partisanship of this rant, there are plenty of “Republicans” cut from a similar mold. Strom Thurmond and Jim Sensenbrenner come readily to mind.
But does anybody else find it difficult to see any of the above wild leftists functioning successfully (and, in Gore’s case, legitimately) in the private sector, where you aren’t in business to be loved, enlightened, sensitive or “in-touch”?
As Election Day rolls around, just show me someone who at least brings the perception that it isn’t all about the power, the trappings and the trimmings.
Show me a campaign staff whose members present themselves in public with their shirts tucked in and attempt to communicate a message to persons not confined to an institution. Show me someone who’s known a world outside that of public debate. Show me someone who’s gotten their hands dirty without a union telling them when they have to punch out. Show me a decorated veteran.
Show me a successful small-business owner who came up from nothing. Show me someone who isn’t dragging himself back to the public trough for term after term. Show me a candidate who’s worked as — gasp — something other than a lawyer or a lobbyist.
And you’ll probably show me a conservative.
Eric Cullen ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in political science and history.
