Why I Am Planning To Vote For Raul Labrador For Congress

Why I Am Planning To Vote For Raul Labrador For Congress

We had a bond election today in the Horseshoe Bend school district.  Next Tuesday is the primary election.  (If there were any sanity, both elections would have been held on the same day--but at least the bond election was pitifully cheaply run.)

I had originally planned to vote for Vaughn Ward in the Republican primary for U.S. House seat 1.  I saw a swarm of news stories in the Idaho Statesman that were generally so petty as to make me more inclined to vote for Ward.  Dan Popkey, the Idaho Statesman's political columnist, made a big deal of Ward being late on his property taxes.  Even Rep. Walt Minnick (DINO-ID) pointed out how easy it is to miss such deadlines.  It was pretty clear that Popkey was just trying to weaken what was considered the stronger Republican candidate.

But since then, Ward has managed to demonstrate that he is not ready for prime time.  He ran an ad with him in uniform.  That's a complete no-no.  If Ward was an enlisted man, I could be charitable and assume that he didn't know, or forgot.  But he's an officer (Major).  He ought to know better.

Then Ward's campaign was caught plagiarizing stuff for his campaign from other Republican campaigns around the country.  Okay, mistakes happen; busy campaign staff may not understand that if you are going to reuse someone else's stuff, you should attribute it.  (Unless, of course, you are Sen. Joe Biden, now V.P. Joe Biden.)  But then they tried again--and the same problem!

Now, if conservative Republicans around the country had been smart, they would have organized a common platform, and pledged themselves to it--rather like 1994's Contract With America (a brilliant idea from Newt Gingrich).  Then everyone could have signed onto it, creating a powerful collection of campaign materials that would have strengthened all of them--and would have been far less expensive than everyone inventing the wheel individually.  This would have been very powerful--but there's a reason that Republicans are called the Stupid Party.  (As distinguished from their enemies, the Sneaky, Cunning, Shark-like Corrupt Party.)

Again, all these failings might not be a sign of Vaughn Ward's personal failings--but it does suggest that he can't manage his Congressional primary campaign.  That means he isn't going to do a particularly stellar job running the general election campaign, or running a Congressional office.

I'm planning to vote for Raul Labrador next Tuesday.  I'm hard pressed to see any major areas where Ward's positions are better than Labrador's.   Labrador has experience as a member of the Idaho legislature--which is a good stepping stone to the U.S. House.  That we have a strong supporter of stopping illegal immigration with an Hispanic name just sweetens the pot a bit, because it gives us a chance to watch messy brain explosions from Democrats on the coasts who simply refuse to believe that our concerns aren't racism.