Originally at Blue Hampshire, but I wanted to put it here so that the insanely smart people who come to SSP can give us some insight into the CFG.
I’ve said all along that Johnny is a free market radical extremist, and the Club for Growth’s ringing endorsement, their first of the season, cements that position. After all, he scored a solid 100% on their “no one should pay taxes for anything ever” 2005 Scorecard.
As the Hill reports, this is “unusual” for the group, since they typically target incumbents, not support them. I take this to mean that they are wise to the fact that Sununu is in deep doo-doo for ’08, and they will try to play up his libertarian side in a state friendly to that. Personally, though, I don’t see how that will help him against either announced candidate Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand (who is pro-business) and possible contender Stonyfield Farm Yogurt Baron Gary Hirshberg (who is business).
Been awhile since you last heard of the “Club”? Well, here’s a refresher. The CFG spent a million dollars trying to replace Arlen Specter with Pat Toomey, who ultimately lost and is now the head of the Club. They’ve also run ads against Snowe and Voinovich and Chafee.
In other words, they are the definition of an anti-RINO group.
Ergo, through their very endorsement, they utterly destroy any semblance of Sununu’s “moderate” persona.
And who can forget this:
But CFG does not simply target moderate Republicans; they also attack Democrats, including the party’s presidential candidates who CFG refers to as “liberal losers.” They have been particularly obsessed with former Vermont governor Howard Dean. CFG has run a series of negative ads about him in several primary states, including one in which an elderly couple angrily tells Dean to “take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading . . .body piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.”
Expect more of the same well-funded pap to be heading our way from this malign entity.
Thoughts?
(Oh, and if you are interested in more on Sununu, please feel free to visit our Sununu tag at Blue Hampshire.)
Funny how a group that claims to be anti-tax can’t be bothered to admit that Dean managed to balance VT’s budget, which was in a hole from his Republican predecessor, while lowering income taxes in the process.
The sheer falsehood of the epithets put forth in that ad only leads me to believe that the CFG has never actually BEEN to Vermont. For anyone who cares, a blow-by-blow analysis of someone who actually grew up in Vermont and spent 20 years of my life as a Vermont resident:
First of all, most Vermonters are moderate Republicans with fairly conservative personal beliefs, and have been for generations. Most of the state is rural, after all. Guns are big, and hunting, especially deer hunting, is incredibly popular. The difference between Vermont and a lot of other states is simply that Vermonters are more active and vocal about social justice issues – if they think they’re being screwed, they’ll actually say something, and aren’t afraid to raise hell. This is why George Bush and the CFG hated people like Jim Jeffords – they stood for Vermont’s tradition of independent thinking rather than Bush’s tradition of “last man standing”.
Secondly, as previously mentioned, Dean lowered taxes twice, balanced the budget, and made VT’s government overall more efficient. In short, he fulfilled the CFG’s stated motto, which is to endorse candidates who support “limited government and lower taxes”. Ah, but the CFG only endorses Republicans. What we have here is a simple case of black and white thinking. If Bill Sali says that abortion causes breast cancer, he’s a “principled conservative”. If Howard Dean actually governs responsibly and fosters good government, he’s a “left wing freak show”. What wonderful ethics we see on the part of “good conservatives” like Pat Toomey, who would rather replace people who believe in good government with unprincipled idiots like Bill Sali and Tim Walberg than actually do the right thing for anyone but themselves.
For the record, just for the grins of proving how completely out of touch with reality these idiots are, I’ll respond to the rest of the smear:
Most Vermonters take their coffee straight. There’s really no reason to expect froofy drinks to be popular in a state that’s 90% rural.
I grew up in Vermont – lived there for 20 years – and I’ve never once seen a sushi bar there. I didn’t even know what sushi was until I went to college out of state.
Volvos aren’t very popular in Vermont. Generally, most of the population drives pickup trucks or American sedans. Jeep Cherokees are also very popular. The more “liberal” set tend to drive Subarus, or maybe rusty Saab 900s. Volvos aren’t a very popular choice, and you’re a lot more likely to see a beat-up old 1987 Volvo wagon parked on the street or on cinderblocks in someone’s backyard than a Volvo that’s (as implied) held its value enough to be a status symbol.
The NYT isn’t widely circulated. Most of the state only reads their local papers if they read news at all. The NYT and the Boston Globe appear at the supermarket sometimes, but neither sells out, except during sports season. There are about as many Yankees fans as Red Sox fans during baseball season, which is a big part of the reason why both papers are stocked in most supermarkets, but EVERYBODY is a Patriots fan, so the Globe usually sells out during football season.
There are overall fewer piercings per capita in Vermont than in other states I’ve been to. Even among my generation, which is most likely to be pierced, I’ve seen fewer piercings overall. 95% of them are on my generation, which, as I’ve said, tends to be pierced no matter where you go. No doubt Pat Toomey hates us simply for choosing to put bits of metal in various body parts, but how is my generation’s decision to do so Howard Dean’s fault?
Hollywood loving? Well, I’ll admit that all of the guys in my second grade class liked Arnold a lot when Terminator II came out. Vermonters like to watch movies, just like everyone else. Doesn’t mean they like Hollywood’s politics, much less are the stereotypical left-wing Jews implied by the remark.
I dare Pat Toomey or any of these other CFG wingnuts walk up to a Vermont dairy farmer – someone who works his ass off for less than $10,000 a year and can barely support his family – and tell this man, who actually knows what suffering and hardship is yet doggedly struggles for his farm’s survival in the face of major corporate competition subsidized by people like Toomey, that he’s a “latte-drinking, NYT-reading, body-piercing left-wing freak show”. Toomey and Co. would never dare to do something like that because it would make them into actual men as opposed to the whining, soulless cowards that they are, but it would only be the noble thing to do if they’re going to circulate this sort of poisonous rhetoric around the rest of the country.
The Club for Growth deserves Sununu as much as Sununu deserves the Club for Growth. Similarly, Bass deserves to be tarred by the CFG brush after all that he’s put New Hampshire (and Vermont) through.
I look forward to seeing them lose many elections together in the days ahead. While they’re at it, why doesn’t the CFG endorse Gregg, too? It’d make it easier for him to go gently into that good night in another four years.
From the sounds of the commercial, the elderly couple was confusing Vermont with the university of Vermont. UVM, at least now, is pretty close to what they described, being full of filthy pot smoking hippies! however, due to UVM’s desire to bring in more money, they have made it harder for in-staters to apply, meaning UVM consists more of the values of those out of state, not in state. We need to tell CFG to TUGWOS!