Eric Bradner, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article on John Gregg’s Washington D.C. connections. Eric is one of the best state political reporters out there and a nice guy on top of that, but I think this article — if you’re not too careful about reading the particulars — lends itself to false equivalency.
The set up is that Gregg is hammering Pence on being of Washington D.C. and yet Gregg has connections to D.C. politicians and they’re raising money for him. In particular, there was a fundraiser for Gregg at a restaurant in D.C.:
Among the hosts were a number of former and current senators and House members, including Evan Bayh, Baron Hill, Joe Donnelly, Andre Carson and Pete Visclosky. Also invited was Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, head of the national Democratic Governors’ Association.
The underlying problem may be with Gregg’s messaging – it’s, perhaps necessarily, overly simple. “D.C. is bad, m’kay.” Pence isn’t a problem because he’s of D.C. He’s a problem because he’s the embodiment of why D.C. is dysfunctional: all political rhetoric, strict partisanship, and no interest in actual governance. By just focusing on “D.C.” instead of with the more complicated notion of Pence’s role in D.C., it opens him up to this kind of false equivalency any time he has something to do with federal politicians.
I did run into a small sign of hope last night – a moderate Republican who finds John Gregg more appealing than Mike Pence. The reason this is only a small sign is that: a) I don’t have a good idea of how many Indiana Republicans are still moderate; and b) this guy was very tuned in politically – he actually knew the particulars of both candidates. This doesn’t help at all with the type of voter who skims the Bradner article, throws up his hands, and says, “Bah, both sides do it; there’s not enough difference between these damn politicians for me to care; I’m on Team Republican, so I’m voting Pence.”
Pence reminds me of a criminal defense attorney that I knew. Whenever he had a jury trial in a nearby small rural county, he made sure that he drove into town and parked near the CourtHouse square in his 9 years old dusty Ford F-150 pickup truck, so that the jurors would be sure to see that he was a good ol’ boy. After the trial was completed and he was back home again, he’d be back to driving his shiny new Cadillac.
GoodD one knowledge.As I said before, I went to law school with pence but have no real recollection of him. He seems ambitious. I nothing else. I guess that can be enough.
Personally, I think that story applies more to Gregg than Pence (and sounds most like what John Kerry tried in 2004 “oh no, that’s my wife’s SUV, not mine…” )
With Pence, we know what we are getting. That is a religious conservative that truly believes in small government (example, voting against NCLB). You may not like what Pence stands for, but you can predict his opinions more often than not. Gregg? Not so much.
Vote for Gregg because he isn’t Pence if you like, but that in itself means that you have a pretty good idea what Pence is, and he certainly isn’t the guy that will camouflage who he is based upon the constituency.
I’ll grant you that a person’s positions are easier to know when they are almost cartoonishly free of nuance.
But, Pence’s support for creating the TSA and for the USA PATRIOT act belie his commitment to “small government” even if you discount his support for government involvement in a woman’s uterus.
Doug, so we agree that the story better epitomizes Gregg than Pence?
Yes, Pence does not always vote for smaller government. Of course if he did, you would likely call him an idealogue.
Depends on what angle you’re looking at the story from. But, I think Gregg is pretty authentically Southern Indiana good ol’ boy; even if he can be sophisticated when he wants to.
Then again, if you go to Gregg’s website, it is cartoonishly free of issues. Even if you click the ‘issues’ button, you still don’t get any issues. A guy who wants to be governor can’t even prop up a fully functioning website?
Maybe it’s just really, really I mean really clever nuance.
Yeah, I don’t much care for the lack of information on his web page either. “Issues” gets you a question about “what do you think?” if I recall correctly.