I have spent the better part of the past week trying to make a little sense out of the old-fashioned whuppin’ the Republicans gave the Democrats (including this writer) in last Tuesday’s election. I dug into an old cardboard box where had I tossed all sorts of campaign literature, articles written about the candidates, and the candidates’ own statements about what they stood for and read them again. I have to admit I’m even more puzzled now than I was just after the election about the reasons for the magnitude of this defeat, but more importantly, what it means. In general after events of this sort, my reaction is to think something along the lines of an old Buddhist saying, “Good news, bad news, who knows?” I’m not sure I feel that way after this election and I must admit I’m fairly worried about what lies in store for our town.
The reason I feel this way is that despite parsing virtually every word uttered by the winning candidates, I can find precious few specifics about exactly what they will do once they are in office. I’m not talking about some of the more egregious (?libelous) excuses for campaign literature that found its’ way around town over the past month — for instance the sheet that referred to one Democrat as “admitted…enjoying drunken lifestyle” and another Democrat as being involved in an auto accident (I wonder how many of us have not had an accident?). While I hope that whoever put that out (the author did not see fit to identify his/herself) did not win a seat or, if they did, will understand that there is simply no place for that sort of trash talk (or people who talk that sort of trash) in our town, I’m more concerned that most of the other statements and literature give virtually no clue as to how the candidate would operate once in office. What all of the winning Republican candidates’ literature and statements seemed to have had in common was an absolute lack of specifics and a profusion of platitudes and meaningless promises. Read the rest of this entry »
