Absent Is As Absent Does
by John Weckerle
We turn our attention today to a couple of articles from different sources regarding the upcoming Congressional elections here in New Mexico. One of these is a Sandia Tea Party article titled “Progressives Spreading Bull Butter Again — Why Not, It’s What They Do Well” by Edgewood Town Councilor and Sandia Tea Party official internet spokesman Chuck Ring, excoriating Eric Griego, (seeking election in the Democratic primary for Congressional District 1), for not affording the “organization” the “courtesy” of responding to an invitation to a “candidates forum” to be held by this august organization. The second is an article titled “Dems Skip Tea Party Candidate Forum” in the East Mountain Telegraph. Both articles note that Democratic candidates did not attend events hosted by the Sandia Tea Party.
Surprised, anyone?
Now, we’re not going to suggest to our readers that they spend much time reading the Sandia Tea Party site, although they’re welcome to do so. Those who are willing to bother may well recognize the reason that Democrats, and especially progressives, are not willing to waste their time with Sandia Tea Party-sponsored “candidate forums.” This is an organization that allows its resident blogger to heap contempt upon those with differing viewpoints, especially progressives and Democrats – and then there are the issues we’ve raised regarding bias and accuracy. We can’t help but think that Mr. Griego and/or his staff took the time to look them up before deciding whether or not to respond. Ask yourselves this, all of you: if someone had spent a great deal of time publicly insulting you and that in which you believe, would you necessarily accept their “invitation” to a “forum?” Would you even consider showing up if you hadn’t a prayer of picking up a single vote? Would you dignify it with a response?
There is such a thing as rudeness that cannot be ignored or forgotten. If you want a person to come to the table, make sure you haven’t made it abhorrent for him/her to break bread with you.
As for the issue of Mr. Griego’s presence in a video: like it or hate it, at least it was not in a disgracefully edited, dishonest production of the O’Keefe/Breitbart genre. We’d like an answer to the actual relevant questions from all candidates in both races: Do you support Medicare, and do you support the budget proposed by Rep. Ryan? We’ll note that the Tea Party article rather predictably omits that issue entirely.
Let us move briefly on to the commentary by Silvia Bokor (whose name is repeatedly misspelled by Mr. Ring). Ms. Bokor’s commentary contains much opinion but no verifiable facts, and ridicules “Leftists” for thinking that they know what Americans believe. In counterpoint, one might point out that those with whom Ms. Bokor identifies arrogate themselves to the status of “we, the people.” Heads up, Ms. Rand Bokor: we’re all “the people,” regardless of what we believe. Ms. Bokor touts, without any basis, Rasmussen polls as being “more reliable.” We’ll leave it to Ms. Bokor to demonstrate that Rasmussen is more reliable, but we’ll provide links to a couple of criticisms of Rasmussen’s accuracy (here and here), which is more than Ms Bokor bothered to do. And as for Ms. Bokor’s comments on ending Social Security and Medicare, we’ll happily continue to chip in to our current senior citizens’ retirement and hope the nation’s in a position to do the same when we’re old. We would, however, encourage both Ms. Bokor and the Sandia Tea Party spokesman to forgo their benefits in the future and send all of “we the people” a refund check for any Social Security and/or Medicare benefits they may have received to date. We’re not holding our breath, though.
We’ll conclude by noting that the logical opposite of “progressive” is “regressive.” Comments?