GOP’s six-week saturation sliming of Doug England begins – and yes, NAC told you so.

I was elected the Floyd County Republican Party Chairman back in March. One of my top priorities was the upcoming New Albany mayor and city council races.
--David L. Matthews, chairman of the Floyd County Republican Party

That’s six long months for the Republican chairman to formulate a platform plank – any platform plank will do, thanks – that pertains to the city of New Albany in this day and time.

Instead, from the relative solitude of his suburban Greenville command bunker, Matthews has leaped into the New Albany mayoral fray by unleashing the first salvo of his party’s forthcoming negative campaign against Democrat Doug England, with the intended beneficiary being Republican candidate Randy “Silence Is Golden, Golden” Hubbard.

But with yesterday's letter to the editor of the Tribune, Matthews uncannily (and surely unintentionally) corroborated something I wrote in this space just two weeks ago:

It’s beyond debate: Hubbard “tete-a-tete” avoidance mode noted by city residents, Tribune columnist, the Who’s Tommy, and man in moon.

In this continually widening Republican void, where platform planks and ideas go to die, I’m left to surmise that Hubbard’s “duck ‘n’ cover” defensive posture circa the Labor Day opening political campaign weekend is merely a tactical prelude to calculated fireworks later in the autumn. It’s just about the only thing that makes sense at this point.

My best guess would be an 11th hour outburst of negative campaigning in October, with the saintly Hubbard himself deigning to remain “above” the muddy fray while local confederates do the dirty work of contrasting Hubbard’s purportedly impeccable law enforcement credentials with patronage abuse questions that linger in the public consciousness from England’s two previous terms as mayor.

Such a late attack strategy would at least explain Hubbard’s odd reticence as England has aggressively lapped the somnolent ex-sheriff early in the contest, and twice opening bloody cuts: First, with the Democratic candidate’s city hall relocation press conference and Hubbard’s subsequent conceptual disorientation, and second, in the aftermath of the GOP candidate’s inexplicable debate withdrawal …

It is highly flattered to have been proven absolutely correct, even if I erred slightly in thinking that the Republicans might wait until October to begin dropping napalm.

Silly me, although when you have a dog that won’t hunt, perhaps it’s best to periodically squeeze off a few noisy rounds to make the folks back home think they might be having meat for dinner instead of the same tired soup bone.

If only the voters in New Albany might be gifted with red meat from the Republican party.

Of course, it cannot be denied that Doug England carries baggage from previous administrations, and by the terms of political engagement, it’s certainly not unfair for the GOP to play dirty and to go negative, even this early in the contest.

It's just that for once we'd love to see these terms of engagement altered to reflect the power of ideas rather than the soiling capacity of spitballs.

Given that Hubbard has failed to articulate any platform planks of substance … given that he refuses to debate England one on one and ask questions of England himself rather than permit Matthews to carry his lunch pail … given that neither Hubbard nor his party chairman have shown any willingness or ability to address New Albany’s big ticket urban issues at this decisive time, we must regard Matthew’s swift boat pyrotechnics as strictly diversionary in nature, and we’ll continue to do so until Hubbard shows signs of a pulse.

Whether NAC’s opinion matters of not (hold your catcalls, Troglodyte Nation), we’ve spent much of the past three years bemoaning the lack of substantive dialogue on pressing local issues, and positing that we stand at a particularly important juncture with respect to the city’s future viability.

Meanwhile, Matthews can do no better than deploy a Republican Youth League operative’s second-hand smirk to mock England’s willingness to discuss issues on any street corner, and before any size crowd, even as Hubbard’s catatonic silence threatens more of the same cautious, caretaking “conservatism” that has managed to “conserve” only those numerous bad political and governmental habits that have led to regress in the first place.

And, without a debate. How short-sighted (read: arrogant) is that?

England has made one thing perfectly clear, and arguably, it is the most important point that any candidate for public office in New Albany needs to make in 2007: Doing nothing is not an option at this point in the city’s history.

The sooner Matthews, Hubbard and the GOP grasp this self-evident wisdom -- shall we accompany the GOP brain trust on a walking tour of the historic city core to promote much needed consciousness-raising? -- the sooner a genuine debate can be joined and a legitimate alternative offered.

With the mud already flying, there seems depressingly little hope for optimism … but somewhere, at least, Karl Rove is smiling.