GOP chairman blows the lid off apathy amongst the voters.

Floyd County's GOP chairman returned to the editorial page yesterday, lamenting the passing of two local Republicans who he characterized as being among the heroes:

Pay homage to some true political stalwarts, by Dave Matthews, Local Guest Columnist (News and Tribune).

Those folks who serve, often unpaid and seldom thanked, who do so just because they feel they can make a difference. To folks like Charlie (Wilson) and Dick (Stewart), I want to say a very hearty “Thank You” for your faithful service through all the years when practically no one knew or cared that you were there.

For folks like Charlie and Dick, who can't tell you anymore but continue to say so by the example of their life's testimony, I want to tell everyone who thinks their participation doesn't make a difference: “It does!”

Point taken. Wilson was a friend of my late father's, and Stewart a feisty adversary in the blogosphere. Both were involved, and that certainly counts for something, doesn't it?

Matthews also briefly revisited the November election:

It was hard enough convincing people to vote for our Republican candidates when our party is already outnumbered in New Albany by a margin of 2 to 1. But add to that the apparent apathy that seems to be displayed by such poor numbers in voter turnout and it's almost enough to make one downright depressed.

Indeed, pervasive apathy and a low voter turnout are depressing phenomenons, but just as dispiriting to me is the tendency, almost certainly more pronounced among the city's older citizenry, of blindly choosing a straight party ticket. Straight ticket voting played a demonstrable role in returning to office the 3rd district's accidental councilman, Steve "Minor Chord" Price.

While Matthews probably isn't incorrect in blaming these social conditions for hampering the Republican cause, the collateral damage affects one and all, not just Republicans. Furthermore, when considering his party's catastrophic performance in November, its executive level campaign strategy is deserving of analysis, too.

New Albany's municipal Republicans by all rights should be in the position of the Bolsheviks in pre-revolutionary Russia: Fewer in number, but capable of greater feats of organization and political savvy. They're not, and for this persistent condition, the voting public's disinterest is not responsible.

The free market response is obvious, Dave: Offer a new and improved product, and see if you move more units.

And, like Mike Sodrel, pray for Hillary to run. Perhaps President Bush will visit New Albany yet again to court the Neanderthal vote ... and that's your bloc to lose.

Frank Rich: "The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time."

Reading Floyd County Chairman Dave Matthews’s latest Englandophobic comments in yesterday’s Tribune brought to mind a conversation at the bar a few weeks ago, when the previously reticent Matthews first broke on the local scene as chief interpreter for the otherwise silent mayoral candidate, Randy Hubbard.

I was asked by a blog reader if Matthews represented the old-fashioned fiscal rectitude GOP, or if he had consumed the Kool-Aid on behalf of theocratic “values” wing of the party so assiduously courted by the spectacularly failed Bush regime.

My response was, “I’ve no idea.”

Perhaps all will be revealed at some point in the future. Since taking an interest in local affairs, it has been a matter of morbid personal curiosity as to when someone finally would seek to revitalize the typically moribund Republican Party hereabouts by injecting the divisiveness of religious and cultural wars. We have seen in such a strategy financed by outside money in the previous Sodrel for Congress campaigns, but is hasn’t seemed to tinkle down to the grassroots.

Following are excerpts from New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich, who devoted his Sunday column to a discussion of Rudy Guliani’s presidential prospects.

OP-ED COLUMNIST; Rudy, the Values Slayer (October 28, 2007)

… That this same Rudy Giuliani would emerge as the front-runner in the Republican pack six years later is the great surprise of the 2008 presidential campaign to date, especially to the political press. Since the dawn of the new century, it has been the rarely questioned conventional wisdom, handed down by Karl Rove, that no Republican can rise to the top of the party or win the presidency without pandering as slavishly as George W. Bush has to the most bullying and gay-baiting power brokers of the religious right …

… There are various explanations for this. One is that 9/11 and terrorism fears trump everything. Another is that the rest of the field is weak. But the most obvious explanation is the one that Washington resists because it contradicts the city’s long-running story line. Namely, that the political clout ritualistically ascribed to Mr. Perkins, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and their ilk is a sham.

These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves …

Right on, Frank.

Senior editor sez: Doug England for Mayor.

Readers of the Tribune, our local newspaper, have by now grown accustomed to the diversionary banter of Floyd County Republican Party chairman David Matthews, who has taken on the seemingly full-time task of vacuum interpretation and nuance creation for his enduringly sphinx-like mayoral candidate, “Silent Randy” Hubbard.

However, last week it was the turn of Rove’s – oops, make that Matthews’s – fellow party operative Jennifer Mayfield to defend an ever somnolent Hubbard’s honor by way of a stinging attack on the NAPD’s Todd Bailey, himself an outspoken advocate of Democratic candidate Doug England. Mayfield since has been answered by a friend of Bailey’s, and the muddy scrum of accusations and counter-accusations will continue to grow unabated until the final whistle blows on Election Day, when, thanks to state law, we’ll be cruelly denied the gentle consolations of alcohol until 6:00 p.m.

It just isn’t fair.

None of it.

Especially the alcohol part.

(Rereading those first paragraphs, I now tremble with fear while awaiting the rhetorical lash of that pastureland brown shirt dude that Matthews handed me over to last time, but maybe he’s distracted by penning mash notes to his poster child Mike Sodrel. Should I reword what I wrote and spare him the pleasure?)

(Nah; it’s too much fun as it is. Now, back to our regularly scheduled essay.)

Surely Mayfield exaggerates more than even the vituperous non-professor Erika in portraying Officer Bailey as a veritable leech supping at the collapsed veins of taxpayers, although it is probable that in a hotly contested election, and given the stunning absence of ideas that continues to characterize Matthews’s and Mayfield’s perpetually sandbagging local Republican encampment, that dully repetitious saturation sliming is the only available recourse to the GOP’s probable fate of disappearing from the electoral radar screen entirely.

Matthews was in print yet again last Thursday afternoon, this time flashing photos of the candidates in order to rebut Bailey’s admittedly bizarre previous assertion that England is the better dressed of the two candidates, although photos from Wednesday night’s “forum” depict both men as suitably suited and potentially administrative. In the end, while amusing, certainly the GQ factor isn’t relevant to the issues at hand … although in honesty, I’d pay good money to see any candidate for office wear a toga while campaigning.

As for the opportunity to hear England and Hubbard respond to questions (just not to each other) at the forum, the author was otherwise engaged and has yet to view the film, but it is difficult to imagine that anything said by either candidate would be sufficient to change minds even if the general public cared, and alas, little interest in the forthcoming election has been generated up until now, with voter turnout likely to be depressingly small unless a referendum question is inserted along the lines of, “Are you in favor of paying no taxes whatsoever but receiving the same or greater levels of service from the government you intend to emaciate?”

That’d bring ‘em out in droves, wouldn’t it?

---

There’s no time better than the present to offer my personal endorsement in the mayoral contest, because as in the Federer/Woods/Henry razor advertisement, the present is all that matters to me. In considering the England-Hubbard mayoral match-up, I find it useful to strip away the verbiage and superfluous embellishments and concentrate instead on one fundamental factor.

Active vs. passive intent.

From the outset, Hubbard has promised to be deliberate, cautious and, frankly, conservative if elected to office. This is hardly surprising, and for those who believe that incremental and largely passive caretaking is the proper approach to governance, and especially for those who harbor congenital antipathy toward change, the ex-sheriff is the only real choice: "Don't do something - just stand there."

Appropriately, on the other side of the aisle, England’s campaign slogan might be fairly paraphrased as, “Don’t just stand there – do something.”

Culled to its essence, his platform is one of unapologetic activism. For those who believe that problems can be recognized and diagnosed, and solutions undertaken, and especially for those who understand that there is no constant in life except change, the ex-mayor is the only real choice for the job.

One man will be chosen. Whether the winner is Hubbard or England, neither man will please all of his supporters all of the time. Either of them will make mistakes, and in the end, the political wheel will not be reinvented for the sake of tiny New Albany.

What is the real difference to me?

Easy. It can be clearly seen that a transitional situation in New Albany merits an activist stance on the part of local government. This blog has provided three years’ worth of testimony on behalf of such a stance, and of the two candidates for mayor, only Doug England has shown himself willing and capable of articulating an activist stance and possessing the ability to formulate a platform that reflects reality on the ground and offers more than a few thoughtful, workable potential solutions.

Yes, England served previously as mayor.

Yes, he carries baggage from his previous service.

But the present isn’t the past.

As the estimable performer Steve Miller once observed, "Time keeps on slipping into the future," and truer words have seldom been sung. Our next municipal election isn’t about “last time,” or “before,” or “back then.” It’s quite clearly about now. The city is at a particularly important juncture, with certain societal and economic factors illuminated and others not, and with specific difficulties to be faced, but also numerous opportunities there to be seized. Of course, the past is instructive, and when it comes to making sense of what happened before, history books are filled with examples of people whose natural abilities were right for the circumstances of a particular time.

I believe England to be just such a man. What he is best at doing is what we need now.

Of course, like all the rest of us, England is a flawed human being. Fortunately, we’re not being called upon to elect a saint, but to choose a mayor.

Surveying New Albany as it is now, and regarding Doug England as who he is now, there is little doubt in my mind that he possesses the superior skill sets for the job at hand, but surreally, Hubbard’s hastily concocted campaign slogan would have us believe that caretaking and passivity are “right” for New Albany in the current transitional time, and that Hubbard is the “right” man to do very little when much needs to be done.

Perhaps a vow of do-nothingness is a decent gambit in the absence of a platform, but it doesn’t change the fundamental equation, which begins with a plainly evident admission on the part of a vast majority of observers that in New Albany, “something” needs to be done.

England promises to try and do something, and that’s more than enough for me. He’ll receive my vote on November 6.

I encourage readers to follow suit ... not by trusting what this or any other blog tells you, but by choosing your candidate according to your own conscience, and most importantly, by VOTING.

I’ll huff and puff and blow …

... insert Glenn Murphy Jr. joke here.

Keep going … that’s right … a bit more, please … yep, all the way down, until we reach the Hoosierpundit’s blog site, where’s he’s having his way with me, and I must confess to being titillated:

New Albany's Mayoral War of Letters Continues

First, let’s take care of some housekeeping. I’d like to publicly thank Brenda Scharlow for the nifty yard sign, and if GOP chairman David Matthews was in any small way responsible, then thanks are due him, too.

Also, the Floyd County Democratic Party chairman’s Tribune response to the Matthews-attacks-England tempest, published yesterday, is instructive and educational. It can be perused here.

In responses to my blog postings offered by Matthews and Scott Fluhr (the Hoosierpundit), necessary attribution is scant when it comes to certain assumptions being made about me, as in the following:

Matthews: “The critic turned self-proclaimed web blog czar.”

Fluhr: “While I can understand this for Roger Baylor--he's just a blogger and likes to self-style himself as a socialist.”

Fluhr: “Self-crowned smear detector Roger Baylor.”

Geez, you’d think they’re trying to make me look bad. Not to belabor the point, but you guys barely know me, and that’s three accusations of self-directed, auto-stimulation hurdling toward me just days apart – and from two different counties, no less.

Granted, someone like me who drinks beer for a living can never rule out anything, but all the same, I’m asking that you provide a bit of documentation.

I can’t seem to recall referring to myself as a “web blog czar” (at any rate, I’d have spelled it “tsar”) or as a “smear detector” (the gynecologists work their side of the street, and I work mine, right?) and about the closest I’ve come to self-identification with socialism would be periodically expressing solidarity with European Social Democrats.

It comes as no surprise, but Fluhr actually dredges out the “C” word and exposes me as a “Communist,” and now I must beat Whittaker Chambers to the pumpkin patch lest my career as a double agent is revealed. Funny, isn’t it, that a fellow who was all of seven years old when I was traveling through Eastern Europe and seeing Communism up close and personal now “deigns” to red wash me. Sorry to disappoint you, but being there didn’t make me want to do it here.

As for the significance of my pub’s Red Room, the Right just doesn’t do irony, does it?

Turning back to New Albany, both Matthews and Fluhr, and probably more than a few others, are taking great delight in uncovering what they regard as inconsistencies in my writings, and as I’ve noted previously, it’s no great feat to thumb through a few hundred thousand words and find statements that don’t match, or be able to prove and disprove virtually anything. It’s an occupational hazard for anyone who writes, and the hazards increase the better one is at it, but make no mistake: I’ve always quite enjoyed being articulate in a dunderhead’s world.

I’ve always found it strange that for some people, seemingly the highest aspiration in life is to first form an opinion, and then to doggedly stick with it from early childhood until dementia and death, all the while remaining oblivious to surroundings that have no constant feature other than perpetual change.

In political terms, both Matthews and Fluhr would have you think that I’ve scandalously flip-flopped, having once doubted the merits of Doug England, and now jumped aboard the ex-mayor’s bandwagon. Really? Seeing that my candidate lost in the primary, what am I to do now, sit out the general election in protest? My publicly stated misgivings have been considered privately by the candidate himself, and if the answers I’ve received are not entirely to my satisfaction, we’re close enough for rock and roll.

Why doesn’t England’s opponent ask these same questions at a public forum? Perhaps he will, yet.

Besides, didn’t the sainted Ronald Reagan switch political parties? Just like Reagan, for whom I hold little affection, I have a core set of principles that motivate me, with varying degrees of success, to face the passing days. Like anyone, I endeavor to stay with the program. Like anyone, I experience success and failure. But with experience, and by trials and error, my core set of principles has evolved, and certainly will continue to do so.

In the end, to me, elections may be zero-sum contests – one person wins, another loses (Al Gore believes there is a third possibility), but politics and ideas are non-zero-sum propositions. All is flux, adaptation, and evolution.

Hoosierpundit’s morbid interest in my level of self-confidence is duly noted. Alas, his own respect for discourse must be flagging, as – yes -- no comments are allowed at his blog.

Have I yawned yet? No? Must be time for a beer.

David Matthews really showed me, didn’t he?

Well, actually no; he didn’t. He didn't show me anything, and that's the problem.

As is the curious habit of the political party he leads, Dave aimed low and missed the target, lifting gracefully ineffectual dust devils while providing discerning readers with all too much of nothing, and insisting all the while that his party's conceptual vacuousness is in fact made of something so vitally important that he continues to decline frequent invitations to concretely define it.

At the conclusion of more than 700 words devoted to stale rhetoric and a bit of deft soft shoe, the veil of secrecy remains firmly draped atop the heroic sandstone statue of Randy Hubbard, uniformed and armed, erected by Republicans as a symbol of “leadership,” but one that is just as uncommunicative as most pigeon-gathering stations in public squares the world over tend to be.

Think: "Schlock of Gibraltar," as scored and staged by your friendly local (dare we say it) Karl Rove wannabeen.

MATTHEWS: Substantive talk is taking place in forums

I would love to respond to Roger Baylor’s recent opinion published in the New Albany Tribune concerning the Randy Hubbard-Doug England race for New Albany mayor.

As a side note, I’m guessing that Dave Matthews was taught the importance of context in attribution, and when he omits it, one can only surmise that he does so intentionally.

Of course, anyone can peruse this blog or any other for ammunition to support or attack almost any position and surely find it, and Dave’s probably correct in assuming that the subtleties of scholarship and erudition aren’t the primary concern of voters that he and the GOP target with their current “platform,” one composed entirely of slimings of Doug England.

Note however that Dave is capable of neat stylistic pirouettes of his own, such as taking NAC’s suggestion that the intelligence of voters is insulted by a candidate who won’t publicly discuss platform planks with his opponent, and flipping it over to accuse us of insulting the intelligence of voters by asking them to consider substance.

Gads ... those poor, incapable voters. Having to think! Quick, Dave -- go fetch a straw man and a few broom handles before a thought breaks out.

Okay, so let's get down to the basics. Noting that NAC’s criticism of Randy Hubbard’s mayoral campaign has focused on one central point, this being Hubbard’s persistent inability or plain unwillingness to offer substantive platform planks and address these planks in a public debate forum with his opponent in such a manner that his recognition of problems and consideration of potential solutions are evident to onlookers, readers are begged to peruse Dave’s Saturday column in an effort to locate any such planks.

In fact, there are none, and the GOP chairman all but concedes that there are not likely to be any indications of his candidate’s grasp of specifics or insights as to a possible governing strategy during what remains of the campaign season.

Looks to me like you don’t have to be a “self-proclaimed Web blog czar” to see that NAC has won that particular argument. In place of substantive discussion, Dave leaves us with this alternative:

I’ll take honesty, integrity and leadership over experience any day.

To each his own.

Last winter, when I was looking for a surgeon to repair my shoulder injury, it seemed a good idea to select one who’d done the operation previously rather than one who hadn’t. The surgeon I found was able to brief me beforehand, explain the problem with my rotator cuff, and describe comprehensively how he was going to approach fixing it.

Was he telling me “what I wanted to hear?" Absolutely, because what I wanted to hear was that he understood my problem and had a plan for resolving it.

Had my surgeon followed the scant outlines of the Randy Hubbard Hands-Off Model of civic management grudgingly handed to us so far by the party chairman (talk about "tinkle-down" effects), I suppose he’d have told me what a great guy he is and then asked me if I had any thoughts as to how he should proceed rebuilding the rotator cuff.

No, thanks. It seems to me that there are times when it’s just a better choice to go with experience and proven skills rather than trust an informal polling of sidewalk superintendents and street corner passers-by.

And that’s why I’ll be voting for Doug England in November, and why this whole artificially inflated "character" discussion reminds me of Abraham Lincoln's response to Ulysses S. Grant's purported drinking problem:

"Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals."

By the way, Dave – where’s that Brenda Scharlow yard sign you said you’d get for me? After all, our sitting councilman remains a nonentity and a civic embarrassment ... and I'm a bi-partisan type of guy, at least when my intelligence isn't being insulted by denizens of the exurban veld.

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.