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Despite what some symphomaniacs think, I don't get my entertainment from drinking beer and watching football. Last weekend, I drank beer and watched baseball. But even those simple pleasures were marred by a commercial that kept popping up between innings.
Images of idle walking-beam oilfield pumps, shut-down sugar mills and vacant houses for sale would appear, followed by some words from Ted Strickland, who apparently suffers from the same speech impediment as most other Republican politicians.
Although the proper adjectival form of Democrat
is Democratic,
Republican candidates are no more
capable of saying it than a four-year-old boy is able to
say please
or thank you.
Robert Dole in 1976
complained of Democrat wars,
and in 1986, Ted
Strickland says that Colorado's economy is hurting from 12
years of a Democrat administration.
In Colorado's peculiar political system, the legislature exerts more power than the governor. For 10 of the past 12 years, both legislative houses have been in Republican hands, and Strickland has been a leader in those legislatures. If Ted Strickland couldn't make us prosperous from the state senate, where he held real political muscle, how can he make us all rich as governor, whose power is mostly symbolic?
Such stupid commercials, I naively thought, were as low as Strickland's desperate campaign could sink while Roy Romer climbs in the polls. Now people are telling me about some new Strickland ads -- I haven't seen one yet -- that accuse Romer of everything but leprosy.
It's surprising that the Strickland campaign is in such trouble. He ought to appeal to voters of all political persuasions.
Do you think abortion is a woman's personal decision? Then so does Ted Strickland, when he's speaking in Glenwood Springs. Or do you think abortion ought to be prohibited by constitutional amendment? Then so does Ted Strickland, when he's being interviewed on a Christian radio talk show.
Do you believe that Colorado is in economic trouble because our highways and schools have been allowed to deteriorate, so we must raise taxes and build up our infrastructure to make Colorado a better place to do business? Ted Strickland agrees with you, if you ask him in February. Or do you believe that Colorado taxes are so high that they discourage business, and the last thing we need is a tax increase? Ted Strickland agrees with you, if you ask him in October.
Is it disgusting and immoral to help Communists? Ted Strickland implies that it is, if you're talking about Angela Davis. It seems that Roy Romer was on a national board of the Presbyterians when that church agreed to contribute to a defense fund for Davis, a Marxist who once taught in California. She was just one Communist though, and Ted Strickland must also believe that it is all right to help Communists if you're helping a whole bunch of them. He certainly hasn't criticized Ronald Reagan for helping 272 million Communists by offering to sell wheat to the Soviet Union at below-market prices.
Should religion and politics be kept separate? Ted Strickland says so, except when he's telling a born-again audience how he's one of them, and thus deserves their support. Should certain rodeo events be outlawed because they constitute cruelty to animals? Ted Strickland thinks so, and then again, he denies he ever held such thoughts. Should local governments make all the land-use decisions? Ted Strickland has said so, but if the local governments happen to be rural counties trying to keep their water, Ted Strickland has said land use regulations are state matter.
All people in public life have said and done things they later wish they hadn't. Roy Romer used to be against the death penalty; now, he says, he has changed his mind. But you might note that Romer did not deny that he once opposed the death penalty, nor did he tell one audience in the morning that he favors the the death penalty and then tell a different audience that afternoon that he opposes the death penalty.
Ted Strickland,
the ads conclude, He'll do
what's right.
If his latest ads are an example of what
he thinks is right, I'm glad the polls show that most of us
are wrong. Even so, a Governor Strickland just might do
what's right. But he'd probably deny it twenty minutes
later.
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