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In other jurisdictions, politicians have been accused of
playing the race card
-- that is, framing an issue
in racial terms, even if it's not a racial issue.
Take a politician like Marion Barry when he was mayor of Washington, D.C. No matter what the criticism, be it potholed streets or inept police, Barry generally responded as though the critic wore white sheets at night and was motivated by nothing but racism.
Fortunately, that doesn't happen much in Colorado. But we shouldn't rush to congratulate ourselves, since our polity often features the Geography Card.
When you don't want to discuss the merits, or lack
thereof, of an issue, you slam the Geography Card onto the
table. What matters isn't what people say, but where
they're coming from.
How does it work?
A recent example came at the Club 20 spring meeting in Grand Junction, now the home base of Rep. Scott McInnis after he moved there from Glenwood Springs.
The topic was wilderness in the form of HR 829, introduced by another Colorado representative, Dianna DeGette, a Denver Democrat. DeGette's bill would grant wilderness protection to about 1.4 million acres in Colorado, scattered in nearly 50 parcels administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
One can argue about whether these parcels qualify for wilderness protection. One might question whether wilderness actually protects the landscape, since there are so many people determined to visit official wilderness. They may take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints, but enough footprints can add up to serious degradation.
One could even bring up the hoary argument about
locking up resources.
Or argue that DeGette should
have consulted with commissioners and the like in the
affected counties. But McInnis didn't bother with real
issues. He played the Geography Card.
According to those who were present at the Club 20 meeting, McInnis implied that DeGette's wilderness bill was part of an urban Front Range effort to control his largely rural Third District.
But if McInnis believes that evil outsiders shouldn't exert influence on the Third District, why does he take their money? In 1998, his campaign received $209,975 in individual campaign contributions. Of this, only $55,100 came from his district. He got considerably more than that ($80,700) from out-of-state donors, and from Colorado metro area donors ($72,175).
At Club 20, McInnis also lashed out at the Sierra
Club, Earth First! and other out-of-state interests
for
supporting more wilderness.
For one thing, those out-of-state interests do have members in Colorado, some of them even genuine home-grown Colorado natives who keep wishing there was some way to keep the state from being sold to the highest bidder.
For another, if McInnis has something against out-of-state interests, why did he in 1996 accept money from the PACs of the Florida Sugar Cane League, the Texas Cattle Feeders Association and the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California? Does any of them sound like a Colorado outfit to you?
Another facet of the Geography Card, like the Race Card,
is stereotyping. Rather than admit that an area has all
kinds of people who have all kinds of attitudes about a
given issue, the Geography Card presumes to define them as
a single voice, as with McInnis saying that nobody on
the Western Slope
supported the wilderness bill.
The Pitkin and San Miguel county governments, both on the Western Slope the last time I looked at a map, went on record in support. So, I am told, did grassroots organizations like Western Colorado Congress and High Country Citizens Alliance.
After deploying the Geography Card, the user can then
promote himself as a protector, as McInnis did when he
called the DeGette bill an incoming missile
that he
would deflect.
Maybe that's why the old Strategic Defense Initiative is enjoying new support -- an array of radar and missiles will protect us from all those wilderness areas that must be falling out of the sky.
That's not required, though, for effective use of the Geography Card. The main thing is to keep hammering at the alleged source of the issue, rather than the issue itself.
I know how it works, since I've used the Geography Card myself on many occasions. But as we kept hearing during the impeachment and senate trial last year, we have a right to expect higher standards of conduct from our public officials.
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