Jamie Radtke & Tim Donner Can’t Make Up Their Mind on George Allen

By now the conservative hacks in Virginia have resigned themselves to the short-sighted and moronic campaign being run by the (media-driven but grassroots/poll support/name ID missing) ‘challenge’ of Jamie Radtke. The endless ‘George Allen is bad’ emails, talking points, press releases and other irrelevant nonsense have fallen on deaf ears in the grassroots, voters and active political media (RTD, WaPo and Pilot have papers to sell, so they’re gonna drive the Radtke message as much as they possibly can to drive and create a race, despite her being nearly in last place in reality).

Didn’t realize we’d have to include Tim Donner to that list.

Yesterday Radtke and Donner both linked and highlighted a politi-fact meter article ‘proving’ that George Allen had flip-flopped on ethanol policy. Allen had supported ethanol in a visit to Iowa in 2006 and voted for it in 2005 in the Senate. Now five years later, Allen has applauded the Senate acting to end ethanol subsidies. Radtke and Donner cried foul, and RTD’s Schapiro was happy to give them the microphone to do so.

Now step back and look at this.

George Allen, in the eyes of Jamie Radtke’s campaign (and now apparently, Tim Donner’s), is an establishment hack who has a dastardly voting record in the Senate, voting every which way wrong while he was there and absolutely under no circumstances should be let back.

George Allen corrects some of the ills of his past, seeing the light so to speak and regaining some of his conservative principles that led to one of the most successful governor terms in Virginia history, and corrects his position.

Jamie Radtke (and Tim Donner) attack George Allen for correcting his position.

So which is it?

Either his voting record is bad, or it isn’t. Because if he’s admitting his voting record positions in the past were faulty, and admittedly some of them were, and he’s attempting to correct it, then whiskey-tango-foxtrot people. Is it only bad when you can point out how bad it is? Or when he corrects it, that’s him fixing it, which takes away your talking point, so you have to point out now that he’s reestablished his conservative principles? But we can’t say that, so we’ll call him a flip-flopper?

George Allen was a great Governor and a decent Senator, according to recent polling. He has plenty to answer for in his voting record, and the voters of Virginia will hold him accountable to that in the voting booth. But when Radtke and company attempt to hold him accountable, and when he then holds himself accountable he gets attacked for doing so? There might be political opportunism, but at the same time the constituents of Virginia have known George Allen now for twenty plus years.

Radtke and Donner still have a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way to go with establishing themselves with Virginia voters. Yet we continue receiving news clippings and press releases, not about who they are and what they want to do (with the rare exception of Radtke’s eliminate Fannie/Freddie).

Tim Donner, it’s bad enough that I have to read press releases two, three times a week about the Radtke camp complaining about what George Allen did eight years ago. Please do not add to it. Her campaign has rendered itself worthless on its own. Don’t make the same mistake. From the outset, all we’ve heard is how bad George Allen is/was/will be. Radtke is a fiscal conservative, but then spends twice as much as she’s bringing in. Her poll numbers, already low, have gone nowhere. Tea Party and libertarian groups have washed their hands of her campaign. There are lessons to be learned from their ineptitude. It’s probably best not to repeat them.

You can’t have it both ways. Either George Allen’s voting record is horrible, or it isn’t. It can’t be horrible until he realigns his position with his original principles (people are allowed to do that you know) and then get attacked for not supporting the previous position that you criticized.

There continues to be a general thinking that the Virginia electorate is just stupid, and if only we can highlight every George Allen fallacy then we’ll open their eyes to who he ‘really’ is within these wannabe upstart campaigns. It’s an ignorance of Virginia political history and plain hubris to conduct a campaign in that manner. The man is the near-founder of the modern conservative movement in Virginia. He has plenty to answer for regarding his Senate record, and I’m encouraged that he’s beginning to do so. But the notion that ‘if we can just point out what he did wrong HERE’ repeatedly is going to swing the campaign in your favor is stupidity. Plain and simple. He has twenty-plus years of working for and with Virginia citizens, and no manner of ‘but wait, did you see THIS?’ is going to overcome that.

Only by standing on your own merits, your own platforms, your own ideas, your own thinking, your own record will you ever be able to make inroads with Virginia voters. Tim Kaine has national help coming, he doesn’t help from within the Republican party that you’re wanting to represent.

Get real, or get out.

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