I have had the pleasure of speaking on separate occasions with both Suzanne Obenshain and Cynthia Dunbar, both running for RNC National Committeewoman and both truly outstanding, kind, and remarkable human beings.
Apparently, The Bull Elephant has chosen to go into the background of one individual supporting one of the candidates and dredge up the finer details of their past. Ostensibly, to tar and feather one candidate over the other: guilt by association, so it appears.
…and the editors at The Bull Elephant chose to repeat the nonsense.
It is perhaps not worth mentioning that the charges lean on the side of one candidate towards another. It is also perhaps worth mentioning that the candidate who benefits from this exposure would not condone this act in the slightest. Nor is it worth mentioning that those propagating the attack aren’t exactly the cleanest in the department of civil penalties assessed by law.
There’s no small question that there is a rivalry between Bearing Drift and The Bull Elephant. The editors here tend to be more conservative; over there more populist. Here a bit more erudite; there a bit more raucous. Here we tend to source things before printing due to the size of our readership; there it can be very much a connect the dots conspiratorial theme. Here we have a very wide contributor presence from across the center-right spectrum; there it is a very narrow proposition of one-half of the RPV State Central Committee (and designed to be so).
There isn’t one form that’s better than the other. Though we mostly prefer to keep things above the board rather than muck around, quite simply, the differing styles are a matter of taste. For one, the proliferation of blogs and new media sources is a positive thing, the contrast against others is healthy, and the absorption of what was one a very healthy ecosystem of Virginia political blogs into the handful that were (Too Conservative, Virginia Virtucon, Bearing Drift) was perhaps a disaster. The once-healthy give and take that allowed us to preserve the good, disdain the bad, groan at the profiteer, and wince at the self-serving has now subsided into tribes, influence pedding, innuendos, and accusations. It’s a shame… it’s not what we used to be.
Cynthia Dunbar is an accomplished legal theorist. My discussion with her was outstanding to off the page, every bit beyond her reputation with a series of scholarship and papers that very much match my own political views (which naturally, was not the reason for my affinity for Dunbar — but it is always fascinating to meet someone with a far different background than my own arrive at similar conclusions). Yet Dunbar is more than an Ivory Tower thinker, she is a committed activist at heart with very good contacts in Washington and a determined will to fight.
Likewise, Obenshain is a known quality among the Republican rank and file in Virginia, and that has absolutely nothing to do with her last name. Indeed, Suzanne is one of the nicest, kindest, most genuine and outgoing personalities in Virginia politics — a true first lady. Not once have I ever heard her say a bad thing about a soul; not once have I heard others repeat that Suzanne had said anything negative about another soul. Suzanne isn’t just basically a good person, she is a good person. And one might add, a great conservative with a backbone of iron when required.
One imagines that both Dunbar and Obenshain have nothing but disdain for this sort of nasty, negative surrogate campaigning on their behalf. It says more about the outlets peddling it than the candidates (or their targets) themselves.
The Bull Elephant and their editors could learn a thing or two from their example. This may be difficult in the era of Trump, but this nonsense on stilts shouldn’t be rewarded just because the RNC National Committeewoman race is the only game in town.
