Burning Bridges Might Not Be the Best Game Plan, Dick

Dick Wadhams:

Pressed this week, Wadhams distanced his current campaign from that of his former bosses.

"There’s only one idiot named George Allen," Wadhams said of the former Virginia senator and governor.

But Schaffer, he says, is "is perhaps one of the most articulate people I’ve worked for." Referencing the infamous "macaca moment", Wadhams said, "Bob is not going to make a mistake like that."

But just a week ago, Bob Schaffer stated that he thought the immigration system in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands should be a "model" for the entire U.S. Coincidentally, the United States Senated just voted 91-4 to outlaw that very system which led to forced abortions, child labor, sex slavery, and a booming sweatshop industry.

As Congressman George Miller stated upon the bill's passage, "Jack Abramoff is now in prison and Tom DeLay has resigned in disgrace. Very few people would defend the status quo in the CNMI, which has done such damage to workers and their families over the years."

Bob Schaffer is one of those people.

Bob Schaffer's going to need all the help he can get, including donors and supporters of that "idiot named George Allen" who was once held up to be the Republican heir-apparent to the White House. Perhaps alienating Allen and his supporters is not the best way to go, Bob.

Josh Marshall Gets It (mostly)

Talking Points Memo has a piece up about Dick Wadhams' bad string of luck lately. But Josh misses the mark here:

Our best guess is that Schaffer basically missed the Abramoff scandal, at least compared to how people experienced it in Washington. Schaffer was elected in 1996 and term-limited himself after the end of his third term, leaving DC in early 2003. He then tried and failed to get the Republican senate nomination in 2004. There is something called newspapers and the internet. But it just doesn't seem to have registered with him how radioactive Abramoff and his clients had become.

This is not about Abramoff, it's about Schaffer's moral failings. We imagine Schaffer would have blindly supported the sweatshop industry even if Abramoff weren't the intermediary.

Schaffer either genuinely thinks sweatshops are A-OK and he wasn't influenced by the thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from sweatshop moguls, or he doesn't think thay are A-OK but is willing to say so because he got thousands in campaign contributions from sweatshop moguls.

Who cares if Abramoff was the middleman (even though the evidence that he was is about as convincing as the evidence that water is wet). The fact that Schaffer is, as Rep. George Miller put it so eloquently yesterday, one of the few people who would defend the exploitative system in the CNMI is really telling.

Either Schaffer is a principled sweatshop proponent or an unprincipled sweatshop proponent. Is one better or worse than the other?

Abramoff is just the icing. Schaffer's extremism and corruption is the cake.

Dick Wadhams Thinks the Sunrise is a U-Turn

Mark Udall said it was night time at midnight, but now it's noon and he claims it's day time? That's a U-turn! That hypocrite!

Yeah, not so much.

Dick Wadhams claims Mark Udall has changed positions on the Roan Plateau because he's now trying to get Bill Ritter's incremental-drilling plan written into law when he used to support a total moratorium.

I read it differently. He and John Salazar had the drilling moratorium in the energy bill, but Congress stripped it out because it didn't have the votes. Now they are going for middle ground, just trying to get the most protection for the Roan that they can.

When some people fail, they try again. But Wadhams, reflecting the attitude of his candidate Bob Schaffer (permanently etched in the Congressional Record), thinks 'my way or the highway' absolutism is the way Coloradans want to be represented. In Schaffer's world it's better to be a righteous failure than it is to compromise and get half of what Coloradans want.

Coloradans are tired of ideologues. They want a Senator who is willing to work hard to accomplish what is achievable for Colorado--strong and principled, but willing to be flexible when necessary. Bob Schaffer is not that, and Wadhams represents his point of view well.