Chris Perkins… AKA NoVA’s very own version of John McCain

So, it’s come to this. Whether it’s Patch articles about Ken Vaughn, posts here about Ken Vaughn, or anywhere else, the Perkins campaign is sending out email alerts to supporters to flock to the comments sections and attack and insult Vaughn and/or pimp Perkins. So be it.

Your candidate is the John McCain of Virginia’s 11th District. An honorable service record, but beyond that, not a lot to recommend him for the office for which he’s running. Let’s review:

His platform consists of meaningless platitudes combined with standard RINO pablum.

He doesn’t understand the Second Amendment (or doesn’t care.)

He’ll do nothing to end entitlements, which are not only the root of the power of the federal leviathan, but also the drivers of our national debt and its attendant annual deficits.

He indicated he’s not a fan of Ron Paul at a YR event, but apparently went out of his way to defend his former boss, noted former RINO party-switcher Jim Jeffords, there.

He owns a lobbying/government relations firm.

His campaign manager is great at issuing ridiculous statements that contravene “The Colonel’s” own platform.  After stating in an interview that he “would welcome the opportunity” to debate his primary opponents, he’s refusing to debate, claiming primary debates  are “divisive” and “counterproductive to the party.”.

All indications are that Chris Perkins personally is a great guy, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is who is the best choice for the 11th District, Virginia, and America. That’s Ken Vaughn. I’ll go further. It’s not even close. Ken has an excellent grasp of the fiscal issues facing America, and a real plan to restore fiscal sanity, as well as bring the federal government back within its Constitutional limits. Perkins does not.

Chris Perkins: You’re just another cog in the GOP machine… witness your endorsements from RINO 2011 GA candidates like Baker and Schoeneman. You also lean on your veteran status like Giuliani does 9/11. There’s a picture of you in your Class As on your campaign site! “Join The Colonel.” Quite frankly, it’s distasteful.

Tyler Harber: I am calling YOU out for talking ridiculous rumor trash about Ken Vaughn, from what I hear from some friends at GMU. Looking into that a bit more. Also, it’s particularly rich that you called Ken’s comparison of your candidate’s positions “blatant lies.” Newsflash: PEOPLE CAN READ THE CAMPAIGN WEBSITES. I’ll also go ahead and assume you’re behind Perkins’ sudden fear of debate. Know this, Tyler Harber and the rest of the Perkins campaign. It’s on. We will hound you and hold you accountable at every turn. Keep acting like you’re the inevitable nominee a la Mitt Romney. Go ahead.

Perkins supporters: NOW I am “attacking your candidate.”

A little early to be playing prima donna, isn’t it?

Ken Vaughn, one of the Republican candidates for the 11th district Congressional seat in Virginia, has called for a series of debates with his primary opponent Chris Perkins. He challenged Perkins to at least five of these candidate forums to be held between now and the June primary.

The debates would allow the voters to cast an informed vote about who should represent the GOP in the Congressional race against Gerry Connolly this year. It’s an opportunity to clarify positions and to help the voters make a an educated choice.

The first of these debates will take place tomorrow night, but apparently we’re only going to see one candidate there.

Ken Vaughn.

Chris Perkins decided to bow out two days before the forum, because apparently the debate format was not to his liking.

He hasn’t even secured the nomination, and he’s already acting like an entitled brat. That’s my assessment of Chris Perkins’ decision to bail from the scheduled debate. Apparently the Colonel didn’t like the format proposed by the event organizers, so he withdrew from the forum that was supposed to help voters decide for whom to vote in the June primaries.  That strikes me as a bit odd for someone who really hasn’t put forward any solid or detailed plan, who appears unclear about issues of importance and who is facing an opponent with a solid fiscal foundation and concrete views.

But nonetheless, according to an email we have received from the Vaughn campaign, Chris Perkins is apparently backing out of the debate.

Both candidates had previously agreed to an event scheduled for 7 pm Wednesday, February 8, at Kings Park Library. But Vaughn’s opponent, Chris Perkins, decided to withdraw over the format proposed by the event organizers. The forum is still scheduled and Mr. Vaughn will answer all of the panelists’ questions regardless of whether or not his opponent chooses to attend.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but forum organizers certainly don’t have an obligation to conform to candidates’ whims when considering the format of the venue they are sponsoring. And while it’s a free country, and Chris Perkins certainly has the right to back out if he so wishes, it strikes me odd that he would choose to do so because the format of the debate is not to his liking.  To me it’s the equivalent of throwing a hissy fit, taking your ball and going home in a huff. I would think that someone who wants to serve the people of the 11th district would honor the opportunity to make his views heard and clarify his positions on issues. And I would think that someone who was an SF Soldier, and who has ostensibly deployed to places with conditions much worse than this debate, would suck it up and drive on even if he didn’t like the format.

Oh well.

And if anyone from the Perkins campaign would like to explain the rationale, I’m all ears… or eyes, in this case.

If any of the Perkins supporters who showed such bravado when casting stones at Ken Vaughn would like to explain why the voters should throw their support to a candidate who won’t bother attending a debate because the format is not to his liking, please do.

In any case, Ken Vaughn will be there to answer questions. I hope the voters of Virginia’s 11th district at least come and hear him out… and make their vote an informed one.

Another Reason Ron Paul Will Not Get My Vote

Blind, thoughtless, stubborn and ignorant. That’s how I would describe Ron Paul’s latest debate performance. And apparently I’m not the only one who was utterly disgusted by the Congressman’s complete lack of sense and rational thought. Not only does he not have a clue about foreign policy, but he lacks a fundamental human decency in his attempt to be “objective.”

The Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate pile-on began after Paul answered a question about whether the U.S. government had the authority to kill Osama bin Laden. Booed by the boisterous audience, Paul compared bin Laden’s capture in Pakistan to a Chinese dissident hiding in the U.S. and said the U.S. government wouldn’t want China to “bomb us and do whatever.”

In China, the “four big rights” – that guarantee freedoms of speech, dissent and expression – were eliminated. Those who speak out against China’s tyrannical regime are heroes. Chinese dissidents stand up to the authoritarianism that oppresses the people, and have been jailed for years for their courage.

Ron Paul had the unmitigated gall to compare Chinese dissidents seeking help and asylum in the United States to a mass murderer being hidden by an alleged “ally” that receives billions of dollars in American aid!

He was ignorant enough to voice an analogy that is morally repugnant as well as inappropriate.

Dissidents are not terrorists.

Bin Ladin killed thousands of innocent people. To compare that murdering bastard to people who speak out against a tyrannical government is foul.

Yet another reason why I want Ron Paul nowhere near the White House. He’s great on fiscal issues, but completely unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

 

Please make the bad lady stop!

So shortly after Michele Bachmann spewed that if she were President of the United States, we wouldn’t have an (nonexistent) embassy in Iran during the last debate, her team is once again having to explain WTF this woman is talking about.

In light of the British Foreign Ministry pulling all U.K. nationals out of the British embassy in Tehran after students stormed the building in protest, GOP presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann told a crowd in Waverly, Iowa, today that she would close the U.S. embassy in Iran.

[...]

According to reports, Bachmann applauded the U.K.’s move, adding, “That’s exactly what I would do [if I were  president]. We wouldn’t have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn’t allow that to be there.”

The campaign explained that the Congresswoman is on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) – a fact that she’s tossed out almost as many times as the fact that she has five biological and 23 foster kids. Yeah, yeah… we got it. The campaign also explained that the verbal gaffe was taken out of context. How’s that?

If she was referring to the Brits closing their embassy in Tehran in response to the attacks this week, OK.  Then it was a simple verbal gaffe. She meant to say, “That’s exactly what I would do if I were the British. We wouldn’t have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn’t allow that to be there.”  I understand that. You’re on the national stage. You get a bit nervous in front of the crowd. You slip up verbally. I get it.

Then just say so!

Instead of complaining that you were taken out of context, ferpetessake!

This is not the first time Bachmann refused to acknowledge misspeaking. Remember the “our founding fathers worked tirelessly to ban slavery” idiocy?  Once again, the woman refused to acknowledge the gaffe, but simply tried to twist history to the point of nausea.  Her tendency to just pull retardery out of her fourth point of contact is apparently a concern for her staff.

“Some of her gaffes are more the fact that she reads a lot in trying to keep herself up to date but she doesn’t read it carefully enough and it’s hard to get her to correct it,” said Ron Carey, a former chief of staff in Bachmann’s congressional office who later supported Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign.

“She uses some of these lines and they get great applause or whatever, [so] she keeps going back to them. She keeps repeating the mistaken information,” Carey said.

An example: In 2010, he and another staffer kept telling Bachmann a statistic she frequently repeated about the national debt — that President Barack Obama had incurred more debt than all the previous presidents combined — wasn’t right; the correct statistic was that Obama was on pace to do so by the end of his first term. But Bachmann kept making the erroneous claim anyway.

I’d have more respect for her if she simply admitted a gaffe and moved on, but every mistake is followed by a claim that her remarks are taken out of context rather than a simple admission of having misspoken.

Really. Make the bad lady stop! Keep her away from the White House. She’s NOT ready for prime time.

Funny….

Michelle Bachmann wasn’t complaining when Gary Johnson was unceremoniously kept out of nearly every debate.  Now, all of a sudden, she’s upset  about the media choosing the candidates?  Gee, I said that months ago.

“There’s always a suspicion of maybe a bias and I guess this just confirmed it,” she said of a CBS memo before Saturday’s debate, which suggested that the Minnesota Republican congresswoman would be ignored during the foreign policy chatfest.

The memo, she said, “demonstrates that the media wants to choose who our nominee will be and who the next president of the United States will be.”

For the record, I agree.  Every candidate should be given the opportunity to address the electorate, and the American people should decide.

So why is it that we wind up with two (for the most part) crappy choices every single election season?  Who really chooses the candidates?  Some of you will argue that the American public selects the candidates, which is technically true, but the American public is lazy.  The American public cannot make a selection unless it is staring them in the face from their hi-def television. Americans won’t research available candidates, unless that research involves being spoon-fed information by the pundits and news networks.  And they definitely won’t take the time to research a candidate whose name they have never heard before.

If they aren’t familiar with the name, why not?

That’s where the selection process is removed from the people.  The media decides who is a viable candidate and promotes only the candidates the mainstream establishment believes are worthy.  Pollsters decide whom to include in national surveys based on some nebulous criteria of “viability,” and the people never become fully informed on all the available candidates.