Clyde Middleton on Judd Gregg’s cheap shot at Gov. Palin

GOP elitists needs to back off on denigrating Sarah
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Liberty Pundit Clyde Middleton scolds former New Hampshire Senator Judd Greg for his recent cheap shot at Sarah Palin:

I see this headline - GREGG: Sadly, the primary process might help Sarah Palin. OK, I bite. Let’s see how he builds his argument, although I have to admit I am weary of the relentless Palin pounding by everyone with a platform. I either hear the same few facts, naked conclusions supported only by emotion, or – the worst – just emotion. Gregg, sadly, creates a new category: Conclusion without any support whatsoever.

Gregg stumbles through explaining the Iowa Caucuses and NH Primary. I read about the general calender of each (“read about” not learned – I learned nothing). And then the Gregg Hammer, the centerpiece of his logic to support the cheap shot “Sadly” in the headline: Who would this favor? Does Sarah Palin come to mind? Although she is not viewed by most as strong enough to win, she is viewed by many as a person worth voting for to make a statement. And primaries tend to be populated by people who go to the polls with the purpose of making a statement.

Oh. So people would vote for Sarah for the same reason they voted for Ross Perot, Eugene McCarthy, and Ralph Nadar: To make a “statement.” And only those people would vote for her. Gotcha, big boy. So Ralph Nadar could take NH this time. Hunh. Still waiting for you to explain the conclusion, “Sadly,” btw.

Let me delve into this mess. First, Judd Gregg sports a conservative (mostly) voting record. Here’s the details. That does not, however, give him license to gnaw on the ankles of our potential nominees. He’s not and has never been considered a sage commentator. He served his purpose, was put out to pasture, and is no longer needed. And if this column is any indication of his reasoning abilities, then someone needs to review his meds. The boy ain’t getting what he needs.

Second, and this is the real discussion, Gregg aside, you all need to back off Sarah. She is one horse in the race – maybe in the race. What’s with all the preemptive strikes from every corner of the Legacy Press and blogosphere – lib and con alike? You feel a need to kill her now because she might win? Or is it just sport to toss body blows at her yet you think she can’t win? Or you think she can beat Romney but not Obama, so we’d better kneecap her? What is it? Why are you all so intent on denigrating this woman?

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You are free to support or not support any candidate. But try focusing on the standards we demand of others: Attack a candidate based upon their political positions. Inform each other of those positions and why you disagree. And keep the cheap shots aimed at the Dark Side, the ones with a D stamped on their foreheads.

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One minor point of contention with Middleton. Judd's record is what we would describe as "mixed" rather than "mostly conservative," as John Batchelor pointed out in 2009:

Judd Gregg was always an insignificant journeyman Republican politician. At 62, the tall, craggy, and dull New Hampshire scion has been in public office since 1978, all his adult life on the public payroll, as a state officer, congressman, governor and senator. His father was also a governor of the Granite State before him, and Gregg has no claims on originality—another Exeter-educated Ivy Leaguer who drifted into politics like some drift into bridge playing—a man without need of principles as long as he used his father's name and his elitist tone. Greggs's undistinguished congressional career—30 years of chumminess and obtuseness—has produced no credible record of achievement but it has most recently produced failure after failure for the party and the country. Not just because Gregg was the chair of the giveaway Senate Committee of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and then the chair of the giveaway Committee on the Budget, overseeing the ghastly Bush spending sprees to bribe the public for the 2004 victories and then for the 2006 losses, but also because when the country needed him the most, during the stock market crash of last September and October, Gregg turned yellow.

When Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson misled the public and the Congress about the TARP plan last September, the so-called bailout of the big, insolvent banks by buying their toxic waste with taxpapers billions – Gregg was a lead figure for the Republican minority to go along with the shenanigans. Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put Gregg in the position of negotiating with the Democrats as they worked to overcome the resistance of the Republican House members who had defeated the TARP on September 29. Gregg took to the microphones to repeat nonsense: "This is about Main Street. It's about America."

Afterward, Gregg became a supervisor of the TARP swag, a post he quit in early December, when it was laughably obvious that Paulson had fibbed and that TARP was being used to bolster Paulson's friends on Wall Street, starting with Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, and John Thain, CEO and office redecorator of Merrill Lynch, and the other heroic rich men who wanted their bonues as rewards for losing billions and wrecking the planetary economy.

Gregg's 30 years of failures and meaningless polite back-scratching now come to this pointless farce of his announced withdrawal, when he tells the president one thing and then the next day says, “I made a mistake,” and that his nomination is "a bridge too far."

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Indeed, Gregg was such an earmarker in the Senate that the University of New Hampshire renamed its Environmental Technology Building "Gregg Hall." He voted for the CLEAN Energy Act of 2007 and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, and his record on social issues is not conservative. Gregg was one of only six Republicans to vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment. He supported the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, although he has been otherwise pro-life. Gregg's record on Second amendment issues is mixed, including a vote in favor of the ban on assault weapons. Even his fiscal credentials are blemished, as Gregg voted in 2009 to extend Chairman Ben Bernanke's term at The Fed.

- JP