Musings From Last Week

   New Hampshire’s House of Representatives in Concord deserve unalloyed kudos for their resounding (and admittedly surprising) votedown of Windham GOP representative David Bates’ gay marriage repeal effort (HB 437) last week. Their 202-133 margin, the victors encompassing all Democrats and 109 centrist Republicans, had to bring a sense of relief to the nearly 2,000 newly-married couples since Gov. John Lynch signed same-sex marriage into law in 2009, and hopefully is a harbinger that the past 14 months of Concord insanity may be finally turning. And by afterwards voting to kill the bill outright, the legislators ensured that this year-long attack on what had become a basic freedom for many was staked for good.

   Congratulations to both parties for a job well done. And a note to New Hampshire voters: let’s all do a better job of checking out the qualities and ideologies of the people we’ll be voting for this November as 2012 rolls along. There will be many fine Democrats and moderate Republicans to choose from, leaving no excuse for us if we allow the Tea Party regressives we installed in 2010 to remain in office. These people don’t stand for smaller government, job creation and the other nice-sounding legislation they talked about. Their aim is to turn our state into a sort of "Georgia North", allowing government into our bedrooms as well as continuing the losses of thousands of school, hospital and public sector jobs that the ridiculous budget they foisted on us has already done in the past year. Hopefully last week’s vote will make people take a closer look at the better choices we have for our state.

   Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will undoubtedly be the GOP nominee in a couple months, but this coreless of all politicians has been exposed again, this time last week by his campaign manager Eric Fehrnstrom. Say what you will about the extremely flawed Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. But at least they all have the courage and honesty to push their political aims in the public forum with none of the Jekyll-and-Hyde, "which-way-is-the-wind-blowing-today" deception that Romney has practiced at every level for nearly two decades.

   Nobody on either side of the aisle should’ve been too surprised by the gist of Fehrnstrom’s damaging comments admitting that many of his boss’s conservative beliefs and views will change soon after his nomination. "You hit a reset button for the fall campaign", Fehrnstrom explained in a CNN interview. "Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch - you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again". And all this right after Romney received the long-coveted Jeb Bush endorsement a day earlier.

   This interview was definitely not in the Romney game plan, i.e. courting the right-wing vote by repudiating all the centrist beliefs and legislation he had stood for as Massachusetts governor, Senate candidate and presidential aspirant, while simultaneously pushing his more moderate views in states with audiences more receptive to them. What made Fehrnstrom’s blunder (and honesty) astonishing is the fact that he is a classic slash-and-burn campaign administrator, very much in the mold of the Lee Atwater/Roger Ailes team that ran the devastating, distortion-filled war of negativity for George H. W. Bush in 1988 against Democrat Michael Dukakis. We can expect about six months of the same disingenuous character assassination after Romney sews up the nomination and goes head-to-head against president Barack Obama, if the ugly state campaigns he’s already run against Santorum and Gingrich are any indication. And we all know that the money will be there for Mitt, who must be feeling at least a little chagrined at the fact that he has barely eked out most of his victories so far against Santorum despite outspending him from 7-1 to 10-1 in most of the primary elections.

   Maybe a little more truthfulness from Fehrnstrom and his other aides, coupled with the continuance of Romney’s own trademark gaffes on the political trail, will make conservative voters in some of the upcoming elections take a closer look at what they might be getting (or not getting) with a prospective Romney presidency.