(Update: Okay, I went back to the blog “Green Mountain Hard RIght” that this diary refers to and found that there are TWO GMHR blogs run by the same person with a slightly tweaked computer pseudonym. Although one hasn’t been updated for a couple weeks, they seem to have been run in tandem for some time now. Weird. Here’s a link to the one that this diary refers to, and here’s the one linked to from She’s Right. Go figure.)

Via Freyne in Seven Days some time back:

[Rich Tarrant:] “Everybody has a right to express their views, but I think politicians, it says something about themselves based on who they ask to help them. That’s just the way it is.”

We’ve taken Rich Tarrant to task on numerous occasions for courting the Center for American Cultural Renewal/Vermont Renewal. This is a Vermont-based religious right organization that had references to gays as “fags” on their site and has used children as weapons to advance their theocratic agenda. Blier Watch – which is undergoing a renaissance of sorts and becoming less myopically (and at times, inappropriately) focused on the CFACR’s Executive Director – discovered a right wing blog entry containing a guest list from a more recent gathering of theocrats under the CFACR’s tent. Who showed up to see and be seen? From Green Mountain Hard Right (emphasis added):

When I arrived the usual crowd of right-wingers were assembled (mostly from Rutland County) as well as a few big wigs from the State GOP and candidates for high office. In attendance were Windsor County GOP Chairman Suzanne Butterfield, Governor and Mrs. Douglas, U.S. Senate candidate Greg Parke, Bennington County State Senator and U.S. House candidate Mark Shepard, Attorney General GOP primary opponents Dennis Carver and Karen Karin, Chittenden County State Senate GOP candidate Agnes Clift, and Brandon State Representative Joe Acinapura. Curiously there was no appearance made by Rutland County GOP Chairman Jonathan Wallace… former Adjunct General Martha Rainville decided to show up

One wonders if it bothers GMHR blogger vtpaleocon that many of those politicians who showed up to pay homage at the altar of the anti-gay religious right are not inclined to celebrate that relationship in the public eye.

(FYI: A “paleocon” is a slightly mushier term than neocon. The Paleocon patron saint is Pat Buchanan, and those who self-identify as PCs are often similarly ultra-socially-conservative (but economically populist), Vatican-II-rejectionist Catholics who gleefully recognize no line of distinction between their religion and their politics, and spend a great deal of time trying to cast this as intellectual virtue. They’ve never risen to be a potent political force the way the evangelically-driven Religious Right movement has, so they tend to piggy-back on their protestant frequent-soulmates… they also have a tendency to have some disturbing racial views if you dig below the surface, and BW in their post also track Green Mountain Hard Right’s links to some nakedly racist, white seperatist rhetoric that I had no idea were a part of that site.)

( – promoted by odum)

Yikes! This just came across my screen as a press release from Joe Merone at VPT with a note that Graff will step down from Vermont This Week at the end of the year.

No replacement yet.

Former AP Bureau Chief Graff Will Succeed Vachon as National Life VP – Communications

Montpelier, VT.  (September 18, 2006)  —  Chris Graff, the former Vermont bureau chief of the Associated Press, will join the National Life Group in December as vice president of communications. He will succeed Brian Vachon who is retiring from the position after 25 years with the company.
Graff, who worked for AP for 27 years, has also served as host of Vermont Public Television’s “Vermont This Week” for the past 14 years. He is recognized as one of the most distinguished journalists in Vermont. 
Vachon, who was the editor of Vermont Life Magazine prior to beginning his career at National Life, has been the primary spokesperson for the company for the past quarter century. His responsibilities, which Graff will assume when Vachon steps down at the end of this year, also include internal and external communications, government relations as well as public relation activities and programs.
“We genuinely appreciate everything that Brian has contributed to our company during his distinguished career,” said National Life Group’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tom MacLeay.  “We are also extremely pleased to have someone of Chris Graff’s considerable stature and strong Vermont connections joining us and bringing his proven skills to bear for our organization.” 

The National Life Group is a growing and diversified family of financial service companies made up of its flagship company, National Life Insurance Company which was founded in Montpelier, VT. in 1850, as well as Sentinel Asset Management Inc., Equity Services, Inc. and~National Retirement Plan Advisors Inc. all of Montpelier; and Life Insurance Company of the Southwest of Dallas, Texas.