Let’s just come out and say it, shall we? It is increasingly what everyone is thinking.

According to reports, the Dubie camp only agreed to a measly five debates with Democratic Challenger Matt Dunne and Progressive Marvin Malek. Last week, he bailed on the first one. Philip at the time chalked it up to downright imperious arrogance:

The news: Brian Dubie has apparently blown off the first major debate he’s agreed to this campaign cycle, an event organized and staged by the League of Women Voters.

The analysis: This guy honestly believes he doesn’t have to campaign. Why? Because it’s good to be king.

But today brings this news from Freyne:

Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie has canceled yet another debate against his Democrat challenger Matt Dunne and Progressive Marvin Malek. This one was scheduled for 6:30 p.m. next Sunday October 22 at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common.

There’s no longer any avoiding the obvious – that Dubie is afraid.

Everyone knows he’s a lightweight who only squeaked into the office thanks to Anthony Pollina’s determination to split the left even though it was obvious to everyone that he had no chance of winning. Then last time, he exploited his incumbency in much the same way, but stuck his head out a bit more often as he knew he was facing, in Cheryl Rivers, a not-very-strong opponent.

This year he’s up against a far greater threat. Dunne is good on the stump, quick on his (verbal) feet, and has a strong field operation. He also has a good grasp of the issues, and therefore brings a significant policy toolbox with him to any debate.

But of course, Dubie is a lightweight. And this slinking in the shadows campaign of “if I just close my eyes it will all be over soon” just shows that he knows it as well as anyone. By hiding under his airplane, Dubie avoids having not only to answer questions about why he won’t release his personal finances, his out-of-the-mainstream views on abortion rights, and his tendency not to show up for the nice-paying part-time job the taxpayers have elected him to – he also avoids being in a position that allows the public to see just how little he understands about policy and far over his head he is in the Statehouse.

Still, if he had any kahunas at all, he’d stand up straight, meet his opponents in debate, and  make his case for re-election. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that.

Because he is simply a coward.

I say they’re spinach!

On Thursday, I participated in an all county candidates meeting in Bennington sponsored by the AARP.  Some of the Republicans resisted my characterization of the Republican party as dishonest, corrupt and tyrannical.  To them I replied, you chose the label.  Was that fair?

I say it was.  We are in the age of mass politics.  Money travels all over the country; Vermont Republicans get money from Washington as well as the rest of the nation.  Just as factory farming has destroyed the family farm so has Rovian politics destroyed the once valid dictum that all politics are local. 

Several weeks ago, packaged spinach was recalled.  Several people died or were sickened by eating contaminated spinach.  The spinach was produced in California and packaged under the name of several industrial-sized conglomerates including Dole.  California agriculture is based on irrigating a desert with scarce water.  Such a regime brings with it a merging of sweet water and polluted runoff from cattle ranches. 

People were wisely advised to throw out all their packaged spinach.  I say all Republicans are spinach! 

I assume all readers of GMD also read Freyne land, but just in case… it seems new-blogger Freyne is coming to terms with the problem of sock puppets. Yesterday he chose to call out a poster who is likely one of these usual suspect, GOP-campaign staffer trolls that so frequent the Vermont blogosphere. In pointing out the repeated trolling by an individual posting from the same IP address under different names, Freyne writes:

Hey, maybe his real name is “Jim” and he works in the corner office on the third floor of the Capital Plaza Hotel?  The Vermont Republican Party HQ!  Perhaps he would feel embarrassed if Freyne Land readers knew that his was the commentary of a paid, state-party official using various bogus names to hide his nastiness.

Perfectly understandable. It’s dishonest and juvenile to use various phony names to vent your bias. It’d be nice if he could cut that stuff out, eh?

Life is very short, my friend. Just be honest, be yourself, even if you are the state GOP chair or paid staff. Be brave!

.In response, he receives (and promptly posts) this from GOP chair Jim Barnett:

“I want an apology. that’s bullshit what you posted suggesting that I am blogging on your blog under a fake name.  just total crap.  I have posted exactly one blog in my life and it was under my own name in response to one of your buddies who had the nerve to insult then-Rep. Doran Metzger as a “braindead Republican” upon his departure to serve in Iraq.”

Jim Barnett
Chairman
Vermont Republican Party

This is the face of the Vermont GOP. A poorly socialized, self-indulgent frat boy with little respect for the decorum that should come with being the State Chair of a major party. Any Republican parents reading this are probably yet again wishing somebody would just send him to his room for a time out…