Advice to Republican gubernatorial candidate, Randy Brock: remove cranium from nether regions.
You will not win friends and influence Vermont voters by refusing to support a resolution of protest against the Supreme’s “Citizens United” decision; not even as weakly as you just did:
“One of the problems is using a sledgehammer to crush grapes,” he said. “If the focus is money in politics, then perhaps a more narrow approach is warranted.”
In retrospect, that sledgehammer-meets-grapes analogy must sound as absurd to you as it does to us, given that that is precisely how the Citizens United decision could be characterized.
By comparison the Vermont Senate resolution has roughly the impact of a $2.00 tack-hammer.
I don’t know what carat the RNC has been dangling hypnotically before your nose, but it ain’t worth spit here in Vermont. I write as one of your immediate constituents, knowing that you are, on the whole, an ethical sort of guy, even though I seldom agree with the positions you adopt.
I find it difficult to believe that you, like fellow Republican, Peg Flory, think reversing Citizens United could have any effect on municipalities, since you certainly know their privileges are statutorily governed.
The Citizens United decision and the floodgates of influence-peddling it legitimized are an affront to American democracy and an insult to the stature of the Supreme Court. Nowhere is that felt more strongly than here in the state of Vermont.
You would do well to remember that the next time you are tempted to make a gesture to appease the money-gods in DC.
I guess our town resolution, which he should’ve received this week, didn’t sway him. How surprising that he fails to represent the natural persons in his district…
Brock’s only hope — faint, forlorn, fading — to run a competitive campaign is to attract big-money out-of-state donors and the notorious 501 and 527 groups. He couldn’t possibly vote against their interests. Not even on a purely meaningless resolution.
I’m just surprised he couldn’t make a little better argument than Grapes v. Sledgehammer.
(Myself, I prefer Bambi v. Godzilla.)