Embarrasing, and Over the Edge

In an incredible display of hypocrisy, the GOP chairman of the Virginia Teenage Republicans Vincent Harris posted a blog entry attacking elected republicans who are trying to uphold the "core values" of limited government and fiscal responsibility, while at the same time being quoted in the Manassas Journal Messenger about how important those core values are. His blog entry hosts, encourages, and supports comments from democrats who support Democratic candidates against sitting republican incumbents.

(UPDATE: For those who didn't notice, this paragraph is a parody of the first paragraph of the referenced blog entry from TooConservative, meant to illustrate how easy it is to make vacuous personal attacks on people by generalizing based on some isolated specific instance which on it's face is factual.)

My previous blog entry notes the contradiction in Harris's comment.

TC's post concerns a press conference held on Friday by the Republican Committee chair Tom Kopko, which was followed by a Democrat party conference. Both committees oppose the Brentswood development, and the conference was meant to show the bi-partisan nature of that opposition.

Skeptical Observer has a refutation of the more sensationalistic aspects of Vincent's diatribe, based on first-hand input from Corey Stewart. A snippet, regarding the press conference:

Doing so with prominent Democrats might have been a mistake, though Corey notes that it wasn't with Bras and Porta. And it's difficult to believe that Corey Stewart would be rising to Tom's defense if he were concerned about, as Vince reports, Porta's stated intention to run for Occoquan District Supervisor next year.

Also, Chairman Tom Kopko sent out an e-mail correcting misinformation about the event. One wonders why the well-connected Vincent makes no mention of this e-mail, or of making any attempt to contact Tom about the event (which occured on Friday) before criticizing him based on a newspaper article.

In the e-mail, Kopko makes clear his motivation:

Know this: Brentswood being approved is a huge loser issue for Republicans because we control the BOCS. I’ve known this since Mick Staton’s huge loss in Loudoun, arguably because he did not oppose development. Let us please learn from that: PWC Republicans will suffer the same setback in 2007 if Brentswood is approved.

The Chair of the PWCRC's job is to enable the committee to elect republicans. This press conference was directly related to that task, in this case trying to save us from a vote which he believes could cause serious difficulty for republicans. So, when Vincent claims:

This is not what party Chairman should be doing.

he is dead wrong. This is exactly what the chairman should be doing -- working hard to make it possible to elect republicans and defeat democrats in our local elections. And if a large majority of the committee votes to resolve that Brentswood development should be opposed as contrary to republican values, it is the chair's job to translate that opposition into action.