Walt Minnick is my Congresscritter. Up to this point, I was prepared to grudgingly accept that he was an okay guy. Yes, he's a Democrat, but he voted so sensibly in Congress concerning the stimulus disaster that you might have mistaken him for a Republican (to the horror and disgust of many Democrats here). His initial missteps on gun control generated a firestorm of upset, and Minnick tried to very hard to bridge the gap with his constituents.
While I could respect Minnick, I was planning to vote for Minnick's Republican challenger for two reasons:
1. To remove Nanci Pelosi (D-Open Ward) as Speaker of the House.
2. His Republican challenger, Raul Labrador, seemed like a sharp conservative with whom I had significant areas of agreement.
All my willingness to accept Minnick as a good guy is gone. Minnick is running an ad that misrepresents Labrador's position by quoting him out of context. You can read the details in this September 17, 2010 Associated Press story.
My guess is that Minnick can see that the coming Republican tsunami stands a good chance of knocking Minnick out--and felt desperate enough to start playing dirty. What makes this particular ad so desperate is that it was so transparently dirty. People that I know who do not pay careful attention to day to day politics in our district immediately saw the ad for what it was. At the same time, Minnick seems to be part of the open borders crowd of the Democratic Party--and to be attacking Labrador on this basis is gross hypocrisy.
I guess it is time to call Labrador's campaign and get a yard sign.
I was one who held a reserved respect for Minnick, until he came to visit our business one day. We had the opportunity to ask about the Health Care debacle right after the horrid bill was passed. His answer as to why he voted against it instantly turned me into a staunch opponent of his. The reason he didn't support the health care bill was that it didn't do enough to cut costs, like rewarding "healthier" lifestyles. In other words, he's really just another progressive facist trying to masquerade as a "conservative democrat". He didn't answer as to what gave Congress constitutional authority to mandate our purchasing health insurance.
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