Mutually Assured Distraction

I got a giddy e-mail from the Michael Chadwick Campaign highlighting this story by the Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey, with the headline, “2010 Elections: Republican Vaughn Ward’s family supported by bailout.”

It turns out that Ward’s wife works for Fannie Mae and the left is squealing that this proves  Ward a hypocrite. Others just smell blood in the political water.

I’ve gone on record as saying that I support Raul Labrador for Congress, but I don’t think that Ward’s wife’s working for Fannie Mae ought to influence voters votes. To begin with, Ward’s wife worked in IT and had nothing to do with what necessitated the bailout, bad loans that were encouraged by Congress and top-ranking Fannie Mae officials.

What was Ward supposed to say when the bailout happened? Was he supposed to slam his hand down on the table and say, “Woman, you’re quitting that job. Ain’t no way no wife of mine going to be workin’  for a company bailed out by Uncle Sam!” Apparently, the Statesman thinks so.

Ward lives in a place known as the real world, and in the real world you deal with how things really are.  For example, in an ideal world, I think Idaho would have a flat tax with no deductions or dodges and a flate rate. However, I take my standard deductions. Think of how many school jobs could be saved, if liberal “patriots” reported only their income and no deductions.

The Wards live in the real world. The decision to bail out the company was made by Washington, DC, not by them. When that decision was made, Mrs. Ward continued to provide services rendered for technology, just as many people have continued to sell GM Cars, and tellers work at Citibank.

In the leftist mind, if some policy benefits you in some way, you HAVE to support it at the risk of being a hypocrite. It’s simply not the case. A policy can be good for your family in this instance, but terrible for the next generation.  And it’s not as if taxpayers would save money if Mrs. Ward were to quit as Fannie Mae would have to hire someone else to do the job.

And by the way, for the Statesman that’s so scandalized that a man in the 21st Century having his wife as the breadwinner when running for office, where’s the outrage on Senate Elliot Werk, full-time legislator? 

But I digress.

Ward doesn’t think his wife should be the subject of such stories. And I agree. However, if he expected the Statesman to play nice and show some human decency, he’s not been paying much attention to politics or the Statesman. The Statesman wants to make their statist, Government is god point that Vaughn Ward ought to fall down and worship government saying, “Oh Gracious Lord, thank you for providing my family with food.” For Ward’s part, if Fannie Mae went away, he figures his wife would find something else.

I think that the two major campaigns in District 1 face a challenge. The Soviets and the U.S. had mutally assured destruction, the Labrador and Ward campaigns have mutually assured distraction. The Ward campaign and its supporters have flirted with trying to tar Labrador for being an immigration attorney. In effect, people like Ward supporter Senator Mike Jorgensen have tried to Labrador the scapegoat upon which voters take out their frustration over illegal immigration. (See Labrador’s gutsy response at Dennis Mansfield’s place.)

On the other hand, this story offers voters an entirely different scapegoat. At the end of the day, our economy faced a near collapse that costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and nobody was made to pay for it.  Now Idaho voters could take their frustrations out on the husband of a woman that had nothing to do with her company’s collapse.

I think both of these actions would be a horrible miscarriage of our political process.

The more that Republicans ratchet up this stuff on one candidate’s side, the more it will be ratchetted up on the other. Mutually Assured Distraction.  The only real winner in this thing is Walt Minnick, who can enjoy watching the Republicans destroy each other as he plots his path to re-election.

This reminds me of the last scene from War Games.  The only way to win is not to play.

(PG-language warning)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWjlCaIrQo[/youtube].

UPDATE:

Alan at Idablue may want to read posts before he links to them. He identified me as a supporter of Ward’s despite me having endorsed Labrador and saying so in this post.