Jack Kingston is at it again – making nonsense claims against David Perdue as we approach the run-off between the two of them for the Republican nomination in Georgia’s U.S. Senate race.
Now look: I support David Perdue for a whole host of reasons – his business experience, his approach to solving problems – but I really have no interest in attacking one Republican at the expense of another. Either one of these guys would represent Georgia better than Democrat Michelle Nunn.
But I do have an interest in stopping the stupidity that sees one candidate attack another with accusations that are simply not true, but are cleverly worded in such a way that make them seem true. Kingston has been doing this consistently to Perdue – starting some weeks back with a mailer that claimed Perdue supports Common Core and wants to raise tax rates. Perdue opposes both.
Now Kingston is claiming that Perdue supports amnesty for illegal aliens. In order to back up this bogus claim, Kingston is trying to tell people Perdue served on the board of the National Council of Chain Restaurants at a time when the NCCR issued a press release praising the U.S. Senate for passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Problem: David Perdue never served on the board of NCCR. He served on the board of an organization that was an NCCR member, but that doesn’t mean he personally agreed with every position the NCCR took.
Bigger problem: Perdue does not support amnesty and never has. His thinking on this is one of the reasons I support him. He understands that problem solving starts by addressing the most crucial aspect of a problem, and in this case that is securing the border. Amnesty as a policy solution simply doesn’t make things better. Perdue, who thinks things through logically, gets that.
So why would Kingston claim that Perdue served on a board where he never served, and that he holds a position he does not hold?
Because he can. Political strategists in both parties pull this crap all the time. If you can level an accusation against your opponent, and you’re confident the voters who hear the accusation will never know the difference, the conventional thinking is that you go ahead and do it. Ask any political strategist why they go negative and they’ll tell you, “Because it works.” Ask them if it bothers them to engage in such a dishonest practice, and if you could get them to be honest (an ironic proposition, I realize), they would tell you their only job is to win. They don’t care how they have to do it.
I don’t even think this is acceptable in a general election campaign against a Democrat. It is really detestable when Republicans do it to other Republicans. I understand that Jack Kingston wants this Senate seat badly and he’s willing to work hard and give it his all to win it. There is nothing in the world wrong with that.
But when you win a seat by lying about someone else, you have given up some of what is often described as the “consent of the governed.” To grab the nomination by claiming David Perdue supports tax increases, amnesty and Common Core is to sneak across the finish line by committing fraud against both your opponent and the voters.
If there is a legitimate reason Jack Kingston would make a better senator, he’s not telling us what it is. He’s trying to fool us by leveling nonsense accusations against his opponent. If that succeeds and he makes it to the Senate, he will always be the senator who got there at least in part under false pretenses. The voters will not have invested their trust in Jack Kingston the real guy, but in Jack Kingston the leveler of slanderous accusations.
The Republican establishment is responsible for a lot of this. They’re the ones who do the “opposition research” and encourage their favored candidates to twist it or just plain lie about it to their own benefit. That doesn’t excuse Kingston from taking their advice, but they really ought to look at themselves.
The Republican Party is not too highly esteemed by the electorate these days, which is astonishing considering the harm Democrats are doing to this nation. One of the reasons is that the GOP establishment engages in dishonest practices like this, because winning is the only thing they care about, no matter how dishonest they have to be to do it.
