Today the local paper, theMuskegon Chronicle, brought up a growing trend in our little neck of local politics:
An alarming trend is taking hold this campaign season — at least in West Michigan.
As negative campaigning continues to be a part of the landscape, moving into mailed fliers as well as TV and radio attack ads, candidates have added a new tool to their campaign kit — court hearings.
For the third time this campaign season, a candidate has filed a complaint against his opponent in a West Michigan race.
Incidentally, ALL the court cases are from Republicans as they turn to trial lawyers and the government legal system to fight their battles for them.
Fred Johnson's Republican Congressional opponent Bill Huizenga turned to the courts to smack around one of his primary rivals...and more recently Republican Michigan Senate candidate Geoff Hansen took his Democratic rival, Mary Valentine to court for a case that was thrown out in a matter of minutes.
These are the same folks who don't want you or I to be able to sue a doctor if he or she leaves a chicken pot pie and a fork in our chest cavity after surgery.
But of course it's perfectly fine to be a litigious douche if you're a Republican candidate taking up the court's time for your own political candidacy.
Tort reform!
Except for me, of course.
Except for me.
The "do as I say, not as I do" Republicans.
So I see all these tactics out there...the really nasty ones. The really down and dirty ones. The screaming and chanting at town halls. The filing of lawsuits and hiding behind judges as a political weapon. The mass distribution of flat out lies. A news channel devoted to just making shit up, and donating millions to Republican candidates. Or the whole Karl Rove thing where you simply make something up out of whole cloth and put it out there. Hundreds....HHHHHHHHHUNDREDS of filibusters. Using reconciliation to ram shit through without being a nervous nelly about retribution. Calling your opponent a Nazi and and old lady killing socialist terrorist. Impeaching a president.
Why...WHY do Republicans get to have all the fun?
I know, I know...we're better than that, reality based, and so on and so on. But the high road sure would be cold consolation if we lost the US House or the US Senate.