Today’s "Capital Beat" calls me a "turncoat" for suggesting in this post that the Granite State has forfeited its claim on the first-in-the-nation primary for lurching so far and so fast to the left this year. Some points about Pravda-on-the-Merrimack’s reporting:
First, the Monitor never explained the basis for my position which is "it is not enough that the first-in-the-nation State be small enough to allow unknown and lesser funded candidates a realistic chance at breaking through. The first-in-the-nation State must also represent the nation’s ideals and values. Sadly, New Hampshire no longer does."
Second, the Monitor makes it sound like I think that New Hampshire has forfeited the claim to go first because I oppose civil unions and back Bush’s Iraq policy, This mischaracterizes my post, which said " On defining issue after issue, New Hampshire has tacked way too far to the left. A majority of American’s believe that parents have an inalienable right to know if their minor daughters are having an abortion. Not in New Hampshire. Here, parents’ rights are not as important as abortion rights. A majority of Americans believe that marriage should remain the union of one man and one woman. Not in New Hampshire. Just today the Governor announced that he will sign into law a bill that, while titled civil unions, actually establishes same-sex marriage because it excludes opposite-sex couples. And while a majority of Americans have serious misgivings about the prosecution of the war in Iraq, New Hampshire attitudes are out there with the moveon.org crowd, judging from a resolution recently passed by the House calling for an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq."
So my post was directed to the passage of a law against parental notification (which the Monitor never mentioned), the same-sex marriage bill passed by the House (sorry Monitor, but its same-sex marriage not civil unions) and the resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq (which goes well beyond opposing Bush’s Iraq war policy). Incidentally, the Monitor has no idea where I stand on civil unions or Bush’s Iraq war policy because they never called to ask.
Sorry, Monitor, but being a "turncoat" would mean reflexively supporting New Hampshire having the first-in-the-nation primary no matter how bad that would be for the nation as a whole.
I must thank the Monitor, however, for bringing to light another reason that New Hampshire shouldn’t be first, which I omitted from my original post: SOME OF THE PRESS COVERAGE IS REALLY, REALLY BAD.
