Making Excuses For Mahoney

by
Steve MacDonald

The Mahoney supporters seem unwilling to answer to the charge that Sean is playing games with his principles. 

Let me break down the problem as quickly as I can.

Mr. Mahoney is on the board of a foundation that has recently (as in since 2008) given upwards of $160,000.00 dollars to pro-abortion groups and abortion advocates.  But Mr. Mahoney is pro-life.  So to address this contradiction we shouldn’t really address it at all.

My favorite excuse so far is that Sean never inhaled.  That is to say that some supporters claim he may not have known or did not approve that spending personally.  Maybe, but he never approved the spending in the GOP that drove him to abandon his position as a committeeman on principle.  Why hold the GOP leadership to one standard, and the New Hampshire Charitable foundation (NHCF) leadership to another?  And more importantly, if Sean did not know about all that abortion money, despite his position on the board, how can we in good conscience send a guy to DC to look out for us when he can’t even smell the blood in the water at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation?

The most popular (and public) response by far has been to point to a series of votes by Mr. Guinta eight years ago as a reason to ignore anything Sean may or may not be culpable for recently.  Even if we ignore the fact that this is a classic left wing dodge, there are plenty of problems with this tack. 

At its core the Mahoney supporters are saying that what has been said or done recently (or over the intervening years) cannot in any way trump actions of the past no matter what the real circumstances may have been then.  So Frank Guinta, having been endorsed by The Family Research Council Action, or having dozens of New Hampshire pro-life people as backers or county co-captains on this campaign, according to this line of thinking, can have no meaning.  So they are willing to invalidate the vetting and current opinions of pro-life and pro-family activists in New Hampshire so they can conveniently ignore a contradiction about their own candidate.

This is a fascinating choice for someone with Mr. Mahoney’s history. I suppose we could accept the terms, but from now on Sean Mahoney will have to campaign as a democrat who supports left wingers—and is still serving on a foundation that spends hundreds of thousands to support abortions with or without his knowledge, no matter who supports him today or what he says about his record now.

So all that standing in the cold, arm and arm, with pro-life supporters has now been neutralized by four donations to a Massachusetts democrat?  Have it your way.

Finally, at no point should we expect anyone to actually admit that Sean’s ardent pro-life position runs contrary the reproductive rights or social justice support by the Foundation whose board he has not abandoned as a matter of principle.  If that is equally telling, a congressman Mahoney could not possibly be held to account for much of anything done in his company, by people with whom he associates, or even in the entirety of Washington DC.

But don’t I already have someone in congress like that named Comrade Carol Seiu-Porter?

 

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, blogger, and a member of the Board of directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor of GraniteGrok.com, a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

Share to...