Yesterday NHBR.com (New Hampshire Business Review) included GraniteGrok in its content. One of it’s staff writers or editors (there is no by-line) commented on how the GOP establishment was not the only one taking shots from their right. The Union leader, NH Journal, and Red Hampshire–which the author refers to as "those in the GOP media world"–are now in the sights of GraniteGrok and their sometimes paranoid always angry Groksters.
The air-raid siren has been sounded so you less conservative, less liberty minded Republicans had best rouse the troops and scramble the jets or the also "sometimes paranoid and angry" readers of GraniteGrok are going to split the party in two.
So goes the tone of the NHBR.com piece. So what does it really say?
It says they are biased, short-sighted, and uncomfortable with the facts.
NH Journal came under attack for fabricating a story and passing it off as news to skewer Jack Kimball late in the race. Think Dan Rather and Memogate. Making up news to mislead or frighten.
One anonymous blogger at Red Hampshire came under attack for both being anonymous and taking the NHJ lie and agitating it even after it had been contradicted. Norris Cotton, who could be working for NHJ, Bergeron, or Ray Buckley for all we know, continued bashing the false story on Red Hampshire and the players around it until one story was actually pulled. (For the record I do not advocate pulling any story unless it is so violent or vulgar it cannot be edited into something tolerable–let them swing on their own words is my motto.)
The union leader was simply using its bully pulpit to question the candidate they opposed in the race, which is what GraniteGrok was doing, yet somehow we are the ones who are "sometimes paranoid and angry?"
Unfortunately for NHBR it is actually the other way around. Moderate bomb throwers attacking from behind fake names and made up "inside scoops" passed off as legitimate news by paid political operatives are the actions of individuals who cannot find a way to use the truth to stay in power. It is, in fact, one of the things people find most offensive about the political process and it was on full display from the moderate establishment in the NH-GOP chairman’s race. NHBR is always entitled to their opinion, and that is certainly what this is, but suggesting that the party is about to split in two–which his how they close their comments–is the same kind of fear-mongering that failed to get Bergeron the brass ring.
The NHBR piece does get two things right. Yes, there were air-raid sirens, and yes someone is paranoid and angry, but it is not the conservative/libertarians, not at GraniteGrok, nor their readers. It is the entrenched Republicans who refuse to acknowledge that the grass roots and TEA party folks learned what the democrats already new, copied it, added to it, and executed it. And are now reaping the rewards of their efforts. They have a better network, are more agile, and as much or more educated about the issues and how best to respond to changes in the political environment.
That is why the Republicans took so many more seats in the Legislature. It is how they won the Speakers chair. And that is why they won the chairmanship of the state party. And guess what? One of the guys at the fore-front of that movement is now pulling the levers as the Party chairman.
So I think the sometimes paranoid and angry Republicans who have been programmed to fear their own platform, who fear standing up to the one-sided political correctness of the democrats who use hypocrisy to bludgeon weak willed conservatives into silence, should just say thank you, get on board, and reap both the policy rewards of regaining control of state government, and the logistical advantages of a grass roots organizational structure that can compete with and even defeat the progressives in New Hampshire.
Or would you rather just play politics?
Picture from: babyblueonline
