Every Sunday, the UL’s Landrigan does a “State House Dome” wrap-up. As I scanned through the column, the word “domicile” caught my eye. No, Landrigan didn’t use it extemporarily on his own; he was quoting Dem Minority Leader Matt Wilhelm’s own words.
He was irate that Republican NH House Rep Merner didn’t resign immediately didn’t after moving out of his district.
Do you know what thought immediately went through my mind (such as it is lately)? Reformatted, emphasis mine:
Dems try to revive bills
Wilhelm and other Democratic activists have not hidden their disgust that it took Attorney General John Formella’s office months to inform Rep. Merner that he was not legally living in his district and had to resign. “We need a fair debate and a fair vote,” said Wilhelm, who vowed to try to bring back bills that died because Merner took part in the votes. Wilhelm wrote Formella last week that legislation may be necessary to ensure state prosecutors take prompt action on these matters.
“A 20-week gap between admission of wrongful domicile + communication to the House is unacceptable. Credible info regarding member qualifications must be promptly and confidentially communicated to the Legislative Ethics Committee to ensure the NH Constitution is upheld,” Wilhelm posted on X.
Wait…WHAT? Domicile? Did I read that right? That one’s domicile is the place at which someone considers, above all other locations, to be their residence/home. You know, the same word that Democrats for DECADES have tried to spin/redefine/denigrate concerning a person’s VOTING address?
As GraniteGrok has shown in the past (Again, RIP Ed Naile), Democrats downplay, at every turn, the importance of that word.
Here is Wilhelm making a HUGE deal about Merner voting from and carrying out his duties in the NH House to the point of throwing out all of the votes on bills in which Merner participated. ALL bills.
Can we do the same for ANY voting incident on legislation or offices in which someone else WAS living at a wrong or fraudulent address? After all, if 400 Reps vote on a bill, that is a lot of people. So is a legislative or executive office by a given District. Wilhelm just gave us the ultimate definition – he’s a Democrat, and we’re supposed to take Democrats for face value, right? In the spirit of collegiality, for UNITY!, aren’t we supposed to take them at their word? Amiright? Isn’t he absolutely right?
The meaning of a word should be precise within a given context (excluding the fact, for now, that many words can be “overloaded” by which their definition is also by context: “I lead from the front”; “Lead sinkers are not allowed on Squam Lake”) ALL the time. Voting, as Wilhelm, would be a single context.
So your address is EXTREMELY important to Democrats nowadays? This ought to be fun going forward, linking arms with those who never wanted to stand with us before!
Nice to know that Matt has now obviated any further court cases concerning this matter. No longer will Democrats be contesting that domicile can be as flexible as they want it to be and as a given situation requires that benefits them.