Wow. I posted entries a day ahead to take care of a medical situation, and I come back to this?
Miss a day, miss a lot, as they say.
And not another word, please, about my supposed “preoccupation.”
Malia Rulon at the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Politics Extra blog noted the mass-subpoena anti-Schmidt campaign of COAST, which finally seems to have shaken the Enquirer from its sleep about COAST’s true agenda (a cynic would suggest that it’s because it now affects them):
So who got served?
Literally everyone with any connection to Schmidt, starting with her husband, Peter Schmidt, to her Schmidt for Congress campaign and former campaign manager, Joe Braun.
Here are the others who have been served and what COAST is seeking:
- Timothy Billies of Creative Point in Amelia, Ohio, who created and maintains Schmidt’s campaign Web site, for documents and correspondence relating to the site.
- University of Cincinnati for documents and transcripts relating to degrees Schmidt earned at the school.
- Milford Exempted Village Schools for documents about when or whether Schmidt worked at the school and what duties she performed.
- Ohio Department of Education for documents about Schmidt’s teaching certificate or any disciplinary action taken.
- The Cincinnati Enquirer and reporter Howard Wilkinson for any press packets, resumes or documents received from Schmidt’s campaign over her educational degrees, and notes from conversations with the campaign over her educational degrees.
- Dayton Daily News, The Cincinnati Post, the Cincinnati Herald, The Associated Press, The Community Press, the Portsmouth Daily Times, the Times-Gazette of Hillsboro, Clermont Sun Publishing Co. in Batavia, The Georgetown Democrat, Hannah News Services, the Brown County Press and the Catholic Telegraph for the same press packets, interview notes, etc.
- League of Women Voters of Cincinnati, Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Manufacturers Association, Rotunda Inc., and National Federation of Independent Businesses for all records about Schmidt’s educational background.
My count of the above indicates roughly 26 subpoenas.
Rumors that Jean Schmidt’s recently-wed daughter was subpoenaed are not true, despite the fact that wedding cards and gifts may have contained secret communications about her mother’s academic accomplishments or super-secret endorsements. I guess COAST is slipping in its due diligence.
Seriously now, where’s the outrage from the McEwen campaign, which claims to only want to talk about “the issues”? Isn’t this a distraction from that? Oh, I forgot, “COAST and McEwen don’t have anything to do with each other,” even though McEwen was yukking it up with the COASTers at the infamous Schmidt cake-decapitation event a full month into the campaign. Uh-huh.
I think we can see where COAST is going:
- It’s reasonable to believe that COAST will continue to pursue what looks more and more like an obsessive hatred of Jean Schmidt after the primary all the way until November, even if it might mean that she loses the Second District seat to the other party.
- It’s reasonable to believe that COAST’s obsession will continue if she wins re-election for most of her next term, in hopes that a weakened Schmidt can be defeated in a 2008 primary.
Anyone who thinks that this is only about Schmidt’s tax-increasing votes while she was a State Rep in Columbus is sadly mistaken. This is about taking out Jean Schmidt at any cost, for reasons only the COASTers seem to fathom (I’ve tried to understand it for months; based on what I’ve been told, I can’t get there.).
There’s precedent for believing that COAST will be after Jean Schmidt for years. Don’t forget that COAST was willing to accept money from a far-left pro-abortion group a few days before the August 2 Special Election last year to run ads that told Republicans to stay home rather than vote for Jean Schmidt:
It is odd enough that Cincinnati’s most conservative, anti-tax, anti-spending organization has teamed up with an Oregon-based liberal political action committee to run a radio ad in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, but the message the two groups are delivering is even stranger.
They are telling people not to vote in Tuesday’s special congressional election.
Citizens Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes, which generally supports Republican candidates, is using money provided by Frontier PAC, a Portland, Ore., organization that generally helps Democratic candidates, to run radio ads on WKRC and WLW radio.
Had COAST and its liberal bedfellows been successful, we would be talking about Congressman Paul Hackett today. Luckily, it didn’t work. Some of us in the S.O.B. Alliance would like to think that we had a little bit to do with that.
COAST assumed at the time that Hackett would have been easy to defeat this coming November. Uh, people: With all the hype Paul Hackett received after LOSING, can you imagine what would have happened if he had WON? He would have become a national celebrity before his first day in Congress. With name recognition and favorable press coverage most politicians can only dream about, to think that he would have been easily defeated in a reelection campaign, even in the conservative Second District, is absurd. (And no, I don’t believe Hackett would have attempted to jump into Ohio’s US Senate race after only a few months in Congress.)
More importantly, a Hackett victory would have energized national Democrats as they haven’t been since 1992. The WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as The Mainstream Media) had their “Bush in Free-Fall” headlines all ready before Jean Schmidt won on August 2 (some tried it anyway, but a close loss is still a loss). It’s not difficult to believe that COAST’s effort, if successful, might have led to a situation where instead of the “cut and run” speech we heard from Ms. Schmidt, we would have seen a real cut-and-run vote by a Congress intimidated by a Hackett victory and relentless media pounding — all because COAST hates (and that IS the right word) Jean Schmidt, and appears to hate her at a level that makes the Clinton-bashers of the mid-late 1990s look like pacifists.
Meanwhile, Bob McEwen and his campaign sit idly on the sidelines, commissioning a poll designed to give the COASTers the red meat they need, and taking quiet satisfaction in how events have evolved. In an election where the candidates essentially agree on “the issues,” COAST’s Subpoenas Gone Wild also conveniently takes the focus off of where it should be: Bob McEwen’s deliberately undisclosed and unexplained post-congressional “career” during his 12-year absence from the district.
My instinct is that Second District voters will see through all of this and recognize that the McEwen campaign and COAST are joined at the hip, and further conclude that any candidate who would forge an alliance with COAST (and then not have the guts to admit it) is not worthy of their vote on May 2. People who genuinely aren’t pleased with Jean Schmidt’s performance in Congress on “the issues” can look at another challenger who may be more to their liking in Deb Kraus, who, unlike McEwen, is willing to tell us who she is and what she’s been up to.
