District 1 Congressional Debate – The Bus-In Brawl

While I love a spirited debate, it amazes me how there is a distinct double standard when liberals misbehave.  Personally, I have no problem with Democrat candidate Frank Kratovil busing in folk to pack the debate hall to his advantage.  It’s good politics.  My quarrel is with the Obama / Kratovil contingent (you should have heard the cheers whenever “The One” was mentioned) shouting down GOP candidate Andy Harris whenever he pointed out a flaw in Kratovil’s record as prosecutor or when Kratovil misstated Harris’ record.

While Kratovil whined about negative campaigning and attacks on his record, he’s the one running negative ads on TV.  Last night he went so far as to encourage the Obama / Kratovil crowd in their rude behavior on at least two occasions.

To the debate -

Rather than deliver a detailed account (see bottom) of the debate, I wanted to comment on some of the stark contrasts between the two major candidates.

As expected, the first question from moderator Don Rush (of WSDL-FM) was about the proposed $700 billion bailout.  Kratovil was for it – IF.  He was against it – IF.  This is something we have learned to expect from Martin O’Malley Jr.  Harris was firm in his opposition to the proposed bailout.

It appears that besides pledging over $1 million in ad buys, the DCCC has sent Kratovil to Bill Clinton school of campaigning.  Kratovil kept repeating that Harris opposed additional regulation of the financial industry.  It didn’t matter how many times it was pointed out that the statement was false.

As Harris noted, regulation of the financial industry was needed to prevent future re-occurrences of the current problems in the financial markets.  What Harris was not advocating was the type of government intervention into the private sector which helped to get us into this mess.  While it is true that some Republicans are guilty of advocating a wild west approach to financial regulation, it is equally true that liberals were at the root of the mortgage crisis through their pressure on institutions to lend to borrowers who could not afford to pay back their mortgages.  On the mortgage side of the current debacle, the GOP’s sins were primarily ones of omission.

Of course the war in Iraq was a key issue.  Of course Kratovil was “opposed to the war from the start”.  What was most interesting was Kratovil’s portrayal of our forces as OCCUPIERS.  As Harris pointed out, we went into Iraq to LIBERATE the people of that country.

While this may seem like a mild distinction to some, coupled with Kratovil’s apparent refusal to acknowledge that we are in a global war on terror, it is quite stark.  While I have been opposed to the war on , I certainly never accepted the premise that our young men and women were “occupiers” or that this was a war fought for oil.

Health care was the other key issue.  Kratovil is backpedaling from his earlier stance of advocating “universal health care”.  He still supports a Taxachusetts-style plan, but the term “universal health care” isn’t being heard.  While Kratovil certainly won’t acknowledge his support for a single-payer plan (read socialized medicine) outside of Democrat-only forums, he still has to explain his agreement with Sen. Ben Cardin that “Single-payer is the goal.  We just can’t get it passed right now.”

Harris advocates reducing bureaucracy and pushing for tort reform to help lower the cost of health care.  It was interesting that while Kratovil keeps claiming that Harris is allied with special interests, Harris held up a fund raising letter from Kratovil to trial lawyers begging for money because Harris supports tort reform and Kratovil opposes it.

What about the environment and energy independence?  Sure those issues were covered.  Harris’ stance on the issues has remained constant.  Kratovil, on the other hand, is trying to be all things to all people.  Even when it was pointed out that Kratovil made previous contradictory statements in the press or was proven to be mistaken about Harris’ record on environmental issues he kept repeating the same misstatements (I’m feeling generous this morning).  Suffice it to say that Kratovil is for everything, except ….

To read a fairly accurate blow-by-blow account of last night’s debate, check out Michael Swartz’s post on MonoBlogue.  It far exceeds the Daily Times account in both accuracy and detail.

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