McQuaid’s mea culpa
McQuaid should feel embarrassed. Not only did he endorse a dishonest candidate, but that dishonest candidate has now fully embraced the guy who went out of his way to make mincemeat of McQuaid in a bitter and very public tit-for-tat battle of the egos. And in all of this, The Union Leader failed to
EDITORIAL
Today is Super Tuesday, and by the end of this week, 20 states will go to the polls to vote in their respective primaries.
Let’s make America sane again.
With any luck the rest of the American voting public has been relying less on the partisan endorsements of their local newspapers and doing their own homework.
RELATED: Joe McQuaid’d Poker Face and how the grand old party got Trumped
Case in point: Here in New Hampshire, the Union Leader not only got it wrong by endorsing Gov. Chris Christie, but also played footsie for so long with Donald Trump, before dumping him at the “endorsement altar,” that the state’s conservative base was already putty in Trump’s hands.
If Publisher Joe McQuaid had taken the time to do even some cursory research on Trump, or Christie, he would have discovered what everyone else seemed to already know about these two bloviated and underhanded con artists: Christie is just another self-serving establishment-owned dirty career politician; and Trump is a filthy flim-flam business tycoon with no fixed moral compass and zero substance on any issue of national or international importance.
In an editorial posted today, McQuaid is wiping egg off his face. I guess that’s easier to do, now that he’s cut the puppet strings that tied him to Christie.
McQuaid should feel embarrassed. Not only did he endorse a dishonest candidate, but that dishonest candidate has now fully embraced the guy who went out of his way to make mincemeat of McQuaid in a bitter and very public tit-for-tat battle of the egos.
And in all of this, The Union Leader failed to do the one thing it’s supposed to do: Inform readers.
In the months before the NH Primary, when all eyes were on New Hampshire and the state’s newspaper of record, there were no in-depth accounts of Trump’s failed record as a businessman, or years of double-talk on the issues. There was no analytical break-down of Christie’s performance over an entire political career that has been elevated only because of his partisan loyalties and alliances.
In contrast, on Monday I had the pleasure of watching a masterful take down of Donald Trump by comedian and political satirist John Oliver, of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight.” The 20-minute clip is breaking the Internet, and has the potential to do some actual damage to the Trump “brand.”
As Oliver points out, brand is another word for a marketing facade created to make people believe something is more than what it really is. Sort of the way “Coke” is the gold standard of soft drinks, when it’s actually just an impressive way of selling carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, and caffeine.
McQuaid writes this about Christie: “Rather than standing up to the bully, Christie bent his knee. In doing so, he rejected the very principles of his campaign that attracted our support.”
That just goes to show you how much your hometown newspaper’s endorsement is worth: McQuaid was so mesmerized by the propaganda Christie was spreading as a campaign platform that he failed to recognize the smell of political manure when it was dumped right at his feet.
McQuaid further writes: “Voters here apparently knew better than we. Most rejected Christie but divided their votes among several others, leaving Trump to claim victory. And now, despite specifically telling us that he would never endorse him, Christie is backing Trump.”
McQuaid also failed to notice that the one candidate in New Hampshire who trumped Trump and resonated with voters, bar none, was Sen. Bernie Sanders, who not only beat his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, by a 22 percent margin, but also beat Trump in total votes cast, 151, 584 to 100,406.
McQuaid found it more palatable to endorse a documented career do-nothing than a principled candidate whose consistency and message make more sense the longer this election cycle drags on. Why? You’d have to ask McQuaid, but it would probably have something to do with “conservative values” and party loyalties.
Clinging blindly to partisan conservatism is the death knell for a Grand Old Party that is careening off the cliff of insanity into a sea of anarchy.
Way better than endorsing a Democratic Socialist, I suppose.
And in closing, I have to point out that McQuaid uses as his newspaper’s motto a famous Daniel Webster quotation. It’s a front page fixture, superimposed over the American flag, and reads: “There is nothing so powerful as truth.” That is the truncated version. The full quote is: “There is nothing so powerful as truth — and often nothing so strange.”
The strange truth of Election 2016 is that there is nothing so elusive as truth when establishment newspapers fail to deliver the facts and, instead, cast themselves in the leading role as “kingmaker,” to justify their existence while clinging to their last shred of political relevance.
Heavy is the head that fumbles the crown.
Carol Robidoux is editor and publisher of Manchester Ink Link.
