Stu Greenleaf is calling for a task force to study the gun issue. Greenleaf has been a thorn in our sides for a while now, but he sometimes votes the right way on our issue. It’s hard to say what the intention is here. On one hand, we shouldn’t trust Greenleaf at all, but on the other hand, task forces are a common way for politicians to be seen as “doing something,” without actually doing anything. Along with blue ribbon panels, they are generally kabuki theater; elaborate rituals often structured to come to pre-determined conclusions. But which conclusions?
The thought has occurred to me that one way to deal with Greenleaf, if he continues down the anti-gun path, is to go volunteer for his next Democratic challenger, just to get him out of a leadership position in the GOP-controlled Senate. The worse he gets on our issue, the more attractive this thought becomes.
I think you’ve struck gold there, Sebastian.
There are reliably-Democrat districts, both at the state and federal levels, which will (probably) never be won by a Republican. So why not help a Democrat contender unseat the incumbent?
If all the contender choices are “gun rights worse” than the incumbent, maybe stick with the incumbent. But, maybe, replacing a 20-year veteran with a raw newbie gets the veteran off choice committees and makes the replacement climb the seniority ladder from the bottom. Next election cycle, do it again. There may be value in churn, especially if it happens at the primary level.
And, there’s nothing that says a “better” (relatively speaking) new Democrat can’t be recruited from somewhere to run for the office. And, from all this maybe the Republicans will eventually discover that we’re not to be taken for granted, and that gun owners are less interested in “R” or “D” than we are in our rights.
One must be careful with this: I remember well how the National Review got behind Joe Lieberman to get rid of self-described “turd in the punchbowl” RINO Lowell Weicker, who lost by 1% due to Republican defections.
However, their “To get to B you must go through C” or whatever it was, their conceit that they could later replace Lieberman … well, even the more extremely Left Democratic party couldn’t do that in 2006, and he’s going to retire in a few days after a quarter century in the Senate….
I just have to relate the following, and I’m not sure what the moral is:
Some years ago I went with a small committee to visit Greenleaf, to discuss the features of a bill (non-gun-related) that he had introduced. In fact he had introduced it in several previous sessions over the years.
When we undertook to discuss its features with him, he essentially argued at great length against his own bill. He didn’t know certain features were in his bill, and argued vehemently against them. Actually, he didn’t seem to know the content of his own bill, and was mostly opposed to the broad concept it promoted.
We left his office scratching our heads, but certain that he was going to be no help at all with what we were seeking to promote.
The bottom line is that Greenleaf is a charlatan, always has been, and always will be. If you can find a reason in that either to retain him or to dump him, have at it.