Brummett, State GOP Tag Team in Misdirection Madness

The Garrish Show Which Distracts You From the Important Story.
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The Garrish Show: Establishment Character Assassin John Brummett puts up a piece today excoriating the state Republican Party for their efforts to determine whether or not the contributors to the Blue Hog Report blog- state employees, were blogging on state time. He suggests instead that they should join the misinformation fueled lynch mob that Blue Hog and Arktimes, and Brummett himself for that matter, are stirring up against Republican Secretary of State Mark Martin.

The whole thing is misdirection madness. The attacks on Martin, when examined in detail, are pretty absurd and clearly amount to an attempt to nit-pick until his office is paralyzed. It's brilliant strategic thinking from the Democrats because the Secretary of State, if he had any help, is the natural person to stop them from....

The Important Story they are Distracting you from: The real story that ought to be on the front page of every paper in this state- Beebe and McDaniel are making a farce of the redistricting process in violation of the state constitution. In the dark, they are redrawing state legislative district lines in a way that will influence the politics of this state for the next decade. Meanwhile, all the press seems to want to talk about are these mis-direction non-stories about Martin and a tiny blog.

Martin's office meanwhile, is trying to slow the fallout from the extra-constitutional power grab, but without help from either state media or the GOP. My source tells me that when they get shown a map from the other side that includes lines that are so flawed that they could even leave the state open to federal lawsuits, they make their concerns known. The Beebe-McDaniel faction has been angrily dismissing these concerns, and the press shows no interest in shedding any light on the matter. They are instead beating the drums on all these piddling little non-stories while the political crime of the decade in this state goes on right under their noses. The Secretary of State's office must be extremely frustrated.

Even more so because of the way the state Republican party is mishandling this. Yes, they raised a valid point about a small blog that was contributing to the paralyzing attacks on the Secretary of State's office. No, Campbell should not be blogging on state time, if indeed he was. Especially if his focus is on exposing alleged misuse of state funds from others! But the net effect of all this is that it make the GOP look like it's response to the critics is to try to silence them.

What should they be doing instead of FOIing critical blogs? How about filing a lawsuit against Beebe and McDaniel for violating the Constitution's provisions on how to conduct redistricting? That is where the important issue is. That is where they are going to get the playing field tilted against them for the next decade. How about some press releases, or even newsletters to their own faithful, blowing the whistle on this story? Every time the media talks to them about any story they should ask the media "why aren't you covering the most important (even if not the most flashy) Arkansas political story of this decade?

The redistricting process is important. It is time for some people to grow up and see beyond the misdirection madness to what is important.