Offended by Rocky Anderson’s plans to protest President Bush this week, the Utah Republican Party is waging a public-relations campaign urging Utahns to call the mayor and tell him to “stop embarrassing” the state. And while Utahns have listened - flooding City Hall with almost 300 calls and overwhelming the phone system - Anderson hasn’t. Salt Lake City’s mayor isn’t altering his protest plans. “Given the nastiness of some of these people, it actually just bolsters my resolve,” said Anderson, who previously alleged that the “real embarrassment” is Utahns’ unwavering support of Bush.
Rocky Anderson is both a hero and a novelty: an unwavering, unapologetic Democrat smack in the middle of the reddest of ignorant, inattentive, clueless red states. Man, talk about living behind enemy lines. Utah is Bush country, where the majority of the populace has been drinking the Kool-Aid for so long that they would never dream of questioning or doubting the veracity of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader.
For a Utah poltician to so openly and aggressively oppose Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader and everything He stands for takes some industrial-size cojones. In Utah, this is the political equivalent of running up the “Down” escalator, or, to be perhaps a bit more prosaic, pissing into the wind. It takes some kind of conviction for a Democrat to not only be successful in an overwhelmingly Republican enclave such as Utah, but to thrive.
I don’t pay a lot of attention to Utah politics (or Utah anything, for that matter), so I don’t know much specifically about Rocky Anderson. What little I do know, however, tells me that any Democrats who can get elected to public office TWICE in Utah is something special. The fact that he is willing to protest a visit by Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader in a place where the average resident thinks this sorry excuse for a President is anointed by God is something that I think is worty of admiration. Anyone can be a leader when the majority of people support him; it’s takes cojones to lead as Rocky Anderson has done as a Democrat in an overwhelmingly react-rather-than-think Republican state.
The GOP acknowledged that its push, sending out thousands of voice-mail messages to Republicans and running ads on about 20 radio stations around the state, wouldn’t change Anderson’s mind.
“This is all about letting the rest of Utah have a voice to counter his voice,” said Utah Republican Party Executive Director Jeff Hartley. “We want to make sure the rest of Utah at least lets him know they disagree with his behavior. It may notchange his behavior, but he will at least know he doesn’t get a free pass when he embarrasses the state.”
Hartley said party headquarters and Republican elected officials have received “dozens” of calls from people upset that Anderson, a Democrat, is speaking at the protest and invited Cindy Sheehan to join him. Since Sheehan’s son died in Iraq in 2004, she has become a national face of the anti-war movement.
Ads started running Monday with heavy play in Utah’s rural counties, where residents are “hopping mad this man is representing our state to the world,” Hartley said.
Yeah, but somehow Anderson managed to get himself elected Mayor of Salt Lake City TWICE, and it’s not as if he slept his way to the top. Anderson, who hardly hides the fact that he’s a Democrat, has found a way to appeal across party lines…and that clearly pisses off the Utah GOP something fierce. That would seem to indicate that Anderson represents at least a few of the more open-minded Utah residents.
Sure, there are those in Utah no doubt enraged by Anderson’s actions, and they are certainly entitled to their opinions. What they are NOT entitled to do is to claim that their voices are the only ones that should be representing Utah to the world. Who’s the real embarrassment here?
Anderson announced last month he wouldn’t seek a third term as mayor. He said the protest has “nothing” to do with his future plans. “These people are so deluded. They make this stuff up as they go along.”
Of course they do. It’s what Republicans do. When they cannot win an argument by force of logic, they resort to bluster and bullying. They’ll try to force their opponents to back down by mustering their “shock troops”, who will do whatever they are asked to do in order to force an opponent to back down. Thankfully, Anderson is not so easily cowed. To be a successful Democratic politician in Utah, you’d have to have a set of brass balls, and Anderson certainly seems to fit the bill.
The GOP radio ad intones that the threat to the United States by terrorists is real, “and the choice is clear. Do we do whatever it takes to win the war on terror? Or do we embolden the terrorists with a cut-and-run strategy? Mayor Rocky Anderson has made his decision. He’s invited professional protester Cindy Sheehan to Utah to convince you that America should retreat.”
Right; the old “better to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than the streets of Paducah” canard…. What a load of propagandistic crap, but it’s Gospel in Utah
The message seems to bolster a poll commissioned by The Salt Lake Tribune that shows 45 percent of Utahns believe anti-war demonstrators such as Anderson and Sheehan “aid the enemies of the U.S.” Some 27 percent say they “play an important role in the national debate over U.S. policy in Iraq.” Another 28 percent weren’t sure. The poll of 625 registered voters was conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research firm this month.
“Part of what undermines our strength is our enemies thinking we have weakness within our ranks,” Hartley said. “If they can pressure us to cut and run and give up the fight …if politicians like Rocky Anderson prevail, then we’ll give up and quit.”
You bet; and if people begin to think they can voice dissent, then the terrorists really will win. For only when all Americans march in unthinking ideological lockstep will we truly be safe- and no one enforces ideological fealty like the GOP, particularly in Utah, where never is heard a discouraging word, and the Democrats are kept underfoot all day.
