The brochure that U.S. House candidate and former Sugar Land mayor Dean Hrbacek mailed to voters this week says, “Dean’s record speaks for itself.” But his physique does not. In a photo next to the words of praise, Hrbacek’s body is spoken for by the torso of an appreciably slimmer man. The picture, presented as a true image of the candidate, is actually a computerized composite of Hrbacek’s face and someone else’s figure, in suit and tie, from neck to knee caps. The give-away is a flawed fit of head and collar.
This is just about the stupidest thing I’ve heard in…well, I’m not quite sure, but it’s been a LONG time. What sort of numbnuts would agree to something so stupid and so easily detecable? So much for being the candidate of honesty and integrity, eh?
Hrbacek’s excuse was that he was just so busy meeting voters in CD-22 that he couldn’t make time for a photo shoot. His campaign consultants were nice enough to come up with a solution that coincidentally happened to take a few pounds off Hrbacek. Hey, with friends like that, who needs integrity? And don’t tell me that Hrbacek didn’t know what was going on…even if he didn’t, he’s still bears responsibility for everything his campaign puts out.
What I really loved was his campaign manager trying to soft-pedal the egregious dishonesty by saying that voters were more concerned with issues than “pretty photo shoots”. Perhaps so, but if Hrbacek is willing to cut corners with his campaign literature, what might he do if he’s elected? CD-22 has already seen what dishonesty, a lack of integrity, and the lust for power creates (see DeLay, Tom). Then again, voters in CD-22, who tend to fall somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, LOVED DeLay, keeping him in office for more than 20 years while he became one of the most venal, corrupt, and mean-spirited Republican zealots in Washington. So, yes, I suppose Hrbacek has a role model, a man whose unofficial campaign motto was always: WHATEVER IT TAKES.
If the far-Right, uber-religious knuckle-draggers in CD-22 managed to return Tom DeLay to Washington for more than 20 years in light of his corruption and dishonesty, I can’t imagine that Hrbacek’s little faux pas would necessarily disqualify him from consideration. This is why you never hear the words “Republican”, “integrity”, and “honesty” used in the same sentence…unless they’re used to define “oxymoron”.
In the end, the good, Christian White folk will get exactly the quality of leadership they deserve. After 20+ years of Tom DeLay, these probably deserve Dean Hrbacek. He’s one of them.
