[Vision2020] The so=called debates

[John Danahy]

I have been trying to follow the fracas concerning the MCA so called
debates.  As I understand it, the MCA, an organization of like minded people
with a stated goal of endorsing candidates for office, tried to get a
meeting with the specific opposing candidates and the organization.  Such a
meeting would then allow the MCA to choose a candidate to endorse.  The
meeting would be purposely set up to allow the members to ask specific
questions of the opposing candidates.  This is not a debate!

  

Apparently, the MCA got agreements from individual candidates to appear,
knowing the proposed format.  The local branch of the Republican Party
objected to the format, calling the MCA partisan.  The Party then tried to
get the publisher of the local paper to be the organizer of such meetings,
calling said publisher a non-partisan entity.  Say what???  Who do they
think their kidding??

 

We have yet to see a real debate.  What we have seen is carefully controlled
campaigning within a limited setting.  The Republican Party can certainly
decline the meeting set up by the MCA, but to do so because the MCA is
partisan, and then suggesting their own partisan meeting, reflects the
overwhelmingly narrow view that has brought about a deeply divided country.

 

If Tom Trail does not want to submit to the questions of a group like MCA
then he should just say so.  The MCA will then be free to endorse his
opponent, if they so wish.  The same can be said with the other candidates.
For the Republican Party to intervene and prohibit such a meeting is to
pretend that the views of the members of the MCA do not count.  It is, in
effect, denying a portion of this community access to the political process
at the most basic level.  Shame on you!!!

 

John

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