A Failure of Leadership
Last night the Frederick and Washington County Republican central committees demonstrated why the Maryland GOP so richly deserves minority status.
When Rick Weldon resigned his position as delegate for District 3B, which encompasses southwestern Frederick County and a sliver of southern Washington County, the local GOP apparatus moved to nominate his successor. After interview candidates three potential nominees emerged as Greg Kline reports on below.
All the apparatchiks had to do was choose one of the three. A pretty easy job you'd think given our political history and the assumed ability to count. But you would be wrong. Instead this august assembly found itself unable to arrive at a decision and rather than make a decision they decided it was best to let Governor Martin O'Malley make the choice for them.
Now both the names going forward are strong candidates. Frederick County Commissioner Chuck Jenkins and Frederick County central committee member Michael Hough are solid Republicans so whichever is chosen benefits both the miniscule GOP caucus in Annapolis and the District.
But the instructive point is that the Maryland GOP is essentially broken, perhaps irredeemably so. The decision to let the opposition choose your representatives is what one expects to find among subjugated peoples rather than with a major political party. If we cannot decide upon a replacement for a state delegate how can we expect to combat Governor O'Malley's destruction on the state's economy and rampant cronyism?
Until this mindset of subservience is erased and the Maryland GOP begins to entertain the notion that it is entitled to more than being Martin O'Malley's errand boy it will remain in the wilderness and deservedly so.
5 comments:
The real question is would you now want the be the guy chosen by O'Malley? Both of these guys are running for GOP nod this year and one of them is going to be able to call the other "O'Malley's choice".
Agreed. In my view, it makes all the sense in the world for O'Malley to nominate Chuck Jenkins -- whom, btw, I say has a much greater chance of becoming a real GOP power in MD, as little as that may mean -- in order to damage him in the future .
This type of small mindedness is what hurts candidates, as you note one of these men will forever be known as "O'Malley's choice", and builds long term enmities amongst people who you'd think would have the same goals.
Well, personal enmities and personal ambitions along with parochial interests are what animate far too many central committee members throughout the state. I remember a member where I live refer to the committee as a "club". They don't get it and it is the party as a whole that suffers.
Whomever O'Malley picks will have to grow a pair and immediately come out against Martin on every issue, to prove he is not bought. The guv may regret it, but it would be too late and he'd create his own monster. We can only hope.
When you see how the GOP rolled over a played dead for every one of O'Malley's tax increases, etc., the idea that we will actually end up with a fighter, other than Sen Mooney, in Annapolis seems rather far fetched.
But as you say, we can hope.
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