Slouching Toward Republican Gomorrah…
Your staff plants a recording device on your opponent’s podium prior to your debate, so they can record any off the cuff remarks he makes while the mics are off. Your opponent finds the device and erases the tape before giving it back to them. Do you: a) Apologize and assure your opponent that the responsible parties will be punished? b) Deny everything and point to your opponent’s support for the militant homosexual agenda? c) File criminal charges against your opponent for destruction of property for erasing the tape?
I guess you file this under the heading of Deep, Late Election Comic Relief. And not surprisingly it comes from a Senate Republican who should have been coasting but now finds himself with a real chance losing his seat.
Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) squared off in a debate with Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford. But on Lunsford’s podium a GOP operative had placed a small voice recorder, presumably to pick up some off-mic comments Lunsford might make — apparently a violation of the debate rules.
(The recorder itself — sans recording — was eventually returned.)
Now, from here the accounts differ. According to the Lunsford campaign, Lunsford actually didn’t see the recorder. But since it was nestled in among his papers it was included when he handed his papers off to his staffers after the debate — staffers who say they later erased the recording since it violated debate rules to have a planted recorder on the opponents podium.
According to the McConnell staffers, however, Lunsford did see the recorder during the debate and essentially confiscated it. Richard St. Onge, II (who, in a separate story, may have absconded with his name from some neo-gothic southern novel) is the GOP operative who planted the recorder. And according to St. Onge, when he went up to Lunsford after the debate to demand his recorder back, Lunsford said, "No you won’t get it back."
And now St. Onge and the chairman of McConnell’s campaign have filed a criminal complaint against Lunsford for petty larceny and destruction of property — because of the erasure.
To be included in The Updated Book Of Virtues by William J. Bennett: It’s Not Cheating If You Do It To Win …or… Extremism In The Defense Of The Party Is No Vice…
