And he accuses US of fighting amongst ourselves? Governor, please.
With all of the attention that was paid these past two weeks between the race for the Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, it was easy to miss the fact that the Michigan Republican Party had a highly-contested race themselves. When the dust had settled at their convention on Saturday, incumbent chair Bobby Schostak had won a narrow 833 to 768 vote over tea party challenger Todd Courser, a favorite of the so-called “Freedom Caucus”. Courser ran on a platform of “liberty and constitutional conservatism”.
The election was so close that Governor Snyder made a surprise appearance at Michigan GOP convention, taking time from the National Governors Association meeting in progress in Washington, D.C. to make an impassioned plea for Schostak’s candidacy. He was even seen pulling people aside to lobby for their votes.
In a sign of just how contentious the GOP chair race was, the Courser camp distributed flyers accusing Schostak of not being a true conservative. Schostak’s campaign responded by handing out one titled, “Stop the lies; tell the truth”, blaming Courser of lying about his background.
The irony in all of this is that in his speech, Governor Snyder accused Democrats of being the ones with all of the negativity in their chair election.
Democrats are itching for a fight. They’re fighting with one another. It’s all negative. It’s not about Michigan’s future; it’s about how they can say bad things about each other or about us. We’re not fighting. We’re not blaming. We’re just making Michigan a great state again.
Right, Governor. Whatever. That’s some seriously wishful thinking from everything I’ve seen.
The Michigan Republicans are so in denial on this that they are even characterizing this as healthy and saying that they are unified now. GOP consultant Rob Macomber even tweeted this nasty little salvo:
Classy till the end. Todd Courser refuses to cast unanimous ballot after losing #MIGOP chairs race. Spare me the talk of unity.
— Rob Macomber (@robmacomber) February 23, 2013
While the Democrats’ race was a vigorous one, at the end of the day, when it was clear that Lon Johnson was going to be the likely victor, incumbent Chair Mark Brewer withdrew from the race allowing the Dems to vote in Johnson by acclimation, a common occurrence for both parties. However, that was not the case in the race for the Republican Chair and Schostak won by a narrow 4-point margin.
Once again, Republicans are accusing Democrats of the very thing they themselves are doing. The fact that Governor Snyder had to race home from an important national governors convention in Washington to twist arms and fight off a takeover by the tea partiers tells you all you need to know about the veracity of his comments about Dems.
In other words, he doesn’t have any.
Adding… The absurd Jason Gillman at RightMichigan.com said this last Thursday:
If Schostak remains after this convention, I see a mass exodus.
But Democrats are the divided ones. Right. Gotchya.
Yeesh…
