As we noted yesterday and the day before, we believe that the College Republicans seem to be promoting the values of deceit, financial fraud, and a feigned and parasitical patriotism among its adherents. We begin today's lesson with a reading from the sacred text, the "Chapter Manual," available from the College Republican National Committee as a pdf download for use in "organizing your campus."
In Chapter 4, "Running A Successful Membership Recruitment Table," the College Republican National Committee offers the following advice(p. 14) to its campus devotees:
Setting Up
On many campuses, the school administration will want you to reserve a table in advance, or obtain special permission in order to run your recruitment table. If you can get permission and a good location, be sure and do it. Otherwise, don’t let the school administration tie your hands. Remember the most important rule when dealing with the administration: Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no. Even if you can’t get permission, set up your table anyway. Most of the time you won’t be challenged, and if you are, assertively remind them of your First Amendment rights, or simply move and set up in a different location on campus. By the time they figure it out, you will have successfully recruited a good number of new College Republicans.
How odd to find the party of "law and order", the "moral values" party, encouraging its college cohort to ignore rules and disobey, indeed to scorn, figures of authority, when the rules and the authority are simply too inconvenient. And yet, one dimly recalls a host of arguments by Republicans about the need to impeach Bill Clinton in order to vindicate the rule of law. Indeed, according to the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, in 2001, Scott Stewart, then the chair of the College Republican National Committee, urged an 82 year women suffering from dementia to
"Rush me back $300 right now . . . if we delay then the Rule of Law may be dead and America may turn into a Communist police state."The College Republicans eventually returned the more than $26,000 they badgered this poor women into sending them. But even lesbian lefty liberals like Pudentilla have to concede with or without the money they're defrauding from the senile, no one ever challenges the "Reds" on their public committement to "law and order." Which is why we find the College Republican National Committee's instruction to campus Republicans to ignore rules and the authority of those whose job it is to enforce rules puzzling.
The only explanation we can think of is the existence of a secret set of rules that apply only to College Republicans. Under these rules, young CRs are bound only by the public rules they like. They may disregard any other rules, if inconvenient, and they should never hold figures of authority who enforce public rules they don't like with any respect. Perhaps the promotion of a belief that young Republicans have such a privileged relationship to rules and authority may explain cases of older Republicans, whose adherence to the public rules the rest of us live under leaves something to be desired.
For example, according to the Concord Monitor of New Hampshire, 34 year old Charles McGee, quondam Executive Director of the New Hampshire Republican party, pled guilty last summer to felony charges arising from a conspiracy by Republics to jam Democratic party phone lines during the 2002 elections. (One of Mr. McGee's co-conspirators was sentenced last week for his role in the crime. Only two months ago the Department of Justice announced it had indicted James Tobin, sometime New England Regional Director of the Republican National Committee in connection with the same criminal enterprise.) Mr. McGee has yet to be sentenced, although he did resign from his position with the New Hampshire Republican party (a day after receiving the New Hampshire Young Republican Federation annual "Gipper" award) when knowledge of his criminal conspiracy became public. Mr. McGee had a happy affiliation with New Hampshire Young Republicans, during his tenure with the NH GOP.
Under the Republican "secret rule" theory, neither old nor young Republicans have abandoned Mr. McGee as he awaits sentencing. Indeed, they obtained a sinecure for Mr. McGee, to tide him over as he dealt with the inconvience "public rules" imposed upon him by federal law. Shortly after Mr. McGee's resignation from his position with the NH GOP, Dick Army hired him to be the New Hampshire state director of Army's outfit, Citizens For A Sound Economy (the same bunch who helped get conservative signatures on Ralph Nader's petition to be on the Oregon ballot in the last election). During that campaign, McGee used his postion with CFSE to promote private social security accounts. Mr. McGee is also Northeast Regional Director of For Our Grandchildren, a pro private Social Security accounts group.
Should citizens conclude that exposure to the morals and values of young Republicans will lead our collegians to grow up with contempt for law and political process Mr. McGee has demonstrated? We believe that it's worth thinking about.
