Well, it only took a year and a half, but after blaming “liberals,” the media, the liberal media, the “lying liberal media,” fellow Republican Loudoun supervisors, people who “hate Sterling,” people who don’t like his newsletters, people who are against family values, people who are against the Boy Scouts, people who “refuse to defend the flag,” people who criticize him because he doesn’t always spell words correctly, and the sunspot cycle for the scandal involving his stealing public assets for political and private purposes, Loudoun Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) chose the Friday before Labor Day weekend to issue a non-apology apology in which he said he was sorry for the “embarrassment” he had caused the Republican Party and took full, manly responsibility by saying he had not been “careful” enough.
Omitted from those receiving an apology were the citizens of Loudoun County, the special grand jury that spent six months investigating him, the aide he fired for complaining about Delgaudio’s unethical conduct, and all of the people Delgaudio had falsely blamed for his troubles since the scandal broke last year.
But it’s a start!
Delgaudio explained his decision to end his complete denial of reality by noting that his “immediate objective” was to help elect Republican candidates in the November state election, and he said he was worried that his ongoing fight against the rest of the all-Republican Board, which voted in July to censure him for his ethical misconduct, was distracting attention from “mobilizing the Republican Party.”
Delgaudio also magnanimously announced he would not pursue an appeal of a judge’s dismissal of his absurd lawsuit seeking to have the censure overturned. While he’s at it, he might also just for the record declare that he is no longer seeking a major recording contract and has also decided he will turn down the Nobel Peace Prize, if it is offered to him.
Meanwhile, the Loudoun County Republican Committee, in a brilliant political and public relations move designed to show once and for all that all of those stories about its extremism and hyper-partisanship in supporting Delgaudio and turning a blind eye to his egregious ethical lapses were just a bunch of outrageous liberal smears (as one well known local Republican internet loudmouth has been insisting for the last month), last week passed a resolution . . . calling on the Board to reverse its censure of Delgaudio.
This came after the previous month’s LCRC meeting, at which “90 percent” of those in attendance (according to one true-believer GOP stalwart who was there) were wearing Delgaudio stickers and Republican state senator Dick Black gave a rousing speech airily dismissing Delgaudio’s misappropriation of public assets, abuse of staff, engaging in political activity with county funds, and sundry other ethical malfeasance as a “squabble over some phone calls.” (Supervisor Shawn Williams, R-Broad Run, was at that meeting and said it looked like a campaign event for Delgaudio, with signs, pins, posters in an outpouring of support for their unjustly picked-on hero.)
An actual apology might of course also consist of paying back the money he stole and compensating his fired aide. But then those actions only hurt the people, the taxpayers, the integrity of public office, and a human being — not the Republican Party, so they don’t count.
realloudoun 