With two weeks to the election, every day brings another colorful glossy mailer (actually two arrived yesterday) from the very well-funded campaign of Tea Party wacko GOP state delegate candidate Dave “I’m just a small businessman” LaRock, slinging an avalanche of sleaze and mud.
In true Karl Rove spirit, LaRock kicked off his negative onslaught with the fabricated accusation that his opponent, Mary Daniel, was doing what he himself was about to do (“Why is Mary Daniel running a gutter campaign?”). That might have been just ever so slightly more convincing had LaRock offer a single instance of Daniel’s supposedly “dirty” campaign. But never mind: the purpose was simply to provide cover for his own dirty tricks.
As noted last week, LaRock has also been assiduously ducking any and all candidate forums or debates, including one sponsored by the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce (LaRock was the only candidate from either party in any of the several local delegate races not to show). And his campaign issued a patently false excuse for his blowing off a forum sponsored by the Purcellville Gazette, blaming the Gazette for refusing to accommodate his schedule, when in fact LaRock told the paper that he had no free dates whatsoever and that he “maybe” would attend “schedule permitting” but that he would decide whether to participate on the basis of “cost-benefit analysis.” (How’s that for bringing businesslike values to public service.)
For the general election, LaRock has been trying to reposition himself as a centrist pro-business candidate (though studiously avoiding mentioning in any of his literature just what his own “successful small business” is: namely, a two-bit, confrontational developer of crappy McMansions, not something that would stand him in very good stead with the Loudoun electorate which is already fed up with the influence of developer money in local politics).
Yet lest their be any doubts about what a wacko Tea Party fringe candidate LaRock indeed is, all one need do is consult the website of the “1789 Project,” of which LaRock is president. This organization, supposedly founded to “educate” the benighted public about what the Constitution really says, offers a remarkable list of fun facts about the Constitution unknown to historians, legal scholars, the U.S. Supreme Court, and anyone else who might naively suppose that the document means what it says.
After expressing great contempt for the idea of “interpreting” the Constitution, LaRock offers his own discoveries about what the Founding Fathers really meant in the nation’s founding documents, even if they did not quite get around to saying so. But Dave knows what they really meant, which is that they were completely behind every far-right fringe position today on abortion, marriage, anti-immigration, government, and religion held by the Tea Party.
According to LaRock’s 1789 Project, the Constitution reveals that:
• The United States “was founded as a Christian nation”
• “the vast majority of Federal regulation [is] unconstitutional”
• The Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court notwithstanding, is “completely unconstitutional”
• Social Security and Medicare are “socialist programs”
• Marriage is “between one man and one woman” only
• “One of the main constitutional duties of the Federal Government is to protect America’s borders”
• “Funding projects which do not benefit the entire nation are unconstitutional”
Of course none of these things are even mentioned in the Constitution, but Dave asks candidates to sign a “pledge” that they will adhere to these great principles, and thereby “uphold the Constitution.”
And Dave is proud to announce that extremely ethical Loudoun Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) is among those who have taken the pledge! How’s that for an endorsement!
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