Democrat Representative Frank Kratovil (D-MD-1) was hanged in effigy in Maryland and some deemed that this was not a proper form of expression of political opinion. One should look at the Congressman before condemning the actions of his angry constituents.
Kratovil is a Liberal Democrat who (formally) represents the rather conservative Fist District of Maryland.
For years, this District was misrepresented by RINO Wayne Gilchrest. Former house-painter and USMC veteran Gilchrest came off as a latter-day “Mr. Smith” but his voting record was closer to that of a Democrat. His Second Amendment views seemed inconsistent for a person representing a district where there were a lot of hunters and shooters but very few murders.
His folksiness was a façade but his profile indicates very little frontal lobe development and a conversation with him confirmed that he is a dullard. His lines seemed to written by Chief of Staff Tony Caliguiri
Like most RINOs, Gilchrest had the backing of party leaders simply because he was an incumbent. Facing a general election candidate who ran to his left made it possible for Republicans to hold their collective noses and send Gilchrest back to the House. His few primary opponents were relative unknowns without much funding.
Then he got a real opponent in the form of State Senator Senator Andrew Harris. Harris is a first generation American with refugee parents from Poland and Hungary. He is a physician on the staff of Johns Hopkins and also a Navy veteran who served in Desert Storm and holds the rank of Commander in the USNR. CSPT maintained a link to Harris’ campaign site, and maybe it got him a donation or two.
Harris took on liberal Republican F. Vernon Boozer in a primary election. Boozer was then the minority leader in the Maryland Senate but Harris took on the Establishment darling, beat him in the primary, and went on to win the General Election.
When Harris took on Gilchrest in the GOP primary, many party leaders took a neutral stance and the Gilchrest camp went on an offensive that reeked of intellectual dishonesty. Harris was falsely portrayed as a liberal on controversial issues. He was shown as a supporter of illegal immigration on the basis for a budget vote that he supported that was passed unanimously. The offensive grant to CASA of Maryland was an amendment that Harris had vigorously opposed and the omnibus measure included mostly essential spending for state services. The Gilchrest camp simply lied.
Harris won the primary but the dishonesty did not end
Kratovil is a liberal Democrat from the DC suburbs with the support of Liberal groups and Governor Martin O’Malley and his gang. He relocated to the conservative Eastern Shore and got elected as a States Attorney and had no legislative record. He could claim to be anything he wanted to be and passed himself as a sort of “Blue Dog” to eke out a fraction of a percent victory. There was a Libertarian candidate muddying the political waters and taking 2.5% of the vote.
The real Kratovil is coming out.
He signed on to Waxman-Markey and is supportive of ObamaCare. Leftist groups are filling his campaign coffers and he has been fined by the FEC for some suspicious contributions.
A number of Kratovil’s constituents have commented that the Representative came off as a Republican when he ran for office. He has two years to accumulate a voting record and will no longer be able to successfully lie about who he is.
Tar and feathers might seem more appropriate than merely hanging in effigy but that would constitute criminal assault and cannot be condoned.
Congressional races in the First District have had their moments. The district had long tended to vote Democrat but could never be taken for granted. Eastern shore voters tend to be wary of outsiders but are supportive of those who put down roots for a few years. Thanks to gerrymandering, Harris was in an appendage of the Congressional District but was seen by some as an outsider from the wrong side of the Chesapeake Bay with a residence in Baltimore County.
The political history of the district has had moments of scandal and tragedy. Democrat Thomas Johnson went to prison and this ruined his political career. Republican Rogers C. B. Morton was named Secretary of the Interior by Nixon and was replaced by Republican William Mills. The suicide of Mills required another special election that saw Republican Bauman elected. Bauman was a brilliant parliamentarian but had a kinky streak that ended his career and saw relatively conservative Democrat Roy Dyson elected to the seat. Republicans got back the seat with Gilchrest ousting Dyson.
Kratovil has a dilemma. He needs to kiss up to the Obama-Pelosi gang to get the money that he needs to win another election where he might have a one-on-one race with Harris. Doing so could spoil his faux-dog image with the voters.
Can the voters be fooled a second time?
Will Kratovil hang himself politically with a left-of-center voting record?
When a right-winger shoots someone at one of these “debates”, I’ll look forward to Art explaining that the victim had it coming for supporting ObamaDeathCare.
Good thing that the Honorable Mr Kratovil is a Marylander; had he been hanged in effigy in California, it might have been a felony!
It’s amazing just how much our friends on the left are willing to ban free expression, when they don’t like the views expressed.
The Phoenician wrote:
And when that doesn’t happen?
Hanging (and burning) in effigy is an old European political tradition. I remember a Hogarth cartoon about “Burning the Rumps at Temple Bar”. Quite often letters of defamation would be hanged to attack noblemen who had fled to avoid prosecution.
In the case of the First District of Maryland, I have lived there and still work there and have met with every congressman since Rogers C. B. Morton (with the exception of Mills and Kratovil). Kratovil is likely to be a one termer. His constituents are steamed.
Hanging (and burning) in effigy is an old European political tradition.
The Europeans were not lynching blacks within living memory.
Pho, you have got to be kidding.
The last true lynching of a black man took place around 1933 and was not within the living memory of most people in the state. He was accused of rape and taken from his cell. He had been identified by his victim and allegedly provided a confession.
There was a recent incident in Prince Georges County (heavily Democrat) where a person accused of murdering a police officer (the evidence left no room for doubt but there was no trial) died while incarcerated. This would not constitute a lynching.
Is the very rare killing of an innocent person by a white perpetrator to be deemed a ‘lynching’? This would account for the Emmitt Louis Till killing and the murder of three civil rights activists a few decades ago.
But how many black men have been strung up in the last half century for their alleged crimes?
How often is an innocent black man killed by a white perpetrator who beat the rap? Name some names and provide some dates.
Would the execution of cop-killer who adopted the Afro-alias of “Mumia” have been deemed a lynching? Some Euro-twits and domestic thug huggers might hold so.
Pho, you have got to be kidding.
Nope.
Excluding the Michael Donald case Art mentions, lynchings continued to around 1965. There are quite probably people walking around today who not only witnessed but participated in them.
And those who beat up Isaiah Clyburn were found guilty of “second-degree lynching”.
Check out this site, or here.
And Art gets it wrong – yet again:
Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 because the Ku Klux Klan needed a nigger to string up – any nigger.
“Lynching” had long implied the extra-judicial execution of a criminal suspect. “Second degree” lynching involves no allegation of crime on the part of the victim and could include a lot of murders.
Was the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum in New York a “lynching”? The killer was acquitted by a jury that seemed rather racially biased and chose to ignore forensic evidence. Rosenbaum was a Yeshiva student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The “crime” for which he had been murdered did not remotely involve him. A black youth was accidentally killed when struck by a car driven by an elderly Hasidic Jew. Rosenbaum was not involved in the incident but was the most convenient member of his faith to the mob.
Neither the perpetrator nor the agitators were involved.
What about the lying agitator Al Sharpton in the Tawana Brawley case? Did he not attempt a virtual lynching of a lot of innocent law enforcement officials? Did the angry tub-thumper ever pay a penny that was awarded to the people he defamed?
Some might claim that Jeffrey Dahmer was lynched in prison but who can find fault with this action? He was guilty but the sentence was defective. A terminal swirly remedied that.
Art Downs, inventing his own idiosyncratic etymologies again! I remember with fondness when Art decided “moon” meant “a plate of hash browns” and then wrote three paragraphs backing up his assertion with dependent clauses. Ladies and gentlemen, the premier postmodernist poet of our times…Mr. Art Downs! He’ll tell you what the words mean…after he’s decided what they mean…at this very moment!
Art seems to have more than a few problems with the truth. Where to begin???
Well let’s just look at Andy Harris as “a Navy veteran who served in Desert Storm.” NOT TRUE
He was on active duty at Walter Reed, never set foot in a combat area. Saying otherwise is an insult to those who did. Try telling me that the guys who served in the Pentagon only while I was slogging through the Central Highlands are Vietnam vets!!!
“Kratovil is from the DC suburbs.” Well, he was born there. But that’s a whole lot closer to the Eastern Shore than Brooklyn, where Dandy Andy was born. Oh, and Andy lived in Baltimore County until he moved to see if that could help him in 2010.
Kratovil “. . . has been fined by the FEC for some suspicious contributions.”
Another lie. The campaign was fined under the FEC’s administration provisions for not reporting some donations within 48 hours at the hectic end of the campaign. Nothing suspicious – an administrative error (.
Kratovil has “. . . left-of-center voting record.” In fact, Kratovil has been squarely in the center in his voting record. Just look at a list of times he voted against the Democratic Party /.
Dishonesty in discourse proves the values of a person. Art’s values are pretty low.
“Lynching” had long implied the extra-judicial execution of a criminal suspect.
Art, “breathing while black” isn’t a crime.
Murder that crosses racial lines should not be defined as ‘lynching’. Some folks tend to be very sloppy with words when it suits their agenda. It must be the ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ syndrome.
Was Yankel Rosenbaum lynched? The ‘offense’ for which he was ‘punished’ did not involve him and was an accident and not a crime.
The “Mafia Lynchings” in New Orleans certainly deserved the name. This 19th century incident involved the murder of a police chief by mobsters. After a rigged trial and acquittal, the locals imposed their ‘justice’ on the accused. The ‘mob’ was a middle-class group that included a number of black faces.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/72feb2fa-8846-11de-82e4-00144feabdc0.html
Kratovil sez he’s not voting for the Health Bill. Wait until Rahm gets a hold of him.
Murder that crosses racial lines should not be defined as ‘lynching’.
“The same night other Klan members burnt a three-foot cross on the Mobile County courthouse lawn, Bennie Hays’ son, Henry Hays (age 26), and James Knowles (age 17) drove around Mobile looking for a victim. They spotted Michael Donald walking home from getting his sister a pack of cigarettes. They attacked him and beat him with a tree limb before slitting his throat and hanging him from a tree across the street from Hays’ house. [2] ”
Art, when Klan vigilantes pick a random black guy off the street, beat him, slit his throat, and hang him up, it’s a lynching.