Bradley Rees True Colors: He's Just Another Typical Politician

In a comment on this blog submitted earlier this week, Bradley Rees’ campaign manager, Michael Ernette, tried to put to rest the growing issue of the hateful extremist language used by Tea Partiers in the Fifth District and, more generally, in the Commonwealth, at least with respect to his candidate.

Indeed, what we are seeing in the Fifth District seems to reflect the growing nationwide trend of anger directed at President Obama and Democrats from some of the darker corners of the Republican Party, whether it is the absurd arguments of the so-called “Birthers” who contend the President was born outside the U.S., or the characterization today of the president as an “angry black man” by one of the GOP’s ideological leaders, Rush Limbaugh.

Meanwhile, more and more, elected Republican officials and candidates are finding it tougher and tougher to walk the fine line between being a responsible, if vigorous, opposition party, and embracing the positions of some core elements of the Party that can only be considered extreme.

So, on a more local level, walking this fine line was Ernette’s task, as well. He failed, however, to do so, refusing on either his own or on Mr. Rees’ behalf to condemn the incendiary language of Tea Partiers recently directed at Congressman Tom Perriello, even as Ernette said neither he nor Mr. Rees agreed with the Tea Partiers on this particular score.

Mr. Ernette’s rhetorical futility aside, this is not the position of a new and truly independent-thinking candidate that Mr. Rees holds himself out as. Rather, Bradley Rees is trying to have it both ways – pandering to the extremist Tea Partiers who are an important core constituency of the RPV while trying at the same time to appear “reasonable” to the vast majority of mainstream Virginians who reject the group’s excessive, dishonest and confrontational anti-government rhetoric.

In doing so, Mr. Rees exposes himself as just another politician.

In an earlier post on the recent Tea Party protests held outside Tom’s office on July 2, I commented on some of the signs containing over-the-top rhetoric, specifically the many references to Tom as a “traitor” and “coward.” While there was certainly plenty of room for debate over Cap and Trade -- the issue directly precipitating the protest, incidentally -- I wrote that the level of vitriol at the protest was excessive and was not warranted in the context of a discussion concerning disagreement over one, largely technical, proposed piece of legislation to address global warming.

My post also wondered why Mr. Rees and other members of the RPV had not rejected the language of the protesters and condemned the speakers who had called our congressman a “traitor.”


Ernette wrote a comment to my post, saying he disagreed that Tom was a traitor (although Ernette sought to ridiculously argue that Tom was a coward because he refused to meet with the Tea Partiers). In any event, it wasn’t clear if he was speaking for himself or the Rees campaign, so I put the question directly to him in a response comment.

In the meantime, Catherine Crabill, Republican candidate for the House of Delegates in the 99th District, made her infamous “Bullet Box” speech warning of armed rebellion against the United States unless the government pursued policies favored by the Tea Partiers. I also wondered whether Rees, Gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell and other Virginia Republicans would condemn her remarks.

On Tuesday, Ernette wrote in a second comment on The Virginia Democrat, “I have stated before and will reiterate, Bradley Rees and his campaign do not consider Rep. Perriello to be traitor to his country.”

Whew! Glad we got that out of the way.

But neither Ernette nor, apparently, Rees, could quite bring themselves to take the next step and condemn the use of rhetoric that they themselves are now on record as saying was inappropriate. “In the Rees camp,” Ernette wrote, “we respect the dissent and we respect why they [the Tea Partiers] are angry, even if we do not completely agree with every sign or sentiment that is expressed. … I would hope that most progressives do not concur with the attitudes expressed with signs that likened Bush and Cheney to Adolph Hitler and I am sure that they don’t.”

Ernette also asked why I “want the Rees campaign to throw peaceful protesters under the bus for [my] amusement.” He also asks, “Can I expect you to disavow every freak show protester that claims to speak for the left, as a sign of good faith?”

Ernette’s equivalence argument, however, is entirely misplaced. First, here at the Virginia Democrat, I also respect the dissent and anger of the Tea Partiers and of all people, for that matter. What I object to is the level of vitriol and the incendiary name-calling these folks are utilizing in pursuing their political objectives.

Second, there is no valid comparison to the use of Hitler imagery in protests of Bush and Cheney to the Tea Partiers. Yes, some “liberal” protesters did make those Nazi comparisons, but they were a clear minority in every crowd. The signs in question about Tom, in contrast, dominated and defined this protest, there were not merely a few of them on the fringes.

Third, Ernette asks whether I should disavow “every freak show protester that claims to speak for the left,” but this argument fails because, first, Mr. Rees specifically cited this protest in an approving manner. So, I am not suggesting that Mr. Rees account for “every freak show protester that claims to speak” for Conservatives, only the freak show protesters about whose actions Mr. Rees has spoken in an approving manner.

Similarly, Mr. Rees holds himself out as a Tea Party leader, and he has spoken at Tea Party gatherings at least four times of which I am aware.

In other words, Mr. Rees is not merely an innocent Conservative bystander being unjustifiably called to account for the words of third parties solely because of his ideology.

Finally, with respect to Catherine Crabill’s, and lets not split hairs, crazy comments, she is, as Mr. Rees is, a member of the RPV. Asking him whether he agrees with a fellow member of his party on this issue and why, is a perfectly reasonable question.

The fact is, I understand why Mr. Rees doesn’t want to answer these questions plainly. He is running for office as a Conservative, and the Tea Partiers are a core part of the GOP base. Rees wants their votes, and perhaps more importantly, their enthusiasm and energy.

The problem is, he also wants the votes of the many more numerous mainstream Conservative and moderate Republicans who rightly view the statements and positions of the Tea Partiers and Crabill as extremist.

So, Mr. Rees winds up talking out of both sides of his mouth, trying to sound reasonable to the moderates, but delivering a verbal wink and nudge to the Tea Partiers. When pressed on some of the more extreme comments from Tea Partiers, such as calling a sitting U.S. Congressman a “traitor,” he disagrees with the appellation, but refuses to condemn it. And for goodness sakes, Mr. Rees cannot even bring himself to simply and plainly condemn Crabill’s remarks advocating armed resistance to the democratically-elected government of the United States.

As noted above, Mr. Rees predicament mirrors that of Republicans on local, state and national levels throughout the U.S. The core of the party to which they are beholden has become more vocal and their rhetoric more extremist as electoral losses have piled up and as moderates have abandoned the party. This vicious circle has reinforced itself over time.

But in the meantime, does all of this make Bradley Rees a bad person? No, it doesn’t.

But it does expose him as a typical politician, the very kind of politician that he professes to despise; the very kind of politician to which Mr. Rees continually asserts his own moral and ethical superiority.

Brad Rees. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

x-posted to Blue Virginia.

Crabill and the Tea Party: It Takes A Villiage Idiot

Several days ago, I wrote about the Tea Party protest on July 2 outside Tom Perriello’s office, and how it appeared, well, extreme and unhinged.

Perhaps it was, but perhaps...

The Tea Party movement is a tiny, impotent and extremist movement that is embarrassing itself and America. It bother me because it is misappropriating the symbols of American patriotism and greatness for its narrow and thermidorian political cause. The very idea that the movement sees itself as occupying some higher level of American patriotism whose political views somehow trump the votes of the 69.3 million Americans who voted for President Obama and Vice-President Biden is both laughable and irrational. Television stations come out to cover them because they are a freak show, not because they are being taken seriously in any political context.

That all said, I also think it is perfectly reasonable for the Tea Partiers to try to convince Americans to see it their way. That is what America and democracy are all about.

But then along comes Catherine Crabill, a GOP House of Delegates candidate (See this report at Blue Virginia for the incredible video – In the interest of saving a bandwidth tree, I won’t be reposting it). To sum up what she said, if the Tea Party platform cannot prevail at the ballot box, then armed revolution (the “bullet box” in her word) in a viable alternative. That, after all, is what the Second Amendment is for, Crabill explains, to facilitate armed revolution.

Look, Crabill obviously has emotional problems, so I don't want to judge her too harshly. But the fact of the matter is that Crabill, at the behest of whatever demons inhabit her brain and soul, simply committed a Kinsley Gaffe -- she inadvertently spoke the truth about this extremist movement. She got to the heart of what these Tea Partiers really believe, namely, that it is somehow a expression of patriotism to overthrow their own democratically elected government because of policy differences over taxation.

And they wonder why others mock them. they blame it on a liberal press that just doesn’t “get” conservatives, and that has stacked the deck against them.

Quite honestly, I wonder why people don’t mock them more.

To date, the Republican Party has tried to have it both ways with the Tea Partiers, trying to exploit the movement’s appeal to portions of the GOP base while at the same time separating themselves, sub rosa, from the movement’s extremist rhetoric and positions so as not to alienate the more moderate independent voters they will need to get elected.

Bradley Rees, 5th District Republican Congressional hopeful, for example, has embraced this movement and spoken at three of its rallies that I know of, but to date he has steadfastly refused to publicly condemn any of their actions, even as he suggests his private feeling are quite different. In fact, on this very blog his campaign manager, Michael Emette, recently wrote about the Perriello protest, “I don't personally consider Perriello a traitor, nor does the campaign,” but he fell well short of condemning the people who did express that extreme and ugly opinion by characterizing the protest as “a couple hundred people voicing their displeasure.”

Well, will Rees condemn Crabill? Will Bob McDonnell condemn her comments? Will anyone from the RPV condemn Crabill? Will any Conservative blogger?

Or is this the Republican Party in Virginia in 2009?

The Suspension of Disbelief

According to the web site Bearing Drift, one of the Conservative sites I have been reading and commenting on lately, Tom Perriello cast the deciding vote in the House of Representatives for bringing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to Virginia.

I can’t really tell if this is true or not. The vote seemed to concern whether to allow President Obama to use funds to close the prison, not actually to bring terrorists to Virginia. What’s more, while the vote did sport a margin of one, I can’t tell if Perriello’s was the deciding vote; after all, when the vote is decided by a margin of one, every vote is, in theory, the deciding vote.

But, whatever, I digress into logic.

No sooner did Bearing Drift publish this little news blurb than Bradley Rees, erstwhile Republican candidate for Congress from the 5th District, was all over it on Twitter. “My 2010 opponent just did THIS,” he effused, linking to Bearing Drift. A little later, he tweeted, “What’s Tom thinking? What am I missing?”

Bradley, don’t hang a fastball over the plate like that, man.

It really is Bearing Drift, a Republican website that seems smart and serious, that mystifies me. I rarely agree with anything I read there, but have enjoyed the debates I’ve had in comments sections over the past week.

But I simply do not understand why intelligent people traffic in such patent nonsense as Bearing Drift did in this news blurb.. I understand the short-term tactical benefit that Republicans hope to achieve with advancing such tripe – it is a convenient way to scare people that terrorists will be sharing their community and, presumably, turn them against Democrats and drive them back to the GOP.

To be frightened by such a patently absurd argument, however, requires what is known is the entertainment business as the suspension of disbelief. That is, you have to buy into the clearly absurd proposition that after closing Guantanamo, the terrorists will end up living in our communities.

And if you think that is too ridiculous of a thought for most people with some measure of common sense to believe, here is what one commenter at Bearing Drift had to say:

Several of the commenters here are missing the point about Gitmo. It is not just that they will be brought here, it is that when they are brought here they will be granted the rights of American citizens (which they are not) and then let go by some judge to roam around our streets and start new terrorist cells, because you know dang well that the fed will not be making sure they get sent back to wherever they came from. Which btw none of them want, because those people actually DO torture them.

Comments like this leave me not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

I have no idea whether this kind of false alarmist rhetoric will work against Perriello in the short term, although I tend to think that most people from any position along the political spectrum would, for the most part, tend to dismiss allegations like this after only a few moments of actual thought, as the arguments proffered to establish them are completely untethered from reality.

Regardless, Democrats and Progressives have nothing to fear from such propaganda.

Republicans, on the other hand, ought to be afraid. Very afraid.

These arguments may appeal to the “Black Helicopter” portion of the GOP base, and, of course, some voters will just not have any independent basis to know whether or not terrorists will be moving into their neighborhoods, so they may be easily swayed by an argument like this.

This dynamic can win the GOP a local House of Delegates, or even congressional, election in Virginia, but the GOP's days of dreaming about sustainable political leadership or change are in the past.

Over the long run I am confident that Republican reliance on arguments like this have been and will continue to erode the credibility of the GOP because they are insulting to voters. In this case, for example, 99% of Virginia citizens will not notice a difference in their day-to-day lives whether these detainees are in Guantanamo or Alexandria, and they will soon enough realize they have been fooled, once again, by GOP rhetoric.

And if you are curious why our friends from the other side the aisle never seem to learn from mistakes like this, it is because they do not seem, at least as far as I can tell, to perceive the disclosure of the fact that they are full of it to have anything to do with people perceiving them negatively.

Ask them, and they will tell you it is the fault of the liberal media.

To my new friends at Bearing Drift, keep it up, guys. Remember, the election of Progressives benefits you, too.

Meet Bradley Rees

Today, I learned about a gentleman down in Lynchburg named Bradley Rees, who aims to replace Tom Perriello as the Congressman from the Fifth District. Indeed, the other day, Mr. Rees called my friend, Drew Lumpkin, who runs one of the most civil, intelligent and interesting blogs around, Dem Bones, well, he called him a "rabble rouser."

Drew may be a “thoughtful theologian,” but he’s no “rabble rouser.”

Fighting words.

What’s more, Rees has been writing critical stuff about Congressman Perriello. Now, I happen to think Tom Perriello is one of the truly decent, ethical people in public life.

I was mad.

So, I sat down this evening with the intention of doing some research to utterly trash this clown.

Unfortunately, I came away unable to do it. In fact, I came away from it all kinda liking the guy, even wanting to meet him.

Don't get me wrong - he's flaky, but in this he seems more eccentric and interesting than anything else. And I’ve no doubt that in his misguided, if sincere way, he means well. What’s more, at least based on what I could learn from him in the Internets, he seems like a decent guy, a good family man, and a loving dad who posted a poem he wrote to his daughter on the web and captioned the accompanying photo of her, "My Princess." Indeed, the poem is an acrostic, something they make kids do in the fifth grade (where the first letters of each line spell your name) …. I’m sorry… I’m getting a little misty writing this…

So, please, meet Bradley Rees.

Anyway, politically, Rees describes himself as an “Ayn Rand Objectivist Libertarian/Conservative,” which is … well, I spent an hour researching this, and I couldn’t completely figure it out what it was, except that is somewhat contradictory, like being a Jewish Muslim.

But what’s more, Rees plans on challenging Virgil Goode for the Republican Party nod to run against Rep. Perriello in the Fighting Fifth, and if he doesn’t win, he plans on launching a third party candidacy, perhaps under the American Constitution Party ticket, to challenge both.

Here’s Rees, by the way (photo by Mrs. Bradley Rees):



His web site, the awesomely named SonofLiberty2K10, is one of the few web sites I have bothered to read that can fairly be called a ”Manifesto.” Mr. Rees sets out his political philosophy in detail, and explains the observations, events, and thought-processes that brought him to where he is.

For example, in a post entitled, “Why Am I A Libertarian? Read On,” he details the top 10 travesties of both Republicans and Democrats (20 travesties in all) to explain why he is not a member of either party.

In some places, he shines with unassailable logic. For example, #10 on the Democratic list is that Democrats “stood in staunch opposition to Abraham Lincoln,” while #10 on the Republican side is that it was “the party of Lincoln.”

The GOP’s # 10 reason also faults it for committing “egregious violations of the 1st Amendment (the Alien and Sedition Acts).” Of course, the Republican Party was founded in 1854, and the Alien & Sedition Acts were passed in 1798, so the GOP ought to get some points for time traveling ability.

Similarly, the #6 reason why he’s not a Democrat is because Democrats “grossly mishandled the Cold War with tragic incidents like the Bay of Pigs, which may have directly led to the Cuban missile crisis and Kruschev’s notorious shoe-banging diatribe.” Thus, Russians, too, have time traveling abilities, since Kruschey was alleged to have banged his show at the U.N. on October 13, 1960, while the Bay of Pigs occurred in April, 1961. Rees may have proved that Russians and Republicans are closer than we think. Hmmmm.

And like many people who profess a special kinship to the Constitution, Mr. Rees isn’t really sure what’s in there. In one post, he states:

Last time I checked, the Constitution didn’t say “life, liberty, and the pursuit of having lawyers making laws to benefit lawyers.” But that’s what we have (although the “liberty” part has been trampled on a bit).

Of course, last time I checked my Constitution it didn’t contain the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which is the phrase to which Mr. Rees is alluding, either. That phrase appears in the Declaration of Independence.

But, as Mr. Rees says, “he is “not a lawyer,” which he touts as a rationale to vote for him.

And, anyway, these kinds of errors are nitpicking. Forget it. He’s rolling:




Mr. Rees, I wish you’d stop criticizing Congressman Perriello so much. He is a good and honest congressman trying to do the right thing, and he is good for our District, even if I don’t agree with him on everything. Some of your criticisms seem strained, like you're trying just a little too hard to find fault.

The Virginia Democrat is dedicated to electing Progressives, not Ayn Rand Objectivist Libertarian/Conservatives, so we can't endorse you. But in the spirit of pluralism, and with an abiding belief in American Constitutionalism, even if we interpret that differently than do you, we nonetheless salute you for putting yourself out there, caring and participating constructively in the political process. We hope you give Virgil a run for his money.