(Chuck Muth) – At a meeting of the Mt. Rose Republican Women on Thursday, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian was asked what he was going to do to ensure that his GOP primary race doesn’t become a scorched earth campaign where whoever comes out on top is so wounded that they can’t win in the general election against Harry Reid. Here’s how Danny answered:
“I will promise/guarantee we will not go after any opponent personally on any issues at all. You won’t hear us make a negative attack on any of my opponents personally, but you have to be able to distinguish the positions you have from your opponent.
“Now recently this guy Chuck LoudMuth or whatever his name is, he’s running around saying I’m attacking Sue Lowden because I made the distinction of where I stand on these issues and she stands on these issues. These are political positions. How can you expect to run a campaign if you can’t distinguish yourself from a different position from the person that’s running against you? You have to.
“I am only talking about what is my political philosophy compared to my opponent’s. I will continue to do so, will continue to distinguish ourselves and I will never, ever go after one of my opponents personally and I would hope that they would do the same.”
“LoudMuth.” Get it? How….cute.
But if you were sitting in the audience and didn’t know any better, you’d think Danny Tarkanian has no idea who I am; that we’d never met. But not surprisingly, this is completely disingenuous.
I first met Danny and his wife Amy at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, in 2004 when I was still living back there. He was thinking about running for U.S. Senate back then and requested a meeting with me to discuss it and seek my advice. Frankly, it was the same advice I’d have given him this year: Don’t do it. Get elected to something at a lower level first before reaching for the brass ring.
Then later, after I moved back to Nevada in 2005, I saw and spoke with Danny on a regular basis at one political event after another. I endorsed him in his primary race for Secretary of State in 2006 and let him put a yard sign in my yard. Heck, I even babysat his kids while he and Amy attended a Lincoln Day dinner a couple years ago!
You mean to tell me Danny would leave his most precious possessions with “this guy Chuck LoudMuth or whatever his name is”?
Once again we see that Danny Tarkanian will say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear….whether it’s true of not.
Now, as for Danny’s contention that I’m criticizing him for making distinctions between where he stands on the issues and where Sue Lowden stands on the issues….well – surprise! – that’s not true either.
Providing the voters with a contrast between yourself and your opponent is, indeed, a valuable and necessary component of a political campaign. I have no problem with a hard-hitting issue-based campaign. In fact, I teach just that in my campaign training seminars.
No, my problem isn’t that Danny is drawing distinctions between himself and Sue Lowden; my problem is that he’s making things up and twisting Sue Lowden’s words and positions in his efforts to draw distinctions and is misleading voters in the process.
For example, had Danny said that Sue Lowden was “wishy-washy” on the issue of the TARP bailout because she said she couldn’t say how she would have voted on that bill at the time….fine. Fair game. But to claim that means she supported the TARP bailout…well, that’s just a flat-out lie.
As someone who played sports, Danny should know the difference between playing hard and playing dirty. You don’t hit below the belt, after the whistle, from behind, or out of bounds. Those are called fouls, and perpetrators are rightfully penalized for them
And as someone who won a lawsuit last August against a political opponent who was found to have lied about Danny in a previous campaign, you’d think Danny would have a greater sensitivity about doing the same thing to someone else.
You’d think.
But you’d be wrong.
And if this is how Danny is going to conduct himself on the campaign trail, just image how he’d act in office if he ever got elected. To anything.