I guess the real question is whether the voters will fall for it. And based on the recent WPRI results, people are falling for it. The David Cicilline campaign is trying to scare the voters away from voting for Brendan Doherty by telling everyone who he supports and who he’ll align himself with. Well, they’re doing that sometimes.
First, they tried the old “Scare the Seniors” tack. He’ll cut Medicare and Social Security! You’ll die on the streets eating leftover cat food! But then Doherty offered his “iron-clad” pledge to not cut Medicare, but to strengthen it. Whoops, that one is out the window.
We’ve seen where Brendan Doherty said that he liked certain parts of the Ryan tax plan and that he supports Mitt Romney for President. The Cicilline people took this as an opportunity to lump them all together. “Doherty supports the Ryan Plan!” “Doherty supports Republicans!” (*gasp*) “Doherty will be in lockstep with Boehner!”
However at the same time, Brendan Doherty himself tells us that he can work with both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats. Cicilline’s record is that he votes with his party 96% of the time.
I hear people in Rhode Island say that they need to send someone to Washington to work with their choice for president, President Obama. Ok, I get that logic. But if the goal is to send someone to Washington who can work with the President, did you watch the debate? The President showed his support for the Simpson-Bowles tax simplification plan. That’s the same plan that Brendan Doherty has been touting that he’s a believer in. Additionally, a few days ago Doherty expressed support for an executive order issued by President Obama.
So I guess my question here is, where are the claims from the Cicilline campaign about how Brendan Doherty supports President Obama? Where’s the talk about how Doherty would be “in lockstep” with Obama? Where’s all that “support” talk when we see actual examples of where Doherty backs up his claims with real action? It’s non-existent from them. There’s zero consistency and when there’s no consistency, there’s no credibility. You can see that everything that comes out of that side is at best heavily slanted and spun and at worst, completely false.
I’ll keep asking the same question, why is it worse to be a Republican (and likely a member of the House majority party) than to be someone who struggles with telling us the truth? Please, someone explain that to me.