I can’t speak for my fellow Virginia Right! Blogger Sandy Sanders, but I will not personally endorse nor support Corey Stewart in the Republican Convention.
Although I was a part of the Virginia TEA Party Federation / Middle Resolution vetting process over 2 days last week, and this process concluded by endorsing Stewart, I have eliminated him from my short list.
While I endorse the vetting process of the TEA Party Federation and Middle Resolution, what I experienced at the vetting was only one element of MY process.
One serious flaw in the vetting process and endorsement decision, in my opinion, was the failure to take into account the candidate’s voting record and performance in office. It is well and good and valuable to question the candidates, as this process did, but I feel it is only one dimension in an array of attributes we must consider.
And if this exact process were used by far left Progressives I believe I could answer their left leaning questions enough to obtain the Democrat’s endorsement, and as long as they didn’t look at my record (as a blogger) I could sound like the ideal candidate.
Corey Steward has been a tax raiser and proponent of larger and larger government year after year. That is a deal breaker no matter how well he answered the 32 questions.
Corey Stewart, if elected Lt. Governor, will eventually stab fiscal conservatives in the back just as Bob McDonnell has done.
All the signs are there. While the Lt. Governor is not allowed to vote on budget bills under the Virginia Constitution, there are still shenanigans he can pull to facilitate things. Grease the skids, if you will.
It is no longer enough to elect Republicans (as if that was ever enough). There are pretenders among us and we must use every tool and “spider” sense to make sure we don’t elect another Republican masquerading as a Conservative like McDonnell.
And there are reports that Stewart may be behind some questionable mud slinging that is smearing some of his opponents and identifying themselves as various newly made up entities. I can’t say for sure Stewart is behind these campaigns and as far as I can tell, he is not admitting or denying the accusations.
Greg at BVBL has some more on this:
Getting the Virginia Tea Party Patriots to endanger their 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status by endorsing his candidacy seemed like it would add quite a bit of momentum in the final stretch that targets a pretty important constituency at the convention. Yes, the VATPP and the federal PAC that seemed to be running that show called it a “vetting process,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, but nobody else is using that meaningless term. The momentum lasted a few hours until Tea Party patriots in Prince William County and elsewhere in Northern Virginia called foul and ignited a firestorm of criticism about how inconsistent Corey Stewart’s record is with the principles of the Tea Party. While the mainstream media hasn’t covered the firestorm in much detail yet, the scope and speed at which that conflagration has spread among convention delegates through the new media has been pretty substantial.
The next blow came this evening as Virginia Virtucon accused the Stewart campaign of being behind a string of illegal, anonymous negative campaign materials with some pretty solid evidence to back up that conclusion. All campaign communications under Virginia law are required to contain a disclosure identifying who authorized and paid for the communication, and not only did these not contain the disclosure, but either referenced non-existent entities as the responsible parties, or used throw-away, one-time YouTube and email accounts to actively hide the responsible parties. There was something willful about the intent to break the law here, there was an active effort by a group of people to violate the law, and that might even trigger even greater penalties.
As does Michael at Write Side of my Brain:
Some nasty stuff about Lieutenant Governor candidates Pete Snyder and Scott Lingamfelter has been circulating around to convention delegates. But, no one seemed to be able to determine the source.
Until now.
Riley has pretty convincing evidence that the trail leads back to one Chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors. See here and here.
This is all just ugly. And in the next two weeks may just get even uglier.
I don’t want to play with these kids anymore.
And Virginia Virtucon has several posts on the topic here.
But it is Corey Stewart’s record that made this decision for me.
My friend Tito Munoz has given his opinion on Bearing Drift and Tito knows Stewart well. And I trust his judgment and so should you.
And Sean Kinney at BD has this to say.
If this is true, the TEA Party Federation and Middle Resolution will have to rethink their Stewart endorsement.
Article written by: Tom White
