Hamlet And Republican Heroes

The endorsement of Ben McAdams by a broad spectrum of county Republican mayors is a story with strong legs. In fact, occasionally a story becomes so large that it temporarily eclipses the larger story of which it is a part.

Right now the McAdams campaign would be smart to simply lay low and let the “Republicans For Ben” story run for as long as it can. I’d guess that’s exactly what’s happening. So don’t look forward to any big press events or grand policy pronouncements from Ben until the Republicans are through debating whether Crockett is fit for public office.

You’d have to be a fool to step in front of that story, and Ben’s no fool.

The latest evidence of the story’s importance comes from Bryan Schott at UtahPolicy.com. This week that story leads off his “Five Things I Think I Think” column. According to Schott, “Nobody, except Democrats, care about the Democrats who support McAdams. Republicans who support McAdams? That’s another thing entirely.”

Yes, it is.

This story may be a marathon runner, but before it runs its course I’d like to offer a few of my own observations.

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Yes, the coverage of this mass defection by Republican office holders has been strong. But has even this level of media attention done the story justice?

Ask yourself what would happen if a majority of Democratic governors got together and endorsed the candidacy of Mitt Romney. The answer is: game, set and match... welcome to the White House President Romney.

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I’ve followed the dialogue unfold at places like “Republicans for Ben,” and noticed something amazing. By and large, the one recurring argument against this bandwagon of McAdams support is, “Are you really in support of Ben, or is this merely a rejection of Crockett.”

Do these people ever stop and think how that argument sounds?

There’s a famous passage in Hamlet that reads, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here
 the undiscovered country from whose bourne damn with faint praise...”

This novel objection to Republican support for McAdams falls below even that small standard of “faint praise.”

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I’ll confess that I’m a yellow dog Democrat who's found it hard to vote for Republicans. My intention, when I enlisted in the McAdams campaign, was not to change that fact.

Unfortunately, this experience has been a terrible acid on my partisan purity.

I don’t know all of the Republican mayors who’ve endorsed Ben (who could, that’s a lot of people to know.) However, I came to know Cherie Wood, the mayor of South Salt Lake, in a previous connection.

She’s a tea-totaling Mormon who would never darken the threshold of the South Salt Lake liquor store in which I work. Yet, when Republicans in the legislature sought to close it down she fought like a lion to keep it open, and she succeeded.

In that fight the political advantages for her are tough to calculate. But never-the-less she did it. And in supporting Ben, here’s one more example of her political courage and independent thinking.

Russ Wall - Mayor of Taylorsville

Russ Wall, the mayor of Taylorsville, is someone I did not know before the McAdams campaign. And in fact, for the majority of my time with the campaign he was an active supporter of Mike Winder, the very person I thought Ben would be opposing in the general election.

However, I’ve since come to know him much better.

It’s hard to overestimate the risk, and the courage it took to spearhead fellow Republican mayors in support of a Democratic candidate. There were a million good reasons why he shouldn’t have done this, and only one reason why he did. He thought it was the right thing to do, and to hell with the personal consequences.

These are prime examples of the stuff all public office holders should be made of... Republican or Democrat. Russ Wall and Cherie Wood are people to be admired.

The irony for me is that, in helping Ben, so far I’ve found two Republican mayors that deserve my support, and my respect.

Where my continued efforts might lead has me quite concerned.