On Endorsements

Too Conservative has the early morning news that Jim Rich will supposedly receive a major endorsement from a VA elected official during the Convention today (I won't steal TC's thunder - go on over to his site and read about it).

Pardon me if I don't swoon. I'm still planning to vote for Heidi Stirrup even if Ronald Reagan should come back from the dead for the sole purpose of dictating a letter of support for Jim Rich. Why? Oh, just the trivial reason I have listened to Heidi talk about her vision for the 10th district and why Republicans have been getting their butts kicked lately, and it makes a lot of sense. Not enough grassroots activism, not enough boots on the ground on election day, not enough promotion of conservative principles. That fits with the reality I live in. Plus she's been out there talking to people constantly the past few months so we happen to know what she thinks, and I (long time voter, first time conventioneer) couldn't pick Jim Rich out of a police lineup.

Endorsement letters get written from the comfort of one's desk between answering e-mails and reviewing the month's credit card charges. Not to say they are meaningless: When "two Congressmen and a Lt. Governor" decide to write those letters, it means two Congressmen and a Lt. Governor have decided to stake a bit of their political reputation for the promise of future reward, or have received chits from past elections that now must be paid off.

Two Congressmen and a Lt. Governor might instruct me to jump off a bridge, might promise me the moon, might come around with their palms out, but I'm not turning over ANYTHING just on the basis of their authority. When I'm trying to make a difficult decision or having a crisis of conscience, I don't think to myself, "Hmm. What would two Congressmen and a Lt. Governor do right now?"

The endorsements of two Congressmen and a Lt. Governor means absolutely nothing except that Jim Rich managed to get them. That, I'll grant you, is to Jim Rich's credit, in the same sense that if Jim Rich grabbed the front-row parking spot at Costco before I could get to it I'd have to tip my hat to him for his scrappiness and pluck. But I wouldn't think of him as the better man.