This week the staff of a Democrat, incumbent Congressman Tom Perriello of Virginia, called his Republican opponent a carpetbagger. So the Republican National Campaign Committee got the home addresses of several staffers working for Democrat Perriello.
Republicans were hot to demonstrate that the Democrat was disloyal to his district, hiring workers who lived in other areas. Sometimes any campaign issue will do, and turnabout being fair play, Republicans published the names of half a dozen workers, all living outside the district. One of them was Perriello’s chief of staff. Republicans said the he should fire them all.
It all reminded me of a small town I once did some business in. I made a few friends, but there was a reserve that bordered on iciness from some others. One new friend explained it with a story of local parochialism. He had once voiced a mild disagreement on some minor matter during a group discussion. It was not a sharp rebuke, rather an on-the-other-hand sort of comment. “Oh, that’s right,” said a woman in the group. “You’re not from around here.” He had lived in the community all his life, but she was using her “you” in the plural. She meant that his family had not been multi-generational residents.
So last week, Republicans published the names of those half a dozen staff members. They. Added. Their. Exact. Home. Addresses. As in HOME.
This is not the first experience this Congressman has had with home addresses. Last year, some enterprising Republican published the Congressman’s home address and urged conservatives to “drop by” and pay their respects. Well, it was almost his address. Seems there was a mistake and the address was wrong. It was actually that of the Congressman’s brother. One person who dropped by the brother’s home in the dead of night did not ring the bell, but rather cut the gas line leading to the house.
This sort of address publishing thing has become a pattern. Remember Congressman Mark Foley, who hit the headlines in 2006, after making suggestive advances on young Congressional pages? Conservative bloggers were outraged, but not all of them were angry at the Congressman. One published the names and home addresses of the minors who were the objects of the Congressman’s desires. Seems they were guilty of tattling. Major conservative sites then linked to the article containing the addresses.
The following year a couple of small children in Maryland became living examples of what government assisted health care could do. The little kids had been in a serious car accident. One of them would almost certainly have died of brain injuries had not medical care been available under a government program. Conservatives got angry. They not only published the address of the kids, but included driving directions to their door.
This new approach may seem harsh. But the well being of staff members, the privacy of the young objects of Congressional urges, and the safety of injured little kids must not stand in the way of conservative principles.