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Maybe congressman too honest
(by Barbara Christian - August 10, 2012)
Maybe congressman too honest
Congratulations to Congressman Steve LaTourette for speaking truth to stubborn last week, when he stood before the media and announced he was calling it quits.
Why would the popular Bainbridge Republican duck out on what figured to be another inevitable win in November? For the same reason other “moderate” lawmakers who have gone before him have cited.
They’ve become marginalized, neutralized and irrelevant to their born-again party’s take-no-prisoners agenda and a philosophy that has no room for compromise. Without some give and take, doing the work of the people has not become hard, it’s impossible, came the cry from the weary new congressional retirees.
I must admit I was not a big fan of Mr. LaTourette. Like all politicians, he had a way of issuing self-congratulatory press releases announcing projects funded through federal money he voted against. In Chagrin Falls, officials even renamed their he-was-against-it-before-he-was-for-it funding “LaTourette money.”
But I had begun to warm to the congressman. It began about a year ago, when he stood before an audience of senior citizens at the Hamlet Village retirement community and spoke with breathtaking candor. So candid, in fact, you could hear the crackle of flames from tea-party heads around the 14th District.
Thinking back, those oh-my-God-did-he-really-say-that moments may have been the early-warning siren that the congressman was getting ready to retire.
He began by calling President Barack Obama by his duly elected title. President and Barack Obama are rarely uttered together in one sentence by members of Mr. LaTourette’s side of the aisle.
Then the Republican congressman had the guts to give President Obama full credit for dispatching Osama bin Laden to hell. That was way off script to the party line, which was to credit the kill to the Bush-Cheney administration and waterboarding.
Next, Mr. LaTourette took on Paul Ryan and his Medicare-ending budget bill, saying it did not make sense.
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