Opposing Murtha

[thedrifter]

October 22, 2008, 7:30 a.m.

Opposing Murtha
Meet the Iraq vet running for his congressional seat.

By Mark Hemingway


When retired Lt. Col. William Russell decided to run for Congress against John Murtha, a 34-year veteran of the House of Representatives, he didn’t do it because he thought he could win. The third-generation soldier and veteran of the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom says he made the final decision largely because he was appalled at John Murtha’s calls for Iraq withdrawal, and in particular the congressman’s rush to condemn the 15 Marines who made headlines in conjunction with the death of civilians in Haditha, Iraq. Murtha publicly accused them of murdering “innocent civilians in cold blood,” long before the facts were known or court martials were held. Since then, charges against 14 of the Marines have been dropped, and one of the exonerated Marines is suing Murtha for slander.

Murtha’s congressional district in western Pennsylvania has more veterans per capita than any other district in the country. By prematurely condemning the Haditha Marines, Murtha was seen as disrespectful to the huge numbers of veterans he represents. His comments sparked discontent throughout the district.

Still, Murtha is a long-time incumbent who has been shameless about bringing unprecedented levels of federal pork to his district, so Russell’s campaign has been a long uphill slog. But, to paraphrase a famous military man, Murtha had not yet begun to insult his constituents.

On Wednesday, October 15 — three weeks away from Election Day — Murtha sat down for a chat with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He explained that he didn’t think Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would fare well in his district because “there is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area.” Murtha’s remarks were even caught on camera.

Almost immediately afterward, Russell was up with ads pillorying the congressman for the comment. As if that comment weren’t bad enough, Murtha pulled off the neat trick of shooting himself in the foot while it was still in his mouth, by helpfully explaining that he didn’t mean to call his constituents racist. Rather, they are just “really redneck.”

Murtha’s general disregard for his district and his recent comments mean that all of a sudden the dark-horse Republican has a real chance at winning the race. “The Democrats did not poll the race because they thought it was a non-issue, and the Republicans for the same reason. So we’ve done some internal polling,” Russell’s campaign manager, Peg Luksik, told National Review Online. “What we’re finding is that even three weeks ago Mr. Murtha’s support was hovering right around 50 percent, which for a gentleman who has a 63 percent voter-registration edge, that’s a significant softening of the support that he has typically enjoyed.”

And the internal poll Luksik is citing was taken three weeks ago, before Murtha’s insulting comments. According to Luksik, the response to their campaign since then has been overwhelming. “At this point the biggest problem we’re having is keeping up with the demand for everything we can possibly give folks,” she said. “People are now saying ‘who is this Mr. Russell?’ We’re now hearing from Democratic committee people, and folks are saying to us, ‘I have voted for Mr. Murtha my whole life and I’m not voting for him this year.’”

The response has been an odd mix of anger and humor directed at Murtha, who seems to be demonstrably out of touch after 34 years. His district is, as Luksik noted, 63 percent Democratic—but those Democrats skew socially conservative on issues like abortion and political radicalism that dog Obama. “People are feeling incredibly insulted. People who are voting their deeply held convictions with are being equated with racism,” she said.



But Russell knows that he can’t just coast on anti-Murtha outrage to win. The economic argument is all-important, largely because Murtha has funneled mindbending levels of federal earmarks to his economically ailing district.

“Over the past decade, Concurrent Technologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 here, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Rep. Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors,” reported the Wall Street Journal in October of last year. “The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary. Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha’s Johnstown Minute Car Wash.”

It’s almost not an exaggeration to say Murtha is the economy in his district. However, Russell notes that all those federal handouts haven’t exactly resulted in a solid base for economic growth—the population of the district is steadily declining. “Our biggest export is our adult children,” Russell told NRO.

Murtha’s handouts have had the effect of driving businesses away, because federal handouts make the tax structure unfriendly to new business. “Small businesses starting out with a $10,000 or $20,000 loan have to shoulder the tax burden for the infrastructure of multi-million dollar non-profits Murtha brings into the district,” Russell said.

Russell says that his first priority when he gets into Congress will be to lead the charge toward national energy independence. Here his district will be of vital strategic importance. And given his district’s resources, his constituents also stand to benefit economically from such an effort. “We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal,” notes Russell.

But despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s 12th district sits on the country’s largest coal and natural-gas reserves, the area was passed up as the site for a major new clean-coal refinery. (It went to West Virginia instead.) Some are starting to wonder about the reliance on Murtha’s economic help. Further, the district is home to Green County, the poorest county in the state, and one that has never really benefited from Murtha’s largesse.

With many in the district eager for change, and given Murtha’s recent insulting comments, the veteran congressman is vulnerable in a way that he hasn’t been for years. So far, the Russell campaign appears to be capitalizing on the recent momentum. Over the weekend, the campaign held 21 simultaneous events across the district, with over 5,000 people attending — the equivalent of a small presidential rally.

While the odds are still against a Russell victory, it would be a mistake to discount him. “We started with an impossibility, moved to an improbability, and now we’re looking at not that long of a shot,” Luksik said. “We have to do everything right and everybody’s going to have to work very hard, but is this a possible win? Yes, it actually is and it could be the upset of the century.”

— Mark Hemingway is an NRO staff reporter.

— Mark Hemingway is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Oct. 24, 2008 / 25 Tishrei 5769

Boot Murtha: The Change America Deserves

By Michelle Malkin

A real referendum on hope and change is taking place in western Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district. If the change agent in the race were a Democrat and the status quo defender were a Republican, this battle would be all over the nightly news. The challenger would be heralded as a maverick and photographed with halo effect and angel wings. Instead, the national media have ignored him.


The Democratic candidate in this race has devoted his public career to back-scratching, logrolling and self-aggrandizing Beltway politics as usual. The Republican candidate is a fresh-faced newcomer and decorated combat veteran fighting to topple the arrogant old crony.


The Democrat supports the pork-stuffed, debt-exploding government bailout for the banking industry. The Republican opposes it. The Democrat supports a raft of illegal-alien amnesty measures. The Republican opposes them. The Democrat supports race-baiting campaign rhetoric and contemptuous smears against both American troops and gun-owning, Bible-respecting citizens. The Republican opposes those divisive tactics and reckless slander.


The symbol of everything wrong with Washington is 18-term Democratic Rep. John Murtha, king of congressional pork and infamous Abscam sting target who was videotaped entertaining a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents posing as emissaries for Arab sheiks trying to enter our country illegally in the 1980s. Most recently, in June, the Democratic porkmeister was caught intervening on behalf of a law-breaking Pennsylvania company convicted of selling military equipment parts illegally overseas and knowingly violating national security rules.


The champion for hope and change is GOP challenger Bill Russell, a Desert Storm veteran, former Army lieutenant colonel and Army reservist who survived the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.


I reported to you in this column on July 23 that Russell is "the man who could topple John Murtha." (His campaign website is russellbrigade.com.) Victory seemed like a nearly impossible miracle three months ago. Now, Murtha is on the ropes and finally feeling the heat.


On Thursday, a new poll by Dane and Associates put Russell ahead of Murtha by 48-35. A separate Susquehanna poll released Wednesday put entrenched incumbent Murtha up over Russell by just a little more than 4 percentage points. That's within the poll's 4.9-point margin of error. Murtha's in so much trouble he decided to cut and run from a scheduled debate with Russell last week.


Lesson: Slander has consequences.


Last week, Murtha derided his own constituents as racial bigots. He told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "There's no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area." It's a sentiment Murtha's man Barack Obama infamously voiced at a San Francisco fundraiser in April, when he said small-town Pennsylvanians were "bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." After initially backing away from his Obama-inspired trashing of Pennsylvania voters, Murtha dug a deeper hole — telling a Pittsburgh television station that "this whole area, years ago, was really redneck."


Bull. As Pennsylvania political analyst Ryan Shafik at the Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research points out, rural central and western Pennsylvania voters turned out in droves to support black GOP gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann in 2006. In fact, Shafik reminds Democratic race-baiters, "The areas populated by conservative whites voted for Lynn Swann. It was the areas filled with moderate-to-liberal whites and large black populations that voted overwhelmingly against Lynn Swann."


Of course, black Republicans aren't really black in the eyes of the intolerant left — which speaks volumes about the unrepentant prejudices of the race-card players. In the Democratic Party, diversity is and always will be only skin deep.


Thanks to word-of-mouth and grassroots Internet activism, Russell's conservative counterinsurgent campaign has succeeded in keeping pace with Murtha's fundraising. This despite Murtha's massive advantage in PAC donations, national name recognition and incumbency perks.


Russell's surge is all the more extraordinary because he was a write-in candidate on active duty until Aug. 1 of this year and unable to actively campaign while completing his military service. He jumped into the race after hearing Murtha's slanderous 2006 accusations that Marines in Haditha "overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."


As I've noted previously, seven Marines have been cleared or won case dismissals in the Iraq war incident Murtha recklessly adjudicated in the court of public opinion — with willing mainstream accomplices at The New York Times, MSNBC and in the world press swinging their nooses to Murtha's beat.


No wonder the news hounds prefer to keep this race out of the headlines.


Republicans face tough odds across the country. A Russell upset over the nation's dirtiest Democrat promises a silver lining. Murtha's constituents are ready to throw the bum out. And not a moment too soon.

Ellie