Culture Vultures: Take Back Vermonters

...So here's the thing: The Vermont Republican Party has a winning issue, a winning candidate, a weakened opponent well past his peak, and a third-party candidate likely to split the liberal vote...

...Our community still has unshakable faith in the flat earth society theory that school 60 No v e m b e r 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator...

...With Mrs...

...Over on the Democratic side, if, say, Maxine Waters has a problem with Joe Lieberman, she simply bundles him in her trunk, takes him down to the basement, and holds his genitals over the furnace until he comes round to her way of thinking...

...Still, even if he hadn't gone homo, he probably should have just gone: He's been governor for a decade and there's a sense that, even without civil unions, this may be a re-election bid too far...

...N r~l [~1 [e] IIi [~ lil I:1 !~ RI ki !::1 }nl Lrq I..:1 [~ kn LJJllP~N[NN[o]I-[II-;'JI~ by Stephen Moore Little Brainos The joys and worries of having "gifted and talented" kids...

...Ne> ertheless, Mrs...

...This," he said, "is a significant group of business and political leaders who are willing to publicly support Dean as the most qualified candidate," i.e., they're the usual bunch of washed-up has-been yesterday's men...

...On Town Meeting Day in the spring, every community that voted on the subject--in non-binding referenda-voted against it...

...Meanwhile, down the other end of the spectrum, Anthony Pollina, Progressive Party candidate and longtime sidekick of ! socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders, is mounting a strong challenge on behalf of lefties disillusioned with Dean's fisca~ 58 November 2ooo " The American Spectator caution...

...After all, what does the Jeffords crowd actually want...

...The GT program is the ultimate status symbol in Northern Virginia...

...And it must be frightfully trying to find one's party all riled up and attracting some pretty ghastly types...

...I may help out one or two somewhere, here or there...

...That would be the race-baiting, riot-inciting A1 Sharpton...

...Hey, no problem...

...Well, who knows...

...But, in Vermont, the leaders of the Republican Party are a little embarrassed by actual Republicans, and would rather they went away so they could get back to voting with the Democrats and being hailed for their bipartisanship by the media...

...What's more, continues the former GOP candidate, the nominee has a "raging inferno inside her of bigotry and hate...

...If he were to distance himself any further, he'd be campaigning from Bermuda...

...was actually a she-said-three-said story (one witness per word), but the Vermont media still went nowhere near it...

...Apparently, he was chit-chatting on the telephone a few years back and mused on the question of why the Vermont media were such defenders of Act 6o, the court-mandated law that destroyed local control of schools...

...Dwyer, though, they couldn't wait...

...Wow...

...Somehow this didn't work...

...She's denied it, and she's certainly given no previous indication that she's an anti-Semite...

...Next up was Primary Day: turnout on the Republican side was twoand-a-half times that of the Democrats, some of it due to crossover voting by liberals trying to prop up Republicans who'd voted for civil unions, the rest due to increased voter registration by affronted conservatives who felt the GOP had betrayed them...

...I am involved only in my own race right now," he said...

...A1 Sharpton wants the Veep over to pay homage...

...A year or two back, I attended the annual school district meeting in Fairlee...

...L et us stipulate that Jeffords, Gilbert, and Rome are awfully nice, reasonable people, if one discreetly overlooks the raging-inferno cracks...

...There are other issues: property rights, education, all bundled up in the slogan appearing throughout Orange County and the NorthEast Kingdom, "TAKE BACK VERMONT...

...Bernie Rome, though, is on a mission...

...Two days after the primary, the Associated Press ran a story in which her Republican opponent in the '9 8 primary, Bernie Rome, claimed she was an anti-Semite...

...Entry into this exclusive club of smart kids is even more coveted than having your son or daughter cherry picked for the select soccer team...

...I happen to like her because I sat at an adjoining table at an Orange County (VT) - Grafton County (NH) dinner for Alan Keyes, and I couldn't take my eyes offthe split skirt and fabulous legs...

...They turned to their local papers, but most of the civil unions coverage is by Ross Sneyd, the Associated Press correspondent who formerly served on the board of Out in the Mountains...

...Ruth's, I mean, not Alan's...

...Another decade of Democrat rule...

...It's mostly the more ramshackle farms and log cabins: generally, if a place has had a lick of paint in the last two years, it eschews "TAKE BACK VERMONT," as well as its less urgent sister signs, "LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE" and "REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER...

...But, if you drive around Orange County between the New Hampshire border and Montpelier, you'll see one TAKE BACK VERMONT sign after another...

...Dwyer7 After all, it won't be long before Vermont gay couples are pressuring neighboring jurisdictions to recognize their unions, and once that happens those jurisdictions will be under pressure to introduce their own gay unions, and once that happens it's over...

...F inally the Moore genes are asserting themselves: My 8-year-old son Justin has just been accepted into the gifted and talented (ST) program in the Fairfax, Virginia school system...

...In fact, Dean's not Jewishdespite that suspiciously exotic surname-and neither are two of the three journalists she allegedly named...

...T he Republican Party has never lacked for gutless wussies, especially when election day looms...

...We don't really have a property tax rate as such anymore...

...But, anxious to accommodate his gay opponent, Jeffords sportingly called one of the pro-civil union Republicans defeated in the primary and encouraged her to run as an independent...

...Next up was William Gilbert, former secretary of administration under the last Republican governor, Richard Snelling...

...Always has been...

...And what happens...

...Distance himself...

...Dwyer replied that the journalists were actually defending Governor Dean...

...With Senator-elect Rodham and the "f---ing Jew bastard," it Gov...

...Inevitably, the only Republican on Vermont's three-man congressional delegation decided to weigh in...

...Maybe it's all come too late...

...But it's not the legs that are the problem, it's the mouth...

...Governor Dean isn't so popular these days...

...Ah, well, Town Meeting: You know the cranky old North Country coots who turn out for those things...

...In the end, five pro-civil union Republican legislators were defeated, and Mrs...

...It's a he-said-she-said thing, and we know how prissy the press is about those, don't we...

...the communal crystals-roasting-on-an-openfire types respond, "Share Vermont" and a lot of the first ones got defaced after dark...

...I don't have any plans to do anything except run for re-election...

...He announced the formation of"Republicans For Dean...

...Big of you, Jim...

...Just tell us what the tax rate is," said one guy...

...They wrote letters espousing t~aditiona] morality, but were told by the liberal crowd they were spreading "hate...

...In my experience of the North Country, business owners are usually reluctant to flaunt political allegiances...

...Matter of fact, if you're a Democrat, you don't even have to be black and female to get away with it, even white men can throw in their two-bits' worth: Governor Howard Dean recently compared the GOP to Ayatollah Khomeini and dismissed them as "flat tax, flat earth people who say evolution can't be taught in schools anymore...

...General stores avoid displaying Republican or Democrat signs because you're bound to upset some customer or other...

...Say what you like about Dems but failure of nerve is not one of their problems...

...So now the signs are nailed high up in big trees it would be risky to chainsaw in the dark or plastered across the second-floor dormers of weathered farmhouses...

...The argument's always that a guy like Jeffords is what it takes to elect a Republican in Ben&Jerryland...

...And the least they could expect from Jeffords & Co...

...Good thing these Democrats aren't (dread word) "meanspirited" like the Republicans, eh...

...Meanwhile, all polls show that a majority of Vermonters oppose civil unions...

...But that wasn't necessary...

...Consider, for example, Vermont, which recently has offered a fascinating glimpse into the future of the GOP...

...And alas, as Vermont goes, so goes the nation...

...Richard Lambert, a farmer in Washington, Vermont, printed up a few in May and so far he's sold over 5,ooo at five bucks a pop (in a state ofhalfa million...

...Because he's Jewish and the press is Jewish," she supposedly said...

...Unfortunately, it's so much easier for a Republican to be "controversial...

...There's a huge yawning Grand Canyon between him and Ruth Dwyer...

...Howard Dean recently compared the GOP to the Ayatollah...

...But, after a decade of Democrat control of the state, Vermont's SOP at last has a viable shot at taking the governorship and the state senate...

...Dwyer is not to everyone's taste...

...This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff...

...There is a whole raft of issues--from small-lot logging to school curricula-but all summed up by the same feeling of impotence...

...It's important that people know about who she is...

...The school board chairman, Allen Avery, stood up and tried to explain how, under the new Act 6o, they had to cut this and that program because they now had to give their money to the state but that certain people in town would qualify for rebates from Montpelier on the increased property tax bill...

...I can't tell you what the tax rate is," said Avery...

...Hmm...

...Why would they do that, Rome asked...

...However, his Democratic opponent, Ed Flanagan, the only openly gay Senate candidate in the country, called on Jeffords to distance himself from the divisive right-wing rhetoric of others in his party...

...In that case, why bother with Republicans at all...

...I could detect envy in the parents of Justin's classmates who didn't make the cut--which only made it all the sweeter...

...It's one of the curious evolutions of American anti-Semitism, as we saw in the Hillary Rodham Clinton "f--ing Jew bastard" incident, that these days it's mostly directed at non-Jews...

...No doubt the fellow thinks, "Ah-ha...

...In an interview with the Burlington Free Press, "moderate" GOP Senator Jim Jeffords "declined to endorse Dwyer...

...But, in the small town of Vershire, the Husqvana chainsaw and tractor dealer has his TAKE BACK VERMONT sign high up his fence, out of reach, The American Spectator - No v e ~n b e r o~ o o o 59 and so does Ward's Garage, the best wrecker service in the area...

...In South Barre, Harold Putney's "TAKE BACK VERMONT" sign had the "VERMONT" crossed out and replaced with "YOUR HATE...

...Even the Dems don't say that about her...

...Jim was flummoxed...

...Yes, academic excellence is everything to Fairfax parents, and I can show you my property tax bills to prove it...

...Dwyer has a tendency to shoot hers off, a trait I personally rather like in a woman but which my media colleagues are wont to fret about...

...How does Tuesday work for you...

...She is a viable candidate for governor, which was not true two years ago," he says...

...That doesn't mean anything...

...Dwyer won the gubernatorial primary...

...In the gubernatorial race, the victorious Republican candidate was Ruth Dwyer, a Thetford farmer making her second run at the governorship...

...A woman who expounds such sentiments has no place in public life...

...They contacted their political masters and were told they should be content with a choice between voting for a Democrat who openly supports gay marriage or voting for a Republican who agonizes about how "conflicted" he is and then votes for it anyway...

...This is a perfect opportunity to unburden myself of my very serious concerns about Governor Bush secure in the knowledge that this scrupulously impartial organ will not blow them out of proportion...

...is some perfunctory, halfhearted support...

...Dwyer is a strong, telegenic candidate with a coherent conservative philosophy-- pro-life, pro-local control-and last time round, in an underfunded campaign, she managed to rack up 4 2 percent of the vote against Dean...

...in the living room...

...Word spread around the neighborhood without my having to advertise it...

...It's not like your usual political placard, it takes a bit of courage to display it: The local papers, like the Valley News, disapprove, finding it a touch too strident...

...From time to time, she'll opine on some breaking news story, the full facts of which are not yet known, and find that she's left some new hostage to fortune...

...Fortunately, such splendidly non-partisan bodies as the New York Times can be relied upon to tease them out...

...No fancy design: just black lettering on white...

...She's not as, ahem, forceful as Mad Max or Sheila Jackson-Lee, but then she's not a black Democrat so it seems she doesn't enjoy the same license...

...And how about the national party getting behind Mrs...

...Before the primary, Rasmussen (the most reliable state pollsters) were showing Dwyer ahead of Dean, not by much- just a couple of points--but not bad for hippy-dippy Vermont...

...I tried to cheer them up by reminding them of how much carpenters are making these days...

...They voted against gay unions at Town Meeting, and their representatives-Democrat and Republican--ignored them...

...When my wife and I found out we blasted Queen's "We Are the Champions" on the CD player and danced a little jig STEPHEN MOORE i8 president of the Club for Growth...

...But, in the GOP, the "concerns" of what are laughably known as "senior Republicans" have to be expressed more circuitously...

...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...

...We'd arrived at the absolute pinnacle of parenthood...

...In Corinth, after dairy farmer Carol Appleton had her sign stolen, she painted the words in giant letters across the wall of her barn...

...And so civil unions became a final straw for the already brokenbacked Yankee highlander...

...Ruth Dwyer neatly wrapped it up by saying Vermonters "are tired of a state that tells them what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and then takes their money to force things on them that they don't believe in...

...True, the "Take Back Vermonters" might have been better advised to take their stand a few years ago, but the taciturn Yankee is temperamentally disinclined to spend his time arguing with vo]ub]e flatland activists, and so the big-government one-size-fits-all lobby wound up inheriting by default...

...She's the Cyd Charisse of the Connecticut River Valley...

...September 12 was Primary Day in the Green Mountain State...

...The former isn't necessarily entirely responsible for the latter, though you notice, motoring around former Dem strongholds in Franklin County up near the Quebec border, that when someone does put up a Dean sign some dissenter will scrawl "GONE HOMO" under the name...

...He signed the "civil unions" law for gaY couples, and his favorability rating dipped from 6 3 percent to 41 percent...

...I felt like parading Justin around the block with a flashing neon sign reading: GIFTED AND TALENTED KID...

...What goes through the mind of a "senior Republican" when a Times man calls up and says he's working on a story about Republican "nervousness" over the "direction" of the Bush campaign...

...It's not about flatlander sodomy so much as Yankee impotence...