It's good to see the usually-invisible Pat Tiberi getting some attention this week in the local media. Since 2001, this 12th District Republican congressman has stayed in office by being the stealth candidate as far as the general public is concerned, attending efficiently to individual constituent requests while building up his re-election war chest by voting consistently to please his party bosses and campaign contributors.
With the media (and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) focused on Tiberi's more newsworthy congressional neighbors -- Democrats Mary Jo Kilroy in the 15th and Zack Space in the 18th -- this hide-and-seek tactic has worked like a charm. All Congressman Pat has had to do every two years to punch his ticket back to Washington is lay down a few thousand yard signs and take advantage of the Democrats habit of putting forth a weak and even more obscure opponent.
But the 2010 election may be different.
Tiberi is now opposed by Democrat Paula Brooks, a popular Franklin County commissioner, and the 12th district race is now attracting more out-of-town attention.
The Dispatch today informs that MoveOn.org has targeted Tiberi this week with one of its "caught red-handed" commercials, linking the congressman's opposition to Democrat-sponsored health care reform bills to his record of hefty contributions from the health care and insurance industries.
"The 30-second spots began airing in the Columbus area last night (Thursday) and will continue for 10 days, said Alex Howe, a spokesman for Moveon.org," said the newspaper.
Moveon.org has posted the ad at: http://pol.moveon.org/redhanded_ads.html
Included is this documentation:
"Congressman Patrick Tiberi has received $682,394 throughout his career from health and insurance interests, including:
Insurance
$601,594
HMOs
$80,800
TOTAL
$682,394
And Wednesday, in the Newark Advocate, Tiberi in a guest editorial repeated his claim that he's all for health care reform - but just doesn't like any of the ideas brought forth by President Obama or majority congressional Democrats.
Tiberi casts himself in the column once again as a hopeful but all-too-often disappointed warrior for reform, a politician who wonders why we all can't just get along. Consider this whopper:
"I had high hopes when President Barack Obama was sworn in," he writes. "We had just completed one of the most partisan periods I'd seen in Washington. Obama talked about common ground, working together regardless of party and finding good solutions for all Americans....then came the stimulus package."
Now while it's true that Tiberi didn't start complaining about Obama in public until March, a month after Obama took office, it's hard to envision this loyal Republican harboring "high hopes" for the new Democratic President last February
Tiberi, it should be noted, was one of ten legislators who signed on during the 110th Congress to one of the most simplistic rants against the Democratic Party ever published by the GOP.
In a 6-page broadside entitled, The Architects of Chaos, Decline and Defeat vs. The Champions of American Freedom produced by the Republican House Policy Committee, the group said the goal of Democrats was "to reduce sovereign Americans from the masters of their destiny into the serfs of governmental dependency."
It then went on to describe the party of FDR and Truman and Kennedy as "the architects of chaos, decline and defeat."
And yet, in February 2009, after supporting this vile slander, Tiberi claims he looked forward to Obama's presidency with "high hopes." This, after a campaign during which his party's leadership had castigating Obama for being the most liberal Democrat in the Senate.
Right.
In fact, in supporting such a document, Tiberi proved himself a partisan "tea-bagger" long before the movement erupted on the Republican Right. Remember this every time the congressman now wrings his hands over the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Washington.
And which party today would you describe as "the architects of chaos, decline and defeat.?"
-- David Lore
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