TNR Online | Swimming with Sharks:
Everyone who watched this summer’s race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent’s “homosexuality” rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don’t; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.
The letter arrived via fax to the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, on the eve of the crnc convention in June. The three-day convention is attended by student delegates from across the country who, after enduring a four-month campaign filled with importuning, backstabbing, and horsetrading, vote for a chair. Most campaigns culminate with the handpicked establishment candidate inheriting the two-year, $75,000-a-year position without much of a fight. But, this year, the establishment candidate, Paul Gourley–the handpicked successor of the last chairman, who was the handpicked successor of the chairman before him–faced a vigorous challenge from an insurgent, Michael Davidson, a smooth-talking 25-year-old Berkeley grad.
Since the fax appeared unexpectedly in the final days of the race, it created an unmitigated frenzy among the conventioneers. The letter announced that the chairman of the Missouri delegation had completely replaced his state’s official slate of delegates (who all happened to support Davidson).
This is how the other side learns how to win: they cheat, they lie, they are willing to stab their fellow-party members in the back to win — whatever.
It’s interesting to me how, well, Darwinian, this all seems, with “survival of the most ruthless” as the guiding principle. Maybe I am thinking of Lord of the Flies.
This is the party that claims to be moral, to be forthright and honest, to have an ethical compass that never wavers.