Courage and Cowardice
OK. Good for DeWine. But here's the thing: He is still endorsing Ramaswamy. A man DeWine himself says has run a lying, vile, smear that attacks a child victim of sexual abuse is just the kind of man DeWine wants to be the next governor of Ohio.
This is going to be quick because I expect that just about anybody reading this will agree with me and preaching to the converted can be annoying. But I am compelled to write a little something about the now-infamous Vivek Ramaswamy ad.
You know the outline. Ramaswamy, now running behind Amy Acton in the race for Ohio governor, financed an ad that dug Amy Acton's mother from under whatever rock she's been living for decades, sat her in front of a camera, and prompted her to call her daughter a liar. Amy Acton was sexually abused for years by her stepfather, married to Acton's mother. Acton's mother says that never happened.
But Ohio authorities arrested the stepfather, charged him with child rape, and removed Amy and her brother from the home. Amy's brother backs up her story. And judges who deal with this sort of awfulness are reluctant to snatch kids from homes unless there is compelling evidence the accusations are true.
Sure enough, when the bastard made bail, he and Amy's mother skipped out on the bail, left the state, and lived as fugitives. Amy Acton's story is real and honest, and awful, but she owns it. It's part of who she is. It's partly why she has the kind of compassion she does.
Contrast this with Ramaswamy, the Special Boy, who has spent his adult life engineering money, and JD Vance, who has defended Ramaswamy, and who's only real accomplishment in life is writing a book that made the intelligenstia feel better about itself for having some sympathy for the working class. The fact that Vance threw a whole region, and its people, under a bus in order to sell books is no longer a surprise given his track record since.
But I'd like to focus instead on so-called "mainstream" Republicans. Some did indeed condemn Ramaswamy's vile ad.
“It’s deeply, deeply, deeply troubling,” Ohio governor Mike DeWine said. “It needs to come down; it’s just wrong to continue to run it.”
OK. Good for DeWine. But here's the thing: He is still endorsing Ramaswamy. A man DeWine himself says has run a lying, vile, smear that attacks a child victim of sexual abuse is just the kind of man DeWine wants to be the next governor of Ohio.
Why? a reporter asked him.
“How do you reckon with yourself still endorsing a candidate that would put out this ad knowing the full context of what happened to Dr. Amy Acton?”
“Look," DeWine answered, "Look, I’m a Republican, and so I did my endorsement a few months ago."
Good God. This is how we got a convicted felon, sexual abuser and sociopathic lying narcissist as President of the United States, with predictable results.
I once called Mike DeWine a spineless jellyfish of a man while giving a speech under the dome of the Ohio capital building. He's lived up to that. And he doesn't even have anything to lose. His term ends in January. He's not running for anything else. He's done in politics. And yet he still cannot stand up for a woman who used to work for him. He picked his side, and it's the side of a scummy con man.
These are the people I have such contempt for, even more than Trump himself, who's a lunatic. The enablers, the careerists, the people who know better, but refuse to stand up for what's right are the real dangers to our country. They need to be swept away, and the sooner the better.
On to more pleasant things: a few good local stories.
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