Chet Edwards For Congress

October 17, 2006
John Young: Face fresh from the factory

Waco Tribune Herald
By John Young |Colimnist

I think I’ve talked to enough politicians in my career to have read Van Taylor from three words and three words only: “my first time.”

As in: “This is my first time to ever run as a politician. I’m an
Eagle Scout and Marine. And all I know here is the truth.”

Humble. Truth-seeking. Patriotic. And neatly pressed and delivered to Central Texas voters direct from an expert political machine. Delivered to us with an arsenal of factory-fresh attack ads. Truth? Well, they sort of pass truth in the hall en route to the video room.

In Bush’s Brain, James Moore and Wayne Slater attribute to GOP mastermind Karl Rove this Sun-Tzu strategy: “All we need to do is throw something odd and unaccountable at the enemy.”
Words that sailed a thousand swiftboats.

From the first shotgun blast of Labor Day, Taylor has fired salvos so far afield of the truth that barnyard animals have been running.

The first was part of a bid to brand District 17 Congressman Chet Edwards soft on immigration. Taylor’s ads asserted that Edwards supports pampering illegal aliens with food stamps and Medicaid, and that he opposed deporting illegal aliens charged with crimes.
The votes Taylor cites are the results of “show votes” staged by Republicans in Congress. Proponents know they won’t fly, but they are used to get Democrats on the record in ways the GOP can use on the campaign trail.

The benefits in question aren’t for illegal aliens but for citizens, children born to undocumented individuals here and naturalized by birth. The Supreme Court twice has ruled that key federal benefits can’t be denied them.

The assertion about deporting illegal aliens charged with crimes isn’t over such a vote. It is over a bill Edwards opposed that would have denied several Texas cities homeland security funds because they don’t routinely ascertain citizenship in police stops.

It’s a mighty leap from that proposition to wanting to shelter murderers and rapists.

Yes, it’s hard to follow. Here’s something that isn’t.

A Taylor direct-mail piece accuses Edwards of voting to increase the tax on Social Security benefits by 70 percent. But he didn’t.
Just the opposite. In 1993 President Clinton proposed, and Congress approved, a bill to raise the tax on upper-income Social Security recipients.

Edwards voted against it.

So, to what was Taylor referring? Twice Republicans tried to rescind this tax. Edwards voted “no” because, as he said, “They didn’t have a way to pay for it.”

That’s the same as voting to raise taxes on Social Security recipients? (Remember: We aren’t talking about all of them, just a few.)

“These are semantics,” Taylor told the Trib editorial board. “You can start cutting the words up precisely as to what that means,” said Taylor, but he called his claim “totally, factually correct.” No, it’s not.

The same mailer purports to cite direct Edwards quotes from an AARP publication that he supports “indexing” Social Security benefits (curbing them based on prices rather than wage growth.) Edwards says he made no such statement for AARP. It backs him up.
“The quotations . . . are not in AARP’s 2006 voter guide,” the organization wrote last week to Tina Benkiser, state GOP chairwoman, demanding a retraction. Don’t expect one.

Since, as I deduced, Taylor said it all in three words, “my first time,” it’s fitting for AARP to complain to the state party. This is a machine at work. Taylor is just along for the ride.

The sad thing is that Taylor is pleasant, sharp, a good citizen, maybe a good candidate. He’s also a fabrication. Someone who knows “how campaigns are won” is doing his thinking for him.
Or else Taylor is ruthless, underhanded and downright deceitful.

I don’t want to believe that of an Eagle Scout.