The Second Leg of the Vermont Secessionists 2012 Election Cycle's Two Legged Stool

In early July of this year the seceshers began their second attempt at a takeover of the Vermont Senate with the announcement on perennial electoral loser and the self-described "Very Foreign Minister" of the Second Vermont Republic's Denny Morriseau's, and up and coming loser Robert Wagner's, various websites, called grandiosely, The Vermont 30: The Unleashing, here and here.

After their less than successful independent entries for various state offices, where their electoral percentage showing was never greater than a low single digit or, as in the case of their gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, barely more than three quarters on one percent, you'd think they'd want to find a way to suppress somewhat the nearly universal perception here in Vermont that these guys represent the extreme, delusion, irrelevant political fringe.

But that not being the case, the Wagner/Morrisseau tag team followed up a week later with a blistering attack on the Vermont legislature that calls all of its members thieves and corrupt here and here:

"Here’s a quick education on how the corrupt politicians sitting in the Vermont Legislature are stealing from us."

What followed was a long attack on their Vermont neighbors, many of whom, unlike Wagner or Morrisseau, have contributed untold hours, days, weeks, months and years of selfless service to their community rather than spending virtually all of their time condemning the many contributions of their neighbors. (And no, Denny, offering to pay for one way tickets to rid Burlington of its homeless population doesn't strike most as public service, any more than your plan to cap assets, income and population for Vermont)

In his post, Wagner describes a "letter" he received from Matt Hawes in Virginia:

"Here’s a letter that I received from Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, illustrating how Montpelier’s brand of sleazy politics has been adapted to Texas…"

The misleading use of word "letter," as well as a loosely correlated assessment of the similarities of the Texas and Vermont legislatures (not even remotely the same), for what was a blast email from an operative of a Tea Party group for whom Hawes serves as Vice President and Executive Director, Ron Paul's Tea Party organization, Campaign for Liberty, reveals Wagner's craving for importance and relevance. In truth, thousands of teabaggers like Wagner received this Tea Party spam.

Wagner's is a head shakingly sad attempt to fool Vermonters and inflate his importance to the national teabagger movement by saying he had received a letter email from the organization of a "flagrant racist," Ron Paul, the so-called "Godfather" of the Tea Party. If Wagner had spent just a few minutes looking into the Virginia teabaggers associated with Hawes' group, as I did, he'd have learned that they'd been involved in multiple acts of political intimidation and, some say, terrorism, when a VA blogger and Tea Party county capo doubled down on an incident tied to his release (mistakenly) of a Democratic party congressman's relative's address in March 0f 2010 by less than two months later calling the congressman "a target." Or maybe Wagner did check and found such rhetoric so compelling that it inspired his own inflammatory, broadsided attack on every legislator in Vermont.

It seems that the Wagner/Morrisseau campaigns are off to the start of another campaign that may prove to be just as disastrous as their last, where their underlying strategy seemed to be to insult and malign virtually every office holder in Vermont. Kinda like when Wagner went to an opening ceremony for the new bridge in Middlebury to piss all over a local, community effort that built a new, needed bridge and which created local jobs - not exactly a savvy, classy or particularly smart, vote getting move.

In closing, I was stunned yesterday to a see a huge, garish campaign sign for Wagner's 2012 campaign on a trailer parked in the state right-of-way in front of The Gathering Inn Hostel on Rte. 100 in the tiny hamlet of Hancock, VT, with the sign nearly protruding into the roadway. Readers of this blog will recall Wagner's announcement of his creation of a "provisional capital" for a secesher Vermont last fall. The innkeeper at The Gathering Inn, Kathleen Byrne, was reported by Wagner to have conducted a ribbon cutting of some sort for the "provisional capital" and/or "Center" or whatever last December here.

A huge campaign sign on a road traveled mostly by people who can't vote for Wagner certainly isn't the smartest campaign strategy but to do it more than 15 months before the election... Really???

Hopefully, despite it being one of the rules of "the Empire" that Wagner so despises, it is a campaign law none the less that he can abide by for the safety of all Vermonters and, so, "respect the rule of law" as he demands of our legislators as a part of our "government" that he so despises. (The Guide to Placement of Political Campaign Signs for Candidates is available for public viewing at the Vermont Secretary of State's website here.)

Oh, and no sign of the seceshers registering their legislature PAC yet.

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