- Scot Lehigh’s take is, well, strange. He seems really mad at Cahill for … something. I’m not sure what. My guess: I think he really wants to see a Patrick/Baker race, and he’s annoyed that Loscocco-gate is oddly helping Cahill and is thereby keeping charter schools, public employee unions, and other Lehigh favorites off the front page. I mean, this is just silly:
it was Cahill who hired this team, just as it was Cahill who picked Paul Loscocco to run with him. Given that, he sounds like a man who took up with a crew of pickpockets and is now complaining that his wallet is missing.
Uh, what? These were nationally-known consultants, not “pickpockets,” and they had a signed contract with the Cahill campaign. One does not expect people with national reputations (by the way, what’s left of that, exactly?) to allegedly flout their contractual obligations in quite such a grotesque way, nor does one expect a running mate whose name is on the ballot to defect at the last second. So, sure, Cahill got screwed by these guys. That’s why he’s suing. But it seems unreasonable to blame the victim here.
And this just reflects ignorance of how legal documents are routinely drafted:
Beyond that, you have to shake your head at a lawsuit that asks the court to “order such other relief as is fair and just.”
Oh come on. That’s a standard catch-all that is included in just about every complaint, right after the more specific laundry list of requested relief. You have to shake your head at a pundit who wouldn’t know that, or wouldn’t bother to ask a lawyer before making a comment like that one.
- The Globe editorial today is, as Mark Bail has pointed out, quite funny. The call for a “high-minded campaign,” from the very newspaper that breathlessly reports every detail of campaign-related “skulduggery” (to use the editorial’s word) is precious irony at best. Furthermore, if the Baker campaign is indeed involved in the “skulduggery” surrounding Loscocco’s defection, that justly reflects on Baker at least as a manager – and managing is a large part of being Governor. (Has anyone failed to notice the gaping holes in the carefully-worded statement from the Baker campaign that they didn’t receive any “written internal information” about the Cahill campaign?)
- Herald reporters Dave Wedge and Hillary Chabot, not folks one would normally peg as Deval boosters, kick off their story this way:
The nasty political throwdown between Tim Cahill and Charlie Baker exploded into a full-blown mud fight yesterday, as intensifying charges of “sleazy” backroom deals leaves Gov. Deval Patrick looking squeaky-clean and primed for re-election.
“It doesn’t help Baker. It gets him off message, and this is not the time to be off message,” said Bridgewater State University politics professor Dr. George Serra. “What it does is, it keeps the governor out of this and allows him to stay on message.”
- In addition to Deval Patrick, there are other winners in this brouhaha, as David Bernstein noted on Twitter:
Dear John Tierney: Sorry, due to Cahill lawsuit I have no time to figure out what I think about your scandal. And S. Bump, forget about it.
(For the record, the Boston tax assessor’s office has concluded that Bump is not entitled to claim her Boston condo as her principal residence, and has therefore revoked the tax break and accepted the payment that she made the other day.)
What did I miss? What do you think?
Los Loco is now alleging Patrick’s team was working with Cahill’s people. Los Loco can only serve Baker at this point by dragging Patrick into this dispute so that’s what he’s doing. Why doesn’t the media report that ‘news’ with the qualification such as, “Cahill’s disgraced and former running mate, and now partisan hack lobbed a quickly discredited charge.” Not only should they question the source and the motive behind this latest salvo, but where’s the evidence???
The Tea Bagging trolls on the Adrian Walker piece think Cahill being in the race to begin with is just some big, vast conspiracy to get Deval elected is just wicked funny. Clearly these people never paid any attention to Cahill and Patrick over the past few years — Cahill and Patrick were almost always at odds (largely because Cahill always seemed to be posturing for a run for gov, the only surprise being that it was as an un-enrolled).
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p>Let’s hope the Baker camp keeps it up. The more they continue to focus on this story, the more likely it is Patrick wins this thing. They seem so obsessed at getting this story ‘right,’ given the extent to which they’ve fudged it so far, that I’m pretty sure they forgot there’s an actual election, with legitimate issues that are important to people, going on.
Lostcauso was never a State Senator—somewhat of a State Rep but never a State Senator.
He got everything else right.
If you run a company and hire an embezzler, it’s your own fault that you’ve been robbed. If your daughter breaks up with a guy who turns out to be a stalker, it’s her fault. If I keep parsing Lehigh’s logic, I could show you how he would blame date rape victims, but enough said.
I know conservatives tend to tout personal responsibility, but when the pickpockets are working for Lehigh’s candidate, he’s forgotten how personal responsibility applies to what he writes.