( - promoted by William Tucker)
New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O'Brien and state GOP party boss Jack Kimball were both scheduled to speak Saturday at the Treason, er, Nullification event yesterday at SNHU.
But they bailed.
I'm pessimistic that the state political press will report out on this fringe gathering, which is a shame, given how truly dangerous a concept it is to the stability of the United States. I'm even less confident that O'Brien and Kimball's expected presence - and then absence - will get explained satisfactorily.
That said, this is a success story, and each and every one of you who rang the bell loudly on this deserves praise. Your sunlight was the needed disinfectant. Somewhere, Daniel Webster is smiling.
This is yet another chapter in the same lesson we have been learning since January: that Bill O'Brien cannot handle the public scrutiny of his fringe allegiances and radical agenda items, that he is basically a middleman for AFP's and Cornerstone's to-do lists, that it is a mistake to think that by doing policy battle with him you are going up against a coherent set of core principles.
Rather, the daily arrogance displayed by the O'Brien statehouse is a byproduct of its inherent weakness. Those Republicans outside of Representatives Hall who have been around longer in this state and who do not yet have their attention wholly wrapped around the courtly rituals of the First-in-the-Nation primary, I believe, are worried that the Speaker will cost them dearly in 2012.
I'm not sure that the New Hampshire press has noticed yet that the entire grassroots machinery of the left in this state has turned away from federal races, issue activism, the POTUS primary, the upcoming gov race, and focused - like a laser beam - on the frightening raft of legislation coming out of Concord. But there is no doubt in my mind that the House GOP leadership has.
(birched, in lilac for Spring; on Twitter @deanbarker)
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