GREAT BEND, Kan. - For the last week or so, I've felt the momentum in the First District Republican Congressional primary shift toward Senator Jim Barnett. Obviously, so has one of his opponents.
On Saturday Senator Barnett held the grand opening of his Hutchinson campaign headquarters. One of his opponents wanted to ruin his big event in Hutchinson, and sent out an phony e-mail Friday night from "teambarnett2010gmail.com" saying that the grand opening had been canceled "due to flooding at Barnett's Kansas City Area home."
The e-mail instructed Barnett supporters to "Please forward this to as many people as possible so we can get the word out. It will be rescheduled for a later date, most likely next weekend," and was signed "Team Barnett."
Senator Barnett turned the tables on the "dirty trickster" by revealing the e-mail to the Hutchinson News. Today's headline blared: "E-mail is 'dirty trick,' states rep for Barnett." Hutch News reporter Mary Clarkin wrote an excellent article about the incident. In spite of the e-mail, Barnett had a crowd of 50 for his grand opening, and the article in today's Hutchinson News showed him as the victim of a cruel lie.
Dirty tricks are nothing new in politics. But this kind of Nixonian-Donald Segretti "dirty trick" that a rival campaign pulled on Senator Barnett is pretty low. The entire e-mail was a blatant lie, intended only to destroy and damage a good man.
All of the candidates in the Big First Republican primary fall all over themselves to talk about their commitment to Christianity. What could be more unchristian than to make up a complete lie, to try to pass it off as coming from the Barnett campaign, and to try to sabotage his grand opening in Hutchinson? One of the rival campaigns has a Nixonian
win-at-all-costs mentality, and it's sickening. I don't know which campaign it is, but I know this: expect more lies to be directed at the good doctor.
It's bad enough to twist the truth, or tell a half-truth, which is rampant in politics today.
For instance, Dr. Barnett walks on water, and the opponent says: "Dr. Barnett can't swim." Or Dr. Barnett and his family take a vacation to California and get a tour of the
now-closed Alcatraz prison: "Dr. Barnett spent time at Alcatraz." These are far-fetched examples, but they demonstrate how campaigns say something that is "technically true," but creates a totally false impression.
These type of twisted truths or half-truths are vicious enough, and probably just as harmful as something completely cut out of whole cloth, such as the totally false e-mail.
But one of the campaigns in this race has a Machiavellian "ends justifies the means" mentality, and you can expect the Big First Republican race to get ugly --- and sooner rather than later. This race is a four man donnybrook, but all six candidates are a factor.
Dr. Barnett has fabulous TV commercials. He touts his farm background, the fact that he is a physician who listens, and he speaks in a caring, credible voice. And his ads have a clever ending when Dr. Barnett asks the viewer "How about you?" For instance, "I believe it's time for some common sense in Washington. How about you?"
I don't know who came up with this "How about you?" tag at the end of his commercials, but it's incredibly clever, and you actually feel like the good doctor is asking you personally what you think, albeit through a TV screen.
Barnett is plenty conservative, but probably more in the Bob Dole "common sense" conservative vein.
The reason I think Senator Barnett is going to win, and that "dirty tricks" and lies won't stick to him is simple. He's an M.D. in a small town. You would have to grow up in a small town to understand this, but in a small town, the local physician is the most respected person in town, even more so than the clergy. And the Big First is the most rural congressional district in America, loaded with small towns, and they love their physicians.
That's why Dr. Barnett won the 2006 Republican primary to take on incumbent Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Dr. Barnett beat seven opponents, snaring 36.1% of the vote. Sebelius was going to be tough for anyone to beat, but Dr. Barnett tried, and beat all comers in the Republican primary. Although he lost the general election to the popular Sebelius, he showed he's a good soldier for the Republican party and a proven vote-getter.
Doctors are so popular in small towns that their spouses are pretty much invincible at the ballot box as well, as long as they are Republicans. In a small town, the local doctor holds the keys to life and death. Like the "Medicine Man" in Native American lore, the small town doctor is above reproach.
The movie "Field of Dreams" introduces us to the power of a small town physician. In the film, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) and Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) travel to tiny Chisholm, Minnesota in search of a former Major League baseball player, Dr. Archibald "Moonlight' Graham (Burt Lancaster.). Dr. Graham had only played five minutes, half-an-inning in a Major League game. He never got to bat in the Major Leagues. Although Dr. Graham regrets not getting to bat in the major leagues, he tells Kinsella: "If I had only been a doctor for five minutes, now that would have been a tragedy."
Barnett has the "Moonlight Graham" factor going for him. He's teflon. Nobody wants to believe anything bad about a small town doctor, and all the dirty tricks in the world will only help Barnett. It was so obvious. But it didn't hit me until the last few days. He's in the healing profession, taking a huge pay cut to serve in the legislature. And people know it.
In my home county of Barton County, there has never been a single jury verdict against a doctor for malpractice in the history of the County. Of course, doctors make errors, just like baseball players, but many a hotshot Plaintiff's lawyer has left Great Bend empty handed after the jury exonerated the local doctor.
A local old-timer lawyer, who passed away several years ago told me: "Marty, I wouldn't take a medical malpractice case against a doctor in Barton County if the doctor got rip-roaring drunk right before surgery and intentionally severed the patient's spine." Not that a doctor in Great Bend would do something like that, but my lawyer friend was making a point about the status of physicians in small town America.
Senator Barnett is by all accounts a fine Christian man, a fine physician and a good Senator. From now until August 3, he will be subject to withering attacks, and more lies. But I see him emerging as the Republican nominee.
I think he's going to win the primary. How about you?
Marty, well said.
"What could be more unchristian than to make up a complete lie, to try to pass it off as coming from the Barnett campaign, and to try to sabotage his grand opening in Hutchinson?"
What's truly sad about these people is that they make so much noise about being Christian. It reminds me of the businesses that make a point of putting the vesica piscis (the "fish" symbol, although it's another ancient pagan symbol adopted by Christians) on their web site, store window, or delivery van. It always makes me wonder, "What are they really like? If they insist on going out of their way to shout out their religion, what are they not telling me?" What it says to me, unfortunately, is "I'm intolerant, but that's okay. I don't ask questions, and I do what I'm told."
Real Christians see little need to talk about their faith. They let their actions do the talking. For the reactionaries in the Republican primary, their actions speak much more loudly than their words.