With the utter domination of Lacey Lafferty by Colin Bonini, and now that Charlie Copeland has kicked the Party’s downstate garbage unceremoniously to he curb with his claims that the DEGOP is no longer in the business of shitting on gay people, it is worth asking, what’s next?
That question can be answered, to some extent by looking at the three millennials the DEGOP has recruited to get their feet wet this year by running for the state senate; Meredith Chapman, Anthony Delcollo, and James Spadola.
Of the three Delcollo, is the nut. He was the attorney representing Lafferty in her dust up with Frank Knotts. Sure he is young, but he has the heart (and web site) of a crusty old codger. His campaign bristles with the barely constrained nuttiness one finds among Fox News addicts. We can leave him out of this.
That leaves Spadola and Chapman. Spadola has been discussed here, to so I’ll take a look at Chapman and see what the future DEGOP looking through her as the lens.
First of all, when you visit her website, it isn’t what you see, but what you don’t see. No abortion talk, no 2nd Amendment calls to arms, no screaming war eagles or red white and blue bunting, or even overheated claims that the government is “too big.” In short, her site is a clean break with what had been DEGOP orthodoxy. On a color palette of soothing greens and blues, Chapman’s web site adopts the look and feel of a Green Party candidate. And the written copy under the issues tab does little to dispel that first impression.
Finance
With the State consistently relying on volatile and unreliable revenue sources, the ability to develop a balanced budget each year becomes more challenging. Delaware is essentially living paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s time to develop new funding mechanisms for the First State and make the tough decisions necessary to focus funding where it’s needed most.
Pretty generic. Where is the typical GOP line that poor people are crushing the budget under their unreasonable demands for public transportation, and schools?
Innovation
In the new economy, it’s not enough to create jobs. We must develop a foundation for long-term, economic viability that encourages new ideas and invites entrepreneurs and businesses focused on innovative ideas to build or grow their business in the First State.
Again, it is tough to argue with that because there isn’t much there it argue with.
The one policy area that Ms Chapman does elaborate on a little bit is education and while trying to keep it generic, she goes off the rails a little bit:
Charter Schools have had a positive impact for so many families in Delaware, but more choices don’t mean better choices. And that’s clear particularly here in District 8. There are 22 charter schools in New Castle County – in addition to the option of school choice, yet so many families opt to move across the border to Pennsylvania, where the schools are ranked higher. They maintain their Delaware jobs because the commute doesn’t change drastically, but we lose their taxes, their community engagement and their talented children. We need to incentivize families to want to go to public school – to build communities within our public school system.
Is it true that “so many families opt to move across the border to Pennsylvania” to get in their great, well-funded public schools? I’m seriously asking, because it strikes me as one of those truthy items that GOPers pick up along the way and never substantiate, or even really think critically about.
Someone help me out. Am I missing something? If Chapman is the new GOP, then there isn’t a lot of “there” in there. Of course, over the course of her career, she’ll have the distinct advantage of running against Democrats. And as we all know, when is comes to vacuousness, Democrats take a back seat to nobody.