When Election Advocacy Morphs Into Prevarication

Now that we are in the closing week of the primary campaign for the NC 3rd Congressional District, the pitch of election advocacy is rising, sometimes to the point of prevarication, but quite often to the point of deception.  I therefore wish to clear up some of the more outrageous things being said of Taylor Griffin in his effort to unseat the incumbent, Representative Walter B. Jones.

Amongst our fellow Tea Partiers, the CCTPP is known for the degree of research we put into vetting the candidates that will appear on our local election ballots.  We put a lot of effort into determining which aspirants have the political ideology and policy prescriptions that are most closely aligned with the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots, and with Tea Party organizations nationwide.

Taylor Griffin first appeared before the members of the CCTPP meeting in early October of 2013.  Because several of our officers had other obligations to meet later in the evening, the meeting was very short, only about an hour.  Griffin spoke only briefly to introduce himself, and the meeting was adjourned with little opportunity for Q-and-A.  The general impression was that his conservative views were solid, but that he would need to improve his public speaking skills to make his effort viable.

Since then, Griffin has appeared before our group three more times.  Each time, the interest of our membership in his candidacy grew, and with it the intensity of the scrutiny we applied to his political ideology, to the positions he had publically taken on the issues of the day (mostly via his website), and to his policy prescriptions on issues that we deemed relevant, but that had not garnered much focus in the media.  The Q-and-A of our members was augmented by the research that I, as webmaster for the group, did to undergird the several posts I put up on our website in support of his candidacy.  With the exception of the opposition research professionals hired by the respective campaigns, I doubt that anyone can be more comfortable in their assessment of a candidate than I am about Taylor Griffin.

Now to the various deceptions and prevarications:  MORE …