It’s a perpetual question, in political circles, whether one ignores the doings of the opposition or addresses them. The conundrum is that acknowledging them in their good works and bad brings them more attention for both. Frankly, the calculation usually has more to do with leverage; the side with a bigger audience ignores the side with the smaller one.
Personally, I’ve never been an adherent to that policy. If somebody is doing and saying things worth addressing, then address them. If it’s clearly useless to do so, then don’t.
So, I’m hopeful that former town council member Brian Medeiros’s new CURB-Tiverton blog will cease to be a venue for the vitriolic anti-TCC rhetoric with which it began and become a resource for people who simply disagree with us. Given the sorts of statements being made in comment sections, via email and snailmail, and even from the podiums of town meetings, I fear that meanness is a constituent component of their strategy. Sadly, folks who’ve been involved in politics and governance for a long time seem to adopt an ends-justify-the-means philosophy and see mudslinging as just the way the game is played.
We disagree.
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