From Steven Greenhut:

After my column Sunday, I heard from the publishers of Red County magazine who nicely complained about my referring to it as a GOP establishment publication. They intend the magazine to be a sort of anti-establishment publication, despite its focus on Republican notables. Fair enough. But Red County owns OCBlog, and under Jubal’s leadership (everyone knows he is political consultant Matt Cunningham), OCBlog is indeed the supreme establishment blog. Here is Jubal defending Scott Baugh and the GOP establishment’s squelching of an anti-Carona measure. And here he is defending political hitman Mike Schroeder against accusations in Red County magazine that he is the “poison” in the Republican party. Here he defends Debbie Carona. And we all know his endless and zealous efforts to defend Msgr. Urell and the local Catholic Diocese. When forced to choose between the victims and the victimizers in the church situation, he sponsored a Web site defending the victimizer. Go figure. In all these cases, he defends the establishment and attacks those who criticize the powers that be. I guess that’s the modern definition of a “conservative.”

But the funniest thing about his attack on my Sunday column is this argument:

“Steve then gives Republicans a good going over with this broad brush in this call-and-response routine with himself:

The GOP is not exactly a bastion of concern for civil liberties. How often do you hear top GOP officials, especially those in law enforcement, express concern about poor folks being railroaded to jail by overzealous D.A.s? Not often, right?

“How often to do hear Steve Greenhut express concern about missile defense? Not often, right?  Steve’s obviously not a bastion of concern for missile defense. How often do you hear Steve Greenhut express concern about single-sex education, classical music, breast cancer or the degeneration of popular media? Not often, right? Steve’s obviously not a bastion of concern for any of those things.”

Actually, it would be perfectly fair to say that I am not a bastion of concern about those issues, just as the Republican Party has shown no concern about prosecutorial abuse except in the cases involving Carona, Baugh and other party leaders. That’s exactly my argument: such issues don’t register to them, unless one of them is a victim. Furthermore, Mike Carona and Tony Rackauckas were adamant that the county doesn’t need civilian oversight of law enforcement and they opposed the overturn of the Copley decision (public records of abusive cops) specifically because they said police and prosecutors can be trusted. They embraced the most pollyanna view of the justice system — until their guy got caught in the snare. That was my point.

By the way, the GOP at the national level, with the PATRIOT Act and so forth, is an ardent enemy of civil liberties. I don’t think I’m out on a limb here.

Now Red County magazine is trying to be outside the Republican establishment (as its publishing of Mark Bucher’s “poison” piece confirms), but Red County’s OCblog seems to have become the mouthpiece for the local establishment. It’s a well-done and popular blog, but it does seem to specialize these days in speaking power to truth.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Carona -- the ethically challenged sheriff, Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.