Sam Carpenter: By Any Means Necessary

Recently a photo was circulated by the campaign manager for Sam Carpenter. This photo showed respected Republican and Communications Director for the Wooldridge campaign, Jonathan Lockwood at a fundraiser for Maria Garcia.

Maria Garcia is running for Multnomah County Commissioner and is a moderate Democrat, who has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

Since then I have been watching the activity of the Carpenter Campaign, especially the activities of his campaign manager David Bacon Gulliver and the hyper active brigade of supporters that surround him.

First let’s look at the events of a few weeks ago.

The Lockwood Affair

It did not take long for David Bacon Gulliver, Sam Carpenters campaign manager, to start casting aspersions on Lockwood, calling him an “LGBTQ activist bomb-thrower” and labeling Garcia as a “radical socialist.”

Make Oregon Great Again, who is strongly tied to the Carpenter campaign, echoed this sentiment and was followed by Carpenter loyalists online.

The problem is they missed a few things in their rush to judgement. One Lockwood is an independent contractor working on the Wooldridge campaign not a direct staffer.

Two he did not directly raise funds for Garcia, simply attended a fundraiser for her as a local business owner interested in local politics.

Third he was allegedly fired from the moderate Knute Buhler campaign for being too Republican.

Also Garcia is a staunch anti public employee-labor union advocate. While she was endorsed by Sanders and does support sanctuary status at least she has some common ground with a few Republicans.

Doubling Down

Instead of recognizing that they are creating fractures within the Republican Party Carpenter and his loyalist supporters doubled down and deflected.

They tried to say they were just questioning what Lockwood was doing and that they are standing up for true Republican values. You know the same excuse your nephews give you when you catch them with their hand in the cookie jar and they say they just wanted to make sure the cookies were still there for later.

It did not work when you were kids so what makes you think it would be any different now that you are adults? Also if you had a backbone you would have taken it up personally with Lockwood first.

Instead you were more interested in the public attention you would get for virtue signaling as opposed to doing the real work and sacrifice that it actually takes to have real virtue.

Same Team?

The Oregon Tea Party has released communications from Sam Carpenter’s Campaign manager, David Gulliver, showing him directing Carpenter supporters to paint other conservatives as racists and bigots.

This is to be done to “make Greg [Wooldridge]…ashamed to have them.” This tactic might be effective online and provide short term gain, it does damage in the long run when you have Republicans calling each other racists. It just adds credibility, or at least the appearance of credibility, to the Progressive’s baseless accusations that the Republican Party is the party of racism.

This is the same sort of tactics used by the mainstream media against President Trump. They would say his supports are bigots, racists and violent and when protesters would attack Trump supporters they would say ‘violence erupts at Trump rally’ implying that those who are violent are the Trump supporters. Inferring that Trump is to blame for the violence done by Progressive protesters.

David and his comrades also engage in an online tactic known as brigading. Brigading is a concentrated effort by one online group to manipulate another, usually through mass commenting and down voting. Generally speaking this is an acceptable form of discourse online as it does not seek to silence anyone but rather promotes a differing opinion. Of course it is the internet so expect a few trolls to pop up now and again.

The point of this tactic is to make it appear that there is overwhelming support for one topic, issue or person and drowns out the voices of those who disagree or dissent. If you pay attention you will often see the same small group of people commenting and liking pro-Carpenter propaganda. It also gives the false impression of overwhelming success, which will draw people in who think that he has massive support, when in reality his support base is a minority of people cycling through.

Here are what I believe to be a few members of the brigade: Lori Tiger Davis, David Bacon Gulliver, Carol Leek, Helen Church, and Mary Wellman. Of course you will find a few others who comment and post but they have been taken in by this group think mentality more suited for Social Justice Warriors than free thinking liberty loving individuals.

They even deny reality when confronted with the evidence. Even when provided with screen shots they still deny the truth. The same way the Progressive’s deny biology when it suits them. In this conversation they cannot refute the evidence, so they fall back on personal attack. They call the person dissenting a liar and claim he is engaging in a smear campaign while doing they engage in the same.

My Opinion

These are just a few examples of this sort of behavior.

These sort of tactics accomplish a few different things. One they make people feel like Carpenter is ready and willing to fight it out. It would seem that he is so eager to fight that he is attacking his own party. People want a Republican who is not so soft and who is willing to say I stand for Republican values and I am not ashamed to actively promote and defend them.

Using this on your own party, while it might benefit in the short term, only creates problems in the long term. It gives the Democrats ammunition for the general election and causes sore relationships among party members.

Sam Carpenter, I doubt you are ignorant of the things going on in your own campaign. Meaning that you are not only allowing this sort of behavior to happen, but are fostering and promoting it.

Of course the comments to this blog will be much of the same. You will get people posting things like ‘MOGA’ and ‘Carpenter for Governor’, and ‘I am with Sam.’ You will also get people saying this is nothing but a smear job or a hit piece and they will call me a liar. They will seek to attack me and ruin any credibility I may have while putting me on trial in the court of public opinion.

That is the essence of social justice and we have seen it throughout the history of the world when people try to speak the truth. From Galileo, to Jesus, to Socrates. I am not saying I am anywhere near comparison to these great people, but that we need to learn from their example that the loudest and angriest voices are often not the correct ones.