Steven JP Dionne: Appealing to the party line doesn't make officials saviors

To The Daily Sun,

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." — Mark Twain

Not duped for a second, reading Citizens for Belknap signs. You see, the printer believes there's some distinction between Free Staters, Libertarians and Trumpsonian (MAGA) Republicans. Political naivete at best, dysfunctional rational at worst.

The latest sale of a "cheap suit," C4B’s recommended primary support of Reps. Harry Bean, Juliet Harvey-Bolia and Richard Littlefield.

The chosen voted Reps. Norm Silber, Mike Sylvia and Raymond Howard to control positions within Belknap County Delegation.

In January, Bean, Harvey-Bolia and Littlefield voted to postpone a Gunstock Area Commission appointment. The "control group" knew they lacked votes for David Strang. Subsequently, Bean, Harvey-Bolia, and Littlefield voted Strang in. In the face of the disaster created by Commissioners Peter Ness and Strang, Littlefield said, "Strang's resignation created a hardship for me, Strang is a personal mentor." The same political mechanics that placed Ness, Jade Wood and Doug Lambert on the GAC, not based on qualifications, but political affiliation.

Bean and Harvey-Bolia voted against a motion to remove Sylvia and Silber from chair positions due to their use of unappropriated expenditures of fees supporting continued attempts to remove GAC members. Littlefield voted to pay the $30,000 cost overrun. He later wrote, "It would be a waste of my time to investigate the matter of these costs."

Mind-numbing, a banner presenting certain delegates as saviors of Gunstock. They saved nothing. Rather, through their delusional ineptness, their "party above all else" rhetoric facilitated the mess.

The final act of this tragicomedy: the saviors' disavowment of their locked allegiance with the extremists within their party, days before the primaries, attempting to save their political derrieres.

Denial of crime after the fact makes one no less culpable; supporting the guilty makes one even more responsible.

Steven JP Dionne

Laconia