Whining About the Boone Election

The nearest thing Watauga has to an official Republican blog lapses into a small tantrum today over ... student voting. They call students "the transient vote."

Talk about loaded language! My dictionary defines the noun transient as "especially, a person staying a single night at a hotel." More recently the word has taken on the color of class distinction: transients these days are often homeless.

Well, okay then.

ASU students, pay attention. The local GOP thinks of you as first-class bums.

This wouldn't be nearly as amusing except that this after-the-fact whining would have been very different if only the Republican side had won in the Boone town elections. Lord knows, they worked the ASU campus as hard as they could to garner votes for Team Templeton. Or rather, they allowed others to work that campus for them, most notably the SGA president and his posse. Mailings, phone calls, matching T-shirts, the glow of smug, clubby togetherness. The only thing they lacked was the allegiance of a student body who after all don't particularly like power politics and egregious manipulation.

The local GOP wouldn't be writing editorials about how unfair it all is ... if only they'd won the student vote. And they're exhibiting exactly the sort of behavior that will keep that vote out of their reach for the foreseeable future.