Gilchrest is the man

Bravo to Representative Gilchrest!

Gilchrest unloads on know-nothings

As a rule, the Wolfs (it is not proper to pluralize the surname Wolf as Wolves, I point out in passing) have not cleaved to any particular political affiliation. That is why I have counseled others to be aware of the weights that they bring to their assessment of issues, and to make measured responses. Having a political affiliation that forces and contorts one's own ability to consider issues on facts and merit is a very considerable weight. It is like those creationist-minded individuals who must be so affiliated to their religious ideal of piety that they disbelieve the evidence of their eyes and think the Grand Canyon could form in years, not millennia; or those climate change skeptically-minded who don't understand the lessons of paleohistory that atmospheric carbon dioxide has been the major thermostatic determinant of Earth's climate state.

From what I read of Representative Gilchrest, he has been a public servant, and his weight (shall I offer "burden"?) has been to be part of a Republican party that seems to add on more and more weights of policy positions, until like a prize racehorse the races can no longer be won or run. So a positional mouthpiece such as his primary opponent takes out someone who has measured, not reactive, responses. It would serve the Republican rightists right if their chosen spokesperson loses the strongly Republican district that Gilchrest represented so ably (in the Democratically gerrymandered map of Maryland -- a device that I detest when either side employs it) -- his district was unusual in that it favored a Republican, and so losing it would serve the hardlinists right.

Gilchrest was a warrior for the estuarine needs of the ailing Chesapeake Bay. One would hope that perhaps there would be a place in an Obama administration for a man who knows how to serve the people and not service a political philosophy that does not recognize the value of reconsideration, reevaluation, and refinement.