A Response by Leonard Clark to Criticism of the Effort to Recall Governor Brewer

By Tom, on Behalf of Leonard Clark of RecallBrewer.com

A Response to Bob Lord's post "Anatomy of a Doomed to Fail Recall — Blind Passion, or Blind Egotism?"

In the interests of full disclosure, I am proud to call myself one of Leonard Clark's recall volunteers and his friend as well. I wanted to reply sooner, but we have been busy with the petitions and events, as the interest is incredible. Regardless, please allow me to respond now.

As is evident above, Leonard is an active, determined and politically passionate individual. While we would all prefer to avoid personal attacks between our colleagues, I never fail to be amazed at how quickly we Dems eat our own when someone decides to just go out and "do it". Too often in this Party the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Instead of finding the good in a proposal or looking for some way it COULD work or how we COULD help, we instead find the flaws and pick it apart because it's 'not invented here' or "wasn't planned well".

Planning? cough, cough, Planning? In The Democratic Party? The brilliant strategic "planning" of the leadership of our Party can be seen most clearly in one stellar hometown example: The selection of, acceptance by, and departure of, our former Governor Janet Napolitano from Arizona to head The Department of Homeland Security. REALLY? Was no one else in the 50 States qualified?

This one act turned the entire State of Arizona over to Republican Control, brought us a new "Scorpion Queen" heroine for the excitable masses, ushered in the era of SB1070, and beget some of the most regressive anti-family, anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-education legislation seen in this country in the last fifty years.

Lest anyone think this is 20/20 Hindsight, I, along the aforementioned Mr. Clark and several other liberals and progressives called KPHX and other radio and online shows while the offer and acceptance “dance” was occurring between the Governor and President. Many of us were questioning the move and predicting a coming catastrophe for our State. I am saddened to say we were right.Yet, some folks tell us we rank and file jest ain't as smart as our leaders and their "strategery".

So please don't preach about 'laying the groundwork', lining up the ducks, etc. The Democratic Party (which I would love to love) is chock full of ready-shoot-aim moments like the Napolitano Departure. These failures to gauge voter sentiments and exercise common sense create workloads for us running on for days, weeks and even years spent extracting ourselves from all-too-preventable mistakes.

The downside of a "reckless" recall effort at this time is extremely small in comparison:

The results of doing nothing? Further attacks on the families and workers of Arizona.

The results of success? An admirable milestone in Arizona history.

The results of failure? A little embarrassment that does not rule out any later effort.

Those are decent odds. In point of fact, considering all the regressive legislation coming our way, this Heinous Governor should be facing recall every minute she is 'serving' the business interests and donors that elected her.

Even the commentary pointed out "we’ve reached a point where disruptive politics are valuable for the disruption alone". Point taken.

[Editor – Please click through for the entire post…]

As for Mr. Clark himself, some of our finest politicians and campaigns have subsequently succeeded after prior fits and starts and outright failures. Leonard is an accomplished veteran and he has never let any prior knock-downs keep him out of a fight that he knows is right. He merely gets up again dusts himself off and tries another approach. I thought tenacity was a trait our society valued. Perhaps my country and/or my party has changed.

For those that think that the current Recall Brewer effort will draw resources away from other campaigns or initiatives…I ask again, really? Politics is not a zero sum game. There are plenty of people that do not become involved because it appears as though the candidates are lackluster, the proposals are mediocre or it's the same old business as usual. If you doubt it, just look at the passion, action and involvement of the formerly uninvolved in the original Obama Campaign, Occupy Wall Street and The Walker Recall and some of the other recent events Mr. Clark quoted. There are plenty of otherwise uninvolved people waiting for the right issue to come along and ring true with them.

Imagine what success this filing might have with the support of BLOGFORARIZONA and other respected Democratic Resources. With more passion and a little less structure we might once again be the Party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and even Clinton. While all had their flaws, we sure have fallen from those reasonable records of success to the foul stink of stalemate with the Republicans.

I'll vote for passion vs. tentativeness any day (it sure worked for Wisconsin where the volunteers stretched for miles – circulators? who needs paid circulators?). Under Arizona Law you only need to be ELIGIBLE to vote to circulate petitions, not registered. Perhaps, even at it's worst, this effort will at least increase the voters that participate.

Last count there were around 6.6 Million Residents of this State suffering under this administration (whether they all realize the pot is slowly boiling yet or not). About 1/3 of them can and do vote and Brewer won this last election by 205,000 votes through a well-funded campaign of misinformation and bait and switch advertising. That's not that large a number of people. In fact, even of the people I know that voted for her are having buyer's remorse.

So, do we really want to wait for the rest of the damage to occur before her final departure in 2015 (or worse, allow her to viciously twist the law and stay?)

I've said my piece, I'll throw in the thoughts of 3 others I respect:

Lao tzu – A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Patton – A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

Goethe – Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

So now that Leonard has filed and already has several thousand signatures with just a handful of hopeful volunteers, the clock is ticking. Is it time to help or is it time to critique from the sidelines?

WWW.RECALLBREWER.COM - See you on the streets.