A Bitter Republican Victor:

Representative Justin Amash embarrassed himself following his victory in the primary on August 5. The sad thing to me is that I don’t think he even realizes it. The challenger in the primary was Brian Ellis, a west Michigan businessman.

Brian Ellis seemed to back the Core Curriculum for schools, and had some other ideas that caused question into whether he’s conservative, moderate or even a liberal Republican.

Amash has been supported by the Tea Party and has bucked even the establishment Republicans. He apparently leans more to the Libertarian view than Republican and certainly not Democrat.

The campaign was very contentious. It was a classic example of what’s wrong with politics in this country. Ads were run by each campaign but not one was heard where the candidate advocated for his own position and what he would do for his district. They were all about the evils of the other guy. There was nothing positive about themselves only negatives about the other guy.

When you’d hear an ad if you heard the candidates voice, the opponents name was mentioned. You usually didn’t hear the candidates name in their own ad until the end when they approved their message.

Amash refused to debate Ellis saying his campaign was not a serious campaign. The guess is that Amash is afraid to debate his opponents so he implies that the other candidate is not worthy of his time although he had no problem paying for advertising telling everyone the ills of Ellis. Ellis ended up with 43% of the vote. That sounds like a serious campaign to me. 43% of the voters in Amash’s district considered Ellis serious enough to vote for him.

Don’t make the mistake that I was in favor of Ellis over Amash because you would be wrong, but in the interest of full disclosure, I have no stake in race other than that of all Americans because while these candidates represent their districts and only answer to them, all Americans are affected by these candidates. I am not in Amash’s district. I had decided a week ago that Amash is who I’d have voted for if I were in his district.

Amash put his arrogance and ungraciousness on full display on election night. Brian Ellis called Justin Amash to concede the election to him and wish him well. Amash refused to take his call, instead choosing to let it go to his voicemail.

Then in his victory speech he was not humbled by his victory to represent Americans in the people’s Congress. He chose instead to take the low road by saying the following:

“To Brian Ellis, you owe my family and this community an apology… for your disgusting, despicable, smear campaign,” Amash said toward the end of his victory speech. “You had the audacity to try to call me today after running a campaign that was called the nastiest in the country. I ran for office to stop people like you — to stop people who were more interested in themselves than in doing what’s best for their district.”

The only place that I’ve been able to find that said that Brian Ellis’ campaign ran the “nastiest in the country” is from Amash himself. I have yet to find anyone else say it. But Amash wasn’t done with just Ellis. He also had some unkind words for former Representative Pete Hoekstra. Hoekstra had been a Representative for 18 years and then ran for Governor of Michigan and for the United States Senate, losing the first to current Governor Rick Snyder and the latter to Debbie Stabenow.

 “I want to say to lobbyist Pete Hoekstra, you’re a disgrace,” he said. “I’m glad we could hand you one more loss before you fade into total obscurity and irrelevance.”

Hoekstra’s crime? He endorsed the man that Amash considered not a serious candidate.

Representative Justin Amash should have been happy he won his election and shown some class and a little humility in victory. Imagine what he’d have said had he lost this election. When Amash was first elected there were positive hopes and he was a man to keep your eye on. Now, he appears to be someone you don’t want to let out of your sight.

You’re welcome to comment.

Brett