Ugly Reflection

In the comments to the previous Ashley Todd post, a Reverend T. stops by to vouch for Dan Garcia:

I know Dan Garcia.  I first heard this story from him. 
I don’t generally agree with his politics, but he’s a stand up guy.  He told me Friday morning that he starting to smell a rat with this girl, and when it turned out that he was right, he was deeply hurt that he’d been used by her. Believe me if there was some sort of conspiracy afoot, they would have done it much better then this.

That Garcia was deeply hurt by the girl is believable, and that had there been a conspiracy, they would have done it better, is plausible. Even when it comes to the notion that Dan Garcia is “a standup guy,” there’s a temptation to believe it.

It seems that a couple of years ago down in Brazos County, Texas, the apparently naive Garcia got himself into a little pickle. As an organizer for the Brazos County Young Republicans, he’d invited a fringe element called the Texas Minutemen to attend one of their meetings. The plan quickly went awry:

When the Minutemen’s quirky leader started rambling about a secret plan to “merge Canada and Mexico with the United States,” the good Republicans in the home of the George Bush Presidential Library started squirming in their chairs behind half-eaten barbecue plates.

When a Minutewoman from Dallas started complaining that ranchers can shoot diseased cattle at the border but not humans, and blamed permissive immigration on the “greedy business people” of America, their Republican host finally had enough and stood to cut off questions.

“Thank you,” said Dan Garcia, 29, an Iraq war veteran and now a Texas A&M University student. Almost apologetically, he told the Brazos County Young Republicans, “Our goal was just to set up a forum where we could hear different opinions.”

Later, he said the discussion “got out of hand a little too quickly.”

“I don’t think disease should be part of the issue,” said Garcia, a Brownsville native and the son of immigrants from Mexico who earned doctorates. “Some of the things they said, I totally disagree with. As Republicans, we’re not xenophobes. We just want to know who’s coming into the country.”
...
Garcia said he looked up Minutemen on the Web and found the Wise County group.

Shannon McGauley, 42, a private investigator from Boyd, leads one of two factions of Minutemen volunteers in Texas. His faction reports to a California man who is affiliated with a Bible-preaching fringe political party and who openly opposes allowing any other “cultures” or languages in America besides his own.

That part bothered Garcia before the meeting.

“What makes America great is that we pull the best from all cultures,” he said in an interview. “As a Republican, I value hard work and personal integrity. People bring those values to the U.S. from all cultures.”

This comes from a guy, apparently a minority himself, and the son of immigrants, who played a role in the instant dissemination of a racially charged hoax photograph:

Todd called Garcia’s cell phone at 8:56 p.m. Wednesday and asked if she could come over. When she arrived, Garcia thought the etched “B” looked like it could have come from the pin of a campaign button.

Garcia said he accepted her story, partly because Todd told him that she was a student at Texas A&M, where he had graduated in May. It was important, he said, to get out the message to other alumni and Republicans.

Important to get the message out to other alumni and Republicans? For what, so they could avoid ATMs?

Why wouldn’t a standup guy be sensitive to the past and the potential harm this could bring to race relations in America? How could he never ask himself the question, ‘what if it isn’t true?’

Admittedly, where it once looked like Ashley Todd might have been the patsy in the crime, directed to the act by Garcia, it now looks plausible that Garcia was Ashley’s stooge.  It was she, after all, who was a paid operative of the rat-fucking College Republicans.

See all of Ashley’s CRNC-NY videos.

And the larger question remains unanswered: When will the Republican Party finally see the ugliness in their own reflection?

Posted by poputonian on 10/26/08 at 08:56 AM • Permalink

And, Pop, Ashley’s “How to Make a Really Crappy Political Poster” instructional video is by far and away the best.  Although the mean black janitor video is probably the most insightful.

This one is great, too. College Democrats have no bottle openers, Frisbees or candy. Silly Dems just focusing on policy and stuff.  I wish they’d grow up.

Yeah, Wonkette pointed that our earlier.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08299/922849-53.stm

However, this is precisely when Ashley was posting her tweets to Twitter.  Was she on her blackberry or something?  Where did she post to Twitter from?

I wonder if that diner has a video surveillance system.

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