Rep. Picchiotti Criticism Reflects Typical Democratic Hypocrisy

The Democratic Party’s Facebook Police is at it once again. A Republican legislator has shared a post and the whole sky is falling. This time it involves State Representative John Picchiotti, who shared a post that had some anti-Islamic elements to it.

First, let me state I am firmly opposed the bigotry and have been a vocal critic of Islamophobia. As a libertarian, I believe individuals should be judged on their own individual merits and not based on that of any affiliation. For example, because some bad Muslims exist in the world, this does not mean by any stretch that all Muslims are to be judged by this clear minority within the religion.

But the problem here though is not whether Representative Picchiotti is a racist or not, but rather that he is a Republican. Democrats, once again, see a political opportunity in this.

The Democratic Party is deeply disingenuous and honestly are likely more concerned about scoring political points against the Republican Party than any group being offended. This is about politics.

After all, not many Democrats are outraged as the Lewiston Mayoral race is literally being bought by the political director of an organization that once criticized a wheelchair-bound State Legislator for having “no spine”and not standing up. In fact, not many Democrats were overly concerned about the Maine People’s Alliance’s awful mailer, either.

In fact, not only did the Maine People’s Alliance slam Representative Crafts for being spineless and not standing up, they stated in the mailers that the people of Maine agreed.

Does the Democratic Party agree with the Maine People’s Alliance’s attack? Do they agree with the vitrolic organization’s assessment of Mainers?

Maybe the Maine Democratic Party just has a low opinion of Maine voters and simply doesn’t care about paraplegics.

Representative Dale Crafts, the mailer target, and being the good man he is, took the high road. He didn’t capitalize on an opportunity to score political points. He accepted the apology, then kept his focus on his day-to-day life and maintained focus on the constituents who elected him.

But why would the Democratic Party care about Chin, who is clearly more focused on buying Lewiston, and his obvious connection to this offensive organization? It was in the past, right?

The problem is something being in the past didn’t stop the Democratic Party from calling for Representative Lawrence Lockman’s resignation for comments he made decades ago.

While these past comments by Representative Lockman were inexcusably awful, why does he get attacked for it decades later and Ben Chin gets a free pass just a couple years later?

Representative Picchioti’s only mistake was in not being a Democrat or attempting to buy a Mayoral seat. If the Democratic Party would like to do a little soul-searching and find the intersection between “principles” and “consistency”, they would call for Ben Chin to resign from the Lewiston race because of the horrible attacks on Representative Crafts.

But let’s not hold our breath. They’re only feigning outrage for the political points.

Chris Dixon

About Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon is a libertarian-leaning writer and managing editor for The Liberty Conservative. In addition to his political writing, he also covers baseball for Cleat Geeks and enjoys writing on a number of other topics ranging on Medium.