La Tribuna

I love local talk radio. If it weren’t for folks like Al Mascitti, Rick Jensen, and Gerry Fulcher, I probably wouldn’t be nearly as interested in this political stuff as I am today. Listening to their shows and having the opportunity to call in (and even appear in-studio) has been quite a thrill and my (shitty) reputation has grown since.

I’ve got quite a few friends out there who record their radio shows on a daily basis and who send me the best clips. Some even go so far as to mash-up clips to make some overarching point that wouldn’t have been made otherwise. And today is one of those days. Today’s also another one of those days where it seems the Republicans are my whipping boys.

All throughout this campaign, folks like me and Dana Garrett have openly touted our support of Republican Tyler Nixon. Tyler seems to be quite the whipping boy himself among rank-and-file Republicans in Delaware. And he’s also perhaps one of two or three Republicans in the state who has explicitly outlined some bold initiatives for bringing Delaware into the 21st Century. In fact, all throughout the campaign Tyler emphasized his ideas in a neat little package entitled “The Five E’s,” in which he placed “Ethics, Energy, Environment, Economic Development, and Education” at the fore of his campaign. Republicans didn’t bite, preferring rather to play nasty politics by endorsing a candidate before the primary who wasn’t nearly as invigorating as Nixon.

In fact, as thorough as he is, Nixon’s made these statements on air MULTIPLE times, none the least his appearance on Dana Garrett’s own Progressive Voice talk radio show on which he explicitly outlined his ideas.
However, that didn’t stop one Republican from basically cribbing all of Tyler Nixon’s ideas and repackaging them (though in nearly the same wrapping paper!) on the radio earlier this week. This Republican? The new Senate Minority Leader, Charlie Copeland. So thorough was he in “presenting” Nixon’s ideas that this mash-up has been produced.
Nixon is first on deck and Copeland follows about halfway through.

And it’s not just Tyler Nixon the Republicans openly steal from. It’s Sen. Karen Peterson. Though Senate thugs like John Still initially despised the idea of open government, he’s come around as was reported about a month ago. People like Sen. Peterson and Nixon have been going on and on about open government for years. More audio is right here in the form of a phone call to WDEL by our very own Joe M., who blogs at Merit-Bound Alley. Joe posed a great question to Sen. Liane Sorenson (who, it should be noted, had supported Sen. Peterson’s open government bill via her signing a petition), who basically flaked out on the response when asked why certain Republicans didn’t just sign onto Sen. Peterson’s bill. Of course this all does lead back to Tyler Nixon in a way, because many of the Senate Republicans’ same points they made FOR open government were taken directly from his own.