Who invited Mark Brewer to participate in the recent GOP for
governor debate? That was the pointed question blurted out by one of
the Republican audience members after Mike Cox used the "China" issue
against one of his opponents.
Cox of course is a GOP candidate for governor and he did pick up
where Brewer left off on his attacks on Rick Synder. Ever since the
Ann Arbor business guy entered the race, Brewer has been a one man
wrecking crew hoping to undercut Snyder's candidacy by claiming he sent
jobs to China when he ran the Gateway company.
Brewer used it successfully on former GOP candidate Dick DeVos in
2006 and republicans are still bitter about that.
Never mind that Mr. Snyder has consistently denied the charge.
Brewer has not given up and now that Cox has taken up the same line of
attack, Brewer and his D buddies must be chuckling.
Rest assured that if Snyder somehow secures the nomination, it's a
sure bet that Cox's words will be used by the democrats against Snyder.
That did not seem to bother Mr. Cox who brought up the issue on
his own in an apparent calculated roll of the dice to cut into Synder's
voter base.
But you have to wonder how the China thing works, if at all, with
GOP voters?
Recall that when Brewer used it against DeVos it was in a general
election where all sorts of voters heard it including those who were
angry about outsourcing in general.
Cox is using the issue in a GOP primary where many of the voters
may actually be sympathetic to job creation efforts in China and
elsewhere. They may not like it but they may understand why some
business guy might want to set up shop in the Communist country.
There were many business leaders in the audience such as Rick
Studley who runs the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. He was not a happy
camper when Brewer attacked DeVos.
Wonder what he thought when he heard a Republican do the same
thing to another Republican the other night?