Anybody remember the old Neil Sedeka hit, "Bad Blood?"
You could use it to describe the current relationship between
former and defeated candidates for governor Pete Hoekstra and Mike Cox.
The West Michigan and wanna be governor is livid.
"They were ugly and misleading at best and totally untrue is a
better description of what they were," Hoekstra expounds the day after
he lost the election he was suppose to win.
His reference is to the $3 million in negative ads that Cox and
company used to tear down Fortress Hoekstra which was his base of
support on the west side of the state.
"It gives you a little bit of heart burn every morning," when you
see another attack from Cox, Right to Life and who knows who else,
Hoekstra observes.
Give Cox credit. He knew he had to dismantle that base and his
ads did just that. And at the get-go, Hoekstra's response was tepid at
best and downright lousy at worse. He spend $5,000 to refute the Cox
attack on Hoekstra for being a big spender in Congress.
But sinse the word of the day in the GOP family is "unity",
Hoekstra was asked if he was ready to forgive Cox for the assault.
Oh my. Mr. Hokestra struggled with that. First he cleared his
throat and than stammered just a tad and finally came up with, "Should
I forgive him? I'm not going there O.K? It was not fair play. It was
ugly."
Mr. Cox was asked to check in on all this. "I was talking about
the issues,' he began his defense of his offensive slam at poor ole
Pete.
In the spirit of party unity, don't you owe him an apology?
"Yeah, except there is not a problem that I'm aware of," he
smiled.
Cox was informed that Hoekstra did have a problem and Cox said
he had not talked with his former opponent about it and then he
offered, "You're just trying to instigate."
Everybody sing, "Baaaaad Blood. Baaaad Blood."