MARK SHURTLEFF SHOULD RUN
By: Bob Lonsberry
Mark Shurtleff should run.
The Utah attorney general, he should toss his hat in the ring. He should throw down the gauntlet and challenge Bob Bennett to a fight to the political death.
Here are the players.
Bob Bennett is Utah’s three-term junior U.S. senator. Mark Shurtleff is the state’s attorney general. They are both Republicans.
Kind of.
If a compass could mark their political bearings, Mark Shurtleff would be center center left and Bob Bennett would be center left left. In a state that is thought of as conservative, neither one of these guys is.
But both of these guys have been successful. Their political lives have been charmed. They got to the top by different routes, but they both have gotten to the top.
Bob Bennett is Utah royalty. The son of a U.S. senator and the grandson of a Mormon prophet, he married the granddaughter of another Mormon prophet. Mark Shurtleff is working class. He claims Utah pioneer heritage, but his political resume has all been built by the sweat of his own brow.
The hit on Bob Bennett is that his political principles are indiscernible. His record of senatorial activity is a lot more reflective of a Washington backroom than it is of a Utah Main Street. And for Utahn's who are politically conservative, he is a deep and bitter disappointment.
That alone is reason for him to get the boot.
Mark Shurtleff wears his political principles on his sleeve. At least occasionally, those principles are jarringly out of synch with conservative members of his party. He received an award from Mexico, for example, for his inviting spirit toward illegal aliens. Among some conservatives, he is infamously remembered for shouting, in Spanish to a mass demonstration of illegal aliens, that he had a Latino heart. He also opposed an amendment to the state constitution that would have outlawed gay marriage.
But if it’s Mark Shurtleff versus Bob Bennett at the Republican convention of 2010, or in a primary, Mark Shurtleff is an easy choice. His greatest strength is his sincerity and affability, and being 20 years younger than Bob Bennett doesn’t hurt either.
If the choice at the next election is really a choice of the Republican Party, a contest between Bob Bennett and Mark Shurtleff, with the Democratic candidate being another in a line of eccentric incompetents, fighting to have Mark Shurtleff replace Bob Bennett would be a step closer to principle.
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