In the past week, we’ve all watched the Republican Party throw Tan Nguyen under the bus and distance themselves from Nguyen’s campaign and the illegal letter sent to legal residents.
A certain photo keeps showing up in the Vietnamese press, and I kept hearing about it, but it wasn’t until last weekend that I finally got my hands on a copy:
The photo shows 8 Republican candidates standing together, and the text of the ad says something about being unitedâ€â€the exact translation is a little fuzzy for me still, at this time.
One of those candidates is the now famously stupid Tan Nguyen.
This photo, which has now been dubbed by some as “Tan and the 7 dopes,†was part of a combined campaign to use synergy to bring success to all of the 8 Vietnamese-American candidates.
These 8 have been standing together in photos; they’ve been pooling their money for advertisements; they’ve been making joint appearances.
So my question is this: if these 7 have put their names behind Tan Nguyen, and he turns out to be a crook and thug, what (if anything) does it say about them? Should we think less of these 7 because of their previous support for Tan Nguyen?
What this says Mike is…
You can judge a person’s character by the company they keep.
Reminds me of the old Sinatra song,
“Me and My Shadow.”
Like the wallpaper sticks to the wall
Like the seashore clings to the sea
Like you’ll never get rid of your shadow
Tan, you’ll never get rid of me
Me and my shadow
And now to repeat what I said at the start
They’ll need a large crowbar to break us apart
We’re alone but far from blue
You can judge a person’s character by the company they keep.
Is that a standard you’re willing to apply to all candidates, Democrat as well as Republican?
It might say something about them IF they knew THEN what is known NOW about Tan Nguyen.
I think it’s more important to see how quickly they’ve distanced themselves from Tan since news of the letter broke.
Daucher and Baugh have (surprisingly) done the right thing.
Have the rest of these candidates denounced Tan and his actions?
Pube–
Good point. And for the record, Van Tran has distanced himself from Nguyen.
Jubal,
I think it’s hard to say that these candidates (and the entire OC GOP for that matter) were unaware of the xenophobic campaign that Nguyen was running.
He was walking the line, and crossed it by sending out that dumb letter.
And yes, we should judge a person’s character by the company they keep…regardless of his or her party.