Tolbert: Tommy Moll’s Uninspiring ‘Big’ Endorsement

My first thought when I saw the Tommy Moll for Congress press release yesterday touting his endorsement from national conservative blogger Erick Erickson was to give it the due consideration it deserved and ignore it.

However, seeing that Erickson quoted me from a blog post from over half-year ago, a small note is perhaps in order.

First – to quote the liberal blog of record: “Who and who?”

It would be stiff competition to determine who is lesser-known in the Fourth Congressional District of Arkansas – Erik Erickson or Tommy Moll.  This is nothing against Moll, but he simply has been out of the state for the last decade.  From 2002 to 2012, he voted absentee. Why?  Because according to this public report from FINRA going back to 2003, he has not worked in Arkansas. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.  This is nothing against a Arkansas born boy going out of state for college and going on to find productive out of state employment.  More power to ya!  But it usually means most people in Arkansas don’t know you.

Secondly, it is a completely uninspiring list of achievements Erickson lists in his endorsement.  The only solid one I found was that he “has a degree from William & Mary, a law degree from Columbia, and co-founded Law Students for Life.”

Hats off for that, but that’s it?  He goes on to say, “Tommy Moll has spent his time in the conservative movement fighting for the right things,” but fails to say how he has done this.  Not one specific example.

Is Erickson willing to put his reputation on the line for what reads like a copy and pasted one-line biographical sketch on Moll?  It makes you wonder how much even Erickson has heard of Moll.

Most of Erickson’s post is spent roughing up Moll’s primary opponent Bruce Westerman – the House Republican Majority Leader.  His criticism and selective quotes from yours truly reads like someone so unfamiliar with Arkansas politics that it is laughable.

He states with a non-existent degree of authority that Westerman “led the fight to expand Obamacare in Arkansas.”  He then quotes my blog post as trying to paint Westerman as flip-flopping “only when he realized expanding Obamacare would be a political liability.”

Again, a laughable re-write.  The context of my blog post was a daily rundown of the events of the House committee meeting when Westerman went from a co-sponsor of a Private Option bill to an opponent. The note was to point out the major emphasis Westerman put on being removed as a co-sponsor. He could have easily done this quietly with what is called a member’s only amendment that would have only been noted in the record.  Instead, he went out of his way to speak at the committee hearing to basically declare himself an opponent.

There may be many reasons to support or not support Westerman, but if you opposed the Private Option in Arkansas then you know Westerman was the ringleader of the opposition from this committee meeting forward.  Erickson is either manipulating the facts or was pitched a line from a Moll consultant and bit on it without understanding the way the debate progressed in the Arkansas Legislature.

It is not the first time this blog did this.  In 2011, Red State roughed up a couple of potential primary opponents of Tom Cotton without any context of the issues in the state legislature linking to some random parliamentary votes.  Granted Cotton was a much better pick than Moll, but you see the pattern.

The impact of Red State’s endorsement is really insignificant.  Moll’s high-paid consultants will likely add it to some list of accomplishments they achieved when they send Moll the bill for their services, but it will not influence anyone in Arkansas’ Fourth.  If anything, it just highlights how far outside of Arkansas Moll’s thinking is.