Crossposted at
Wampum.
Yesterday, as all the blogosphere, Left and Right, now knows, first-term Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt offered these words as she stood in the well of the House:
Ms. Schmidt: Yesterday I stood at Arlington National Cemetery attending the funeral of a young marine in my district. He believed in what we were doing is the right thing and had the courage to lay his life on the line to do it. A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bop, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body - that we will see this through.
Of course, as we all know as well, Schmidt's personal attack on the Hon. Congressman (and two-time war veteran from Pennsylvania) sent the House floor into a well-deserved meltdown, with Democrats shutting down the body until Schmidt withdrew her words.
But an unanswered question remains, who is this Colonel Danny Bubp, and why does his opinion matter so much to Ms. Schmidt? One would assume that he would possess at least as much military experience as the man he essentially termed a coward, in response to the Congressman's call for the troops in Iraq to return home within six months.
Well, we do know that Colonel Bubp is an Ohio state representative, in fact, from a district contained within Ohio's 2nd Congressional district, which Ms. Schmidt won in a special election earlier this year. And how did he win that seat for the first time in 2004?
His own words from the local paper:
Danny Bubp, a West Union attorney facing retired educator Cy Richardson for the Ohio House of Representatives seat here, believes that's why he'll win.
Bubp, who grew up in Sardinia, calls the 88th district a "good Christian community" that's against abortion and same-sex marriage and protective of its right to bear arms.
"That's the kind of district I want to serve in," said Bubp, 50.
And his prior "political experience"?
Colonel Bubp, a 1984 graduate of the (4th tier) Ohio Northern College of Law, spent all but one of the past twenty years in private practice. The single foray into public service during that time was a year as a county judge.
But Col. Bubp didn't waste his legal education. His most recognized pro-bono work was to fight the removal of Ten Commandment monuments from public grounds.
Here he is, receiving the coveted "Ten Commandments Leadership Award" with none other than Congresswoman Schmidt herself.
And that extensive military experience Ms. Schmitz determined was vastly superior to Congressman Murtha's? According to his own biography at his campaign website:
Military Service :
1978 - Commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps
1978-Present - Continues to serve in United States Marine Corps Reserve as a Colonel of Marines
1997-Present - Serves on the staff at the National Defense University, Washington, D.C. as Team Leader for the Reserve Component National Security Course
2003 - Graduate of Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island
2003 - Served on the J-3 Staff at United States Central Command, Tampa, Florida for General Tommy Franks in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom
Nearly thirty years in the Marines, and Col. Bubp missed every single military engagement? Southeast Asia? Beirut? Grenada? Panama? Gulf War? The Balkans? Somolia? He even missed embassy service in Paris!
But that hasn't stopped Col. Bubp from attacking the character of decorated veterans in the past. Col. Budp campaigned for Schmidt in her race against Iraq veteran Paul Hackett in the special election:
Later in the afternoon, the Schmidt campaign staged a "Support Our Troops" rally in Union Township's Veterans Memorial Park, where about 50 people gathered under the park's Vietnam-era medical evacuation helicopter to hear speech-making by Schmidt and some of her supporters, including Glenda Kiser of Amelia, the mother of Sgt. Chuck Kiser, an Army reservist killed last year in Iraq.
The event was billed as a rally to honor veterans and local residents serving in Iraq, but much of the speech-making - particularly from State Rep. Danny Bubp, R-West Union - consisted of criticizing Hackett, an Iraq war veteran, for his differences with President Bush and the administration's policies in Iraq.
Bubp - who, like Hackett, is a Marine Corps Reserve officer - stood under the helicopter's wings in his military dress uniform, saying that the one thing military officers do not do "is criticize their commander in chief."
"I served for eight years under a president who loathed the military but we never said a word about it," Bubp said
Of course, there's "served" and "served", though it looks as though Col. Bubp has just been "served up" by his favorite Congresswoman as fodder in the war against true American patriots.
Bon appetite.