A Republican candidate for Connecticut’s General Assembly has pulled out of his race after being condemned by virtually everyone in Connecticut. Steven Baleshiski was challenging Democratic Rep. Joe Aresimowicz for his state House seat when the lightest of digging brought out a skeleton from the proverbial closet. At the end of this past March, Mr. Baleshiski wrote about Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg on his Facebook page.
I’m not supposed to speak ill of David Hogg because he is a ‘survivor.’ Apparently if you survive horrific events, that makes the stupidity spewing out of your mouth above reproach. I disagree. Hogg can burn in hell, I don’t care what he survived. Survivors who wage war on my country are my enemies.
Baleshiski also had other big conservative ideas about an array of subjects, according to the Hartford Courant.
”Steven, you seem full of hate.’ You’re [expletive] right I’m full of hate,” a post from Sept. 16, 2017 reads. “What emotion do you expect me to feel for people who are trying to destroy my country and impose their sick, dystopian will on me and my family? Do you expect me to sit here ‘sure we disagree, but we’re all fellow Americans?’ Well that’s not how I feel. The people trying to destroy the country I love and impose 1984 meets Brave New World meets the will of Satan on my family are my enemies. I could pretend to be a white knight and say that I don’t hate them but that would be a lie. I hate them.”
There’s so much angry dumb in these short lines. The comments, revealed earlier this week, led to a condemnation from the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
“No candidates running for office, Republican or Democrat, should make vile comments and attacks regarding students who speak out on matters of public concern,” said CEA President Jeff Leake. “That is the opposite of what we teach about democracy, respect for each other and a civil society.”
Baleshiski tried to weather the bad press for about 24 hours, and then resigned. Baleshiski’s resignation from the race leaves an idiot-sized hole in the Republican Party’s election campaign. Republicans like Anne Reilly, the chair of the town committee of Berlin, located in the Hartford County district in which Baleshiski was running, aren’t too bothered by Baleshiski’s hatred. She said, “No candidate is perfect.”
No, they aren’t. That’s true. Baleshiski’s campaign manager, former Southington Republican Town Committee chair Brian Callahan, takes it further.
“He’s a little young. This was a learning lesson,” Callahan said of Baleshiski. “What’s happening to him is much like what’s happening to [Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh. They’re trying to trash him. It saddens me that this is what our country has come to. It’s like a mugging.”
No, it’s more like your “young” (22-year-old) candidate spewed a bunch of ignorant hate out into the world, and he’s either “a little young” in such a way that he lacks the maturity needed to hold office, or he’s an ignorant and vile hothead who shouldn’t hold office. On the other hand, Brett Kavanaugh might have attempted to rape someone. It’s sort of like hate-filled, gun-toting apples and rapey oranges.
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