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Op-Ed: Make Tom Wolf run through the weeds, Governor

“I don't want to get into the weeds of the math,” Democrat gubernatorial nominee Tom Wolf said during a campaign stop at Canonsburg Middle School in Washington County this month.

It was just one of the latest in a regular and long line of wave-off tactics employed by the York businessman when he's asked to defend the indefensible claim (better known as a lie) that Gov. Tom Corbett “cut” education funding, which, to the credit of the Democrats' messaging machine, has become the fulcrum of the race.

“But it doesn't matter where the money came from,” he told WTAE-TV. “If that money no longer goes into education, my definition, that's a cut.”

“Doesn't matter”? Not in pursuit of a political smear, perhaps. And certainly not in loyal service to the teachers unions. But given the facts — one-time federal “stimulus” money that never should have been budgeted by school districts dried up — consider it the dishonest shorthand of a political weasel. But, hey, that's “politics,” right?

After all, and as French political economist Frederic Bastiat once characterized the ever-rampant rise of the deceiving classes: “They need only a few words to set forth a half-truth” — or, in this case, an out-and-out lie — “whereas, in order to show that it is a half-truth” — or a bald-faced lie — “we have to resort to long and arid dissertations” in refutation.

The charge, repeated ad nauseam, of course, makes for a great sound bite in campaign ads while the truth requires a longer, measured and scholarly treatment, not to mention an audience with at least a modicum of brain matter.

Then, last week, pressed to be more specific about not only his education funding proposals but specifics for job creation and fiscal management by the Reading Eagle after Monday's first debate in Hershey, Mr. Wolf employed another tactic.

“I think the specificity is on (Tom Corbett's) shoulders,” Mr. Nonspecificity said.

Tom Wolf doesn't want to “get into the weeds” because as the poll-presumptive governor, the emperor-in-waiting with no clothes fears being forced to run through the weeds that will cut him, if not bleed him dry. “Specificity” no doubt would further expose his political naiveté if not seal his political doom.

And is that not part and parcel to a politician, emboldened by consistently friendly polling that samples a meaning less cohort — registered voters — and under-samples the most meaning ful cohort — likely voters, selling the proverbial pig in a poke?

But while adhering to the Politics 101 principle that if you're ahead in the polls, either keep your mouth shut or raise the art of speaking in generalities to a new level — “going to Florida” is the euphemism Trib colleague and savvy political watcher Joseph Sabino Mistick uses — it very well could backfire on Wolf. After all, a candidate can avoid the “weeds” and “specificity” for only so long.

Now, whether Tom Corbett has enough time and the savvy to expose Wolf's strategy for what it is — political mountebankery — is another question altogether. But the governor's only real hope for re-election is to force Tom Wolf to run through those weeds.

Read the article online HERE.