Republican congressional candidate Chris Myers has a little problem understanding English. In this case, the problem is that Myers doesn’t understand the second meaning of ‘foot soldier’. The first meaning is synonymous with ‘infantry soldier’. The second meaning is ‘One who performs necessary but basic, often mundane tasks.’ Every political campaign has foot soldiers that carry out necessary but basic, often mundane tasks like phonebanking, doorknocking, stuffing envelopes, and making up voter contact lists. It isn’t an insult to infantry soldiers to abbreviate ‘foot soldiers’ and just call them soldiers, or to call them ‘citizen soldiers’.
Decorated combat veteran and congressional candidate Chris Myers (NJ-3) today demanded that his opponent, career Trenton politician John Adler, apologize to United States active duty troops, veterans and military families for comments he made in a YouTube video posted on his web site.
In the video, entitled “John Adler: a progressive,” Adler admiringly refers to radical liberal bloggers from the Daily Kos and other liberal blog sites as “the new citizen soldiers”. The video can be found at Adler’s campaign web site (www.adlerforcongress.com/video), or on YouTube at the following link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-veLCjvWzQM.
“On behalf of our active duty military personnel and their families, and the tens of thousands of veterans living in the 3rd Congressional District, I am calling on John Adler to remove this video and apologize for his outrageous comments,” said Myers, himself a former Navy Lieutenant and decorated combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War. “These radical liberal bloggers are in no way, shape or form ‘soldiers,’ and referring to them in that way is an affront to the brave men and women in uniform fighting to defend our freedoms around the globe, the veterans who have done so in generations past, and their proud families.”
“A ‘citizen soldier’ is a member of the NJ National Guard who leaves his or her family to fight for our freedoms in Iraq or Afghanistan,” said Myers. “Not a radical, liberal blogger who spews angry partisan tirades from the safety of their home computer. There is no defensible comparison.”
Myers also pointed out that Adler’s video claims the driving force behind his candidacy were “New Jersey’s liberal netroots” and that Adler goes so far as to indicate he uses these radical liberal sites to find ideas that help to guide how he governs.
“During this campaign, John Adler has been auditioning to star in an episdoe of ‘Extreme Makeover’ by trying to fool voters into believing he is in the mainstream, while running far and fast from his years in Trenton,” said Myers, a successful, job-creating businessman. “But his comments in this YouTube video and his unabashed, close associations with radical liberal bloggers reveal who he really is: An extremely liberal, career Trenton politician who has very little in common with the residents of this district-including most moderate Democrats.”
It’s nice to get some recognition for our work but calling us ‘radical liberal bloggers’ is not accurate. Blue Jersey is not radical. Daily Kos is not radical. John Adler is running as a proud progressive. That doesn’t make him a radical. The Republicans make themselves look desperate with these types of ridiculous attacks. People know the difference between a citizen soldier and an infantry soldier. People know that John Adler is not a radical.