Rothschild represents a costly fringe element

     Richard Rothschild's comments at Wednesday night's forum confirm what I have come to believe from reading his comments in the voters guides and one the web: He is an absolutist, whose extreme thinking is out of sync with even the mainstream Carroll County conservative.
    Oh, he sounds good. And he dresses well. But intelligence and the ability to articulate do not always mean one knows what he's talking about. He puts out numbers as if he has a complete command of the facts, but his figures on the Waste to Energy plan are out of thin air. No substance, but if you don't know, you have to be impressed with the way he talks. I can see a crowd falling under the trance of a false prophet, or a snake oil salesman.
      Rothschild can be impressive to one who knows even less than he does.
    Not to say that Rothschild does not get it. Maybe he does. But it's not what Rothschild knows that matters to him -- or to his more ardent supporters. It's what he BELIEVES that matters.
     It's apparent to me that he is more interested in forwarding his ideology than dealing with facts. He is one of those to whom truth is reserved for the True Believers, the kool-aid drinkers of a particular demagoguery devoted to an extreme Right Wing way of thinking.
     Not conservative; extreme.  I am reminded of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the anti-communist panic in America half a century ago. The roots of extreme right rantings are found there, unknown to several generations, forgotten by others, but the damage that McCarthy did to America is one of the darker chapters of our past. At one time, he had a lot of people agreeing with him.
     Most Americans opposed communism, but McCarthy's extreme witch-hunting put communists under every bed, in every closet. He manipulated the populace with fear.
     In time, most Americans, even the most patriotic, came to see McCarthy as too reminiscent of another extremist, Adolph Hitler. His extreme thinking and flaming rhetoric became a national embarrassment.
     Carroll County is a conservative county, and has, despite the campaign rhetoric of various aspirants to the powers of public office, been run in a conservative way. You don't survive the economy with a reserve intact, as we have, without conservative, sound, financial practices.
     But the True Believers -- the extreme conservatives -- would refuse to take back the taxes you have paid to the federal and state governments, money we get as part of our share of paying for schools, parks, public facilities. The True Believers would end all participation in grants, spend no money on parks and recreation, for example, and take on the entire burden for those expenses out of a demagogic dedication to smaller government.
     Smart is not what smarties say. Smart is what smart people do. Smart people will not be voting for candidates like Rothschild. Which is not to say he will not be elected. Just be aware.