Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
Toll Free: 800-234-6575
Editorial: A missed opportunity
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Friday’s visit here by the presidential campaign of Gov. Mitt Romney could have been exciting. The prospect of seeing the candidate himself — or a relative or some other surrogate — could get residents’ adrenaline pumping.
But it didn’t happen.
Instead, the campaign sent a bus — but no candidate or stand-in — to visit the local GOP headquarters Friday. Sara Craig, the Virginia state director of Romney’s campaign, said it often sends the campaign bus — minus the candidate — to areas where the campaign may not otherwise stop.
“We want people to know we care,” she added.
Care? Pardon our cynicism, but this is hardly the hand-shaking, baby-kissing, “I feel your pain” type of concern that we have come to expect from presidential candidates. Instead, it was a walk through the bus and “if you don’t mind, grab a cell phone and call a friend and ask them to vote for a candidate that has a nice bus” type of campaign stop.
Maybe this is politics in 2012.
One thing we’re sure of is that this was a golden opportunity passed up by the Romney campaign. Think of the reaction it would have gotten if the candidate, his wife or some other key campaign figure would have ridden in on that bus and said, in effect, “When Barack Obama was running for president he came here and said he would think of Martinsville every day when he woke up in the White House. He hasn’t done that, but this is what we will do ... .”
