Politico: Carol Shea-Porter (D-D.C.)

Politico has quite an article this morning hitting on what many in the NH press have been reporting for several weeks now, Washington has changed CSP.  In the hard hitting article, Politico picks up on the waffle hat incident, the now infamous 2005 Bush town hall, and her unwillingness to meet with her constituents in an open town hall meeting during the August recess.  The whole article is well worth the read, including some choice quotes from Jeb Bradley and also CSP once again trying to quaify her comments about her being removed by “thugs” (AKA Portsmouth police officers).

Here are some of the choice quotes from the article:

On CSP’s background:

Has Washington changed Carol Shea-Porter?

It’s a question that’s being asked in New Hampshire as the Democratic congresswoman gears up for reelection amid criticism that she’s become an insular member of the political establishment she once confronted as a grass-roots activist.

While Republicans have seized on the issue as part of their effort to deny her a third term, the state media has also focused on the theme after Shea-Porter avoided scheduling open town halls during Congress’s August recess. While she eventually held the events, it wasn’t until after she took considerable heat — and after her likely 2010 Republican opponent, Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, announced he would be holding his own public health care event.

“The irony is, of course, that Shea-Porter used to be a ‘tea-bagger’ on the left,” wrote Nashua Telegraph columnist Kevin Landrigan in late August, borrowing a phrase Shea-Porter had used to describe conservative town hall opponents. “We remember when, Carol, do you?”

The charge that a member of Congress has “gone native” or been changed by Washington is a campaign staple, but in Shea-Porter’s case, it’s an especially troublesome matter because it cuts to the heart of her political identity.

CSP qualifying how she was different then protesters this year:

In an interview with POLITICO, Shea-Porter said that she had merely meant to distinguish between her relatively peaceful form of protest in her pre-Congress years and the more disruptive actions taken by the conservative town hall rabble-rousers during the August recess.

“I never opened my mouth,” she said of the 2005 Bush event, where she and another activist removed their sweatshirts, turned their backs to the president and revealed T-shirts that read, “Turn your back on Bush.”

“There’s a very, very big difference between standing there politely and quietly with a shirt on and going around and being disruptive and yelling,” Shea-Porter said.

And finally Jeb Bradley on CSP:

Bradley, Shea-Porter’s predecessor, claims she has contracted a form of Potomac fever.

“I think she’s gone to Washington and forgotten that she’s New Hampshire’s representative in Washington,” Bradley told POLITICO, noting that Shea-Porter had frequently been confrontational and challenging at his public events. “I think she’s become Washington, and the power has gotten to her.”

“What I have a problem with, and what a lot of people have a problem with, is that there’s a double standard,” said Bradley. “There is no bigger hypocrite in Congress than Carol Shea-Porter.”

Team CSP and the NHDP must be none too happy with the problems that CSP has caused herself the past few weeks.  Some on the left may claim that this is a case of the right trying to torpedo CSP.  The unfortunate thing is that its CSP who is doing this to herself by allowing this story to be retold.  Before it was just the NH press that had the story.  Now its gone national.