Hill finds a publicity op he doesn't like

A hat tip to HoosierPundit who reported on the Bloomington Herald-Times story on B-PAC's rally on Saturday. According to Timothy Baer, one of the organizers, Rep. Hill accepted an invitation to attend, but then reneged when he learned that there would be TV cameras there.

BLOOMINGTON — Dozens of people gathered at Bloomington’s City Hall Saturday to hear a Declaration of Peace for the war in Iraq.

Those in attendance got to view an extensive multimedia presentation outlining the nine points that members of The Declaration of Peace — a national peace organization — and the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition hope to get across to local, state and federal legislators...

Baer said U.S. Rep. Baron Hill had been scheduled to attend, but canceled after learning the event would be broadcast on community access television and that media outlets had been invited.

HP's commentary:

Of course, it would be hard for Baron to tell his supporters one thing in Bloomington and then tell the rest of the district something else (his standard method of operation) if those pesky reporters were there covering him doing it and making recordings of what he was saying. The recordings would make it very difficult for Baron to deny saying what he said later on, when he needed to explain himself to the rest of the district.

In the last election, Hill wanted to position himself somewhat to the "left" of Sodrel. Within that position, he wanted to posture more towards the left while in Bloomington and just to the left of Sodrel elsewhere in the district. This wasn't particularly principled, but such posturing is often effective politically.

One modest problem for Hill in 2006: it enabled me to be the strongest anti-war candidate. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my message out as much as I would have liked. And some who heard my message chose Hill anyway-- as the lesser of two evils who had a significant probability of winning.

Going into 2008, I'd guess that Hill will try to walk a similar line, moving further to the left as the war has grown increasingly unpopular. And I'm sure that he'll try to claim that he was there in 2006 as well. I'll do what I can to keep the record straight. Hopefully, Timothy and his colleagues have long enough memories to help out!