Marrow: Obama, Dems no better than GOP

  
Story by Chris Graham
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See if you can guess who updated their Facebook status this way over the weekend.

“A year later is has become abundantly clear that Obama and the dems are no better than bush and his republican sleaze. They are all corporate wh@#es, liars and thieves. The only difference is that Obama actually has a brain (most medical experts agree that bush did not), but no spine, at least bush had a spine ..even if was cheney’s…”

No, though I have a number of hardcore Republican friends, it wasn’t one of them.

And no, it wasn’t me, centrist critic of the Obama administration that I am.

Would you believe, Greg Marrow, the Democratic Party House of Delegates nominee in the 25th District from last fall?

If you got to know Marrow at all last year, it wouldn’t necessarily seem that far out of play. Marrow played up on the campaign trail his onetime status as a Reagan Republican who switched parties when the GOP abandoned its grip with reality on its move to the far, far right.

Still, the Facebook comment has elicited reactions of surprise from people like Lowell Fulk, the chairman of the Rockingham County Democratic Committee, who helped recruit Marrow, a Rockingham County-based optometrist, to run for the House last year.

“We don’t often disagree my friend, but on this I’m afraid we do,” Fulk commented in the Facebook thread.

Marrow’s beefs include the continuation of unfettered access of K Street lobbyists to decisionmakers in Washington, the lack of transparency of the Obama administration on par with the lack of transparency of its predecessor Bush administration, the failure of Obama to this point to follow through with the campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

And health-care reform, Obama’s “baby,” “a ‘pillar’ of his administration, and he didn’t have the cajones to stand up and lead when we needed it most,” Marrow Facebooked.

“Partially as a result, Massachusetts elected the first republican in decades which has now undermined any attempt and change in DC and has derailed ANY MEANINGFUL healthcare reform. If anything passes it will be a joke compared to what we could have achieved,” Marrow wrote.

Marrow, who received 27 percent of the vote in his bid in the 25th against Republican incumbent Steve Landes, said after the election that he was leaning toward making another run for the seat, which represents Waynesboro and portions of Albemarle, Augusta and Rockingham, in 2011.