Schoolyard antics not becoming of a leader

Steve Kush, the suspended executive director of the Bernalillo County Republican Party, is right about two things.

His comments regarding women who voiced viewpoints with which he disagreed at a County Commission meeting on raising the minimum wage were insensitive and "moronic."

Now, if Kush won't resign, he should be fired.

Because it is in the best interest of the GOP, and of informed debate, to have leaders who focus on issues important to voters — not on lame attempts to appear hip and witty on social media by posting sexist epithets, or politically loaded characterizations, or derogatory clothing commentaries, or that observing someone is "hot enough to almost make me register democrat."

Yes, these comments follow along the lines of President Obama's recent, ill-advised public remarks about the good looking California attorney general. But they go well beyond those, and you would think after Obama's misstep and apology that people deeply embedded in politics would have learned something.

Apparently not.

And it is impossible to dismiss Kush's Facebook and Twitter activity as an "ill-fated attempt at humor" when former county GOP executive director Bob Cornelius responded to Kush's comment "Uh oh another Working America chick.nice boots.I know she makes more than min wage" with "Maybe she uses those shoes to walk Central."

It is stunning that in a state whose chief executive is one of the nation's most high-profile Republican women some party leaders appear to see nothing wrong with these kinds of offensive comments.

Kush and Cornelius have apologized, but it's really too little too late.

Voters deserve leaders who will drive an informed debate on issues that affect them, not someone who resorts to schoolyard name calling members of an opposing political party "radical bitch" and "Gestapo leader."

The GOP should get them one.

— Albuquerque Journal