Jackson Free Press

Sid Salter often reminds me of George Will: Clearly, he has a good mind, which shows up sometimes in his columns, but he's so busy using it to shill for the GOP that it's hard to remember that sometimes. Case in point: His Sunday column apologizing for Haley Barbour's hands-on role in NAFTA implementation—which led directly to the loss of so many Mississippi jobs. The point of the column is to remind voters that NAFTA was signed into law by a Democrat — duh. Who doesn't know that one of the Democrats' biggest sell-outs to the GOP in recent years was NAFTA? This is a major black mark on Clinton's record, and the main reason I first started turning against "New Democrats" (other reasons soon piled up). But, the point here and now in Mississippi, is whether we should elect a governor who is the CEO of a D.C. lobbying firm that handled much of the NAFTA implementation, not to mention helped push for it, despite warnings that it would take away jobs back in his home state? The closest he could come to tying Musgrove to NAFTA is his membership in the party who agreed to come on board the train being conducted, in part, by Haley Barbour. That's really weak. It's not like Musgrove is a poster-boy Democrat, after all. He can easily argue that NAFTA is one of the many issues that he takes umbrage with national Dems over. This one's a pitifully obvious shill.