Ben Quayle Ducks the Question

Well, Ben Quayle's Campaign for Congress has had well over a week to Answer Our Questions; the Republican Primary is August 24. Here's what we sent to Ben Quayle:

Subject: A few questions for Congressional Candidate Ben Quayle

12MAR2010: Greetings to the Ben Quayle for Congress Campaign:

Getting straight to the point, Operation Yellow Elephant, which began in 2005 as a nonpartisan grass roots citizens initiative to Support Our President by encouraging his strongest supporters, if qualified, to consider military service, has some questions for candidate Ben Quayle.

We welcome your response for publication on our blog. [If anything is not for publication, please include it in brackets as I am doing with this sentence. We can discuss by phone if needed.]

1. Your bio on your new campaign website does not mention military service. Please confirm that you have not served in our military, or provide any other information that you consider relevant that you may wish to share.

2. We note that you are 33 years old and, therefore, young enough to serve in our military. Are you eligible to serve [healthy and heterosexual, basically]? If you are not eligible to serve, please just let us know that fact (no details, please) and we will not bother you again.

3. Assuming at this point that you are eligible to serve, have you considered volunteering for military service? If you did not do so before 9/11/2001, did you reconsider after the terrorist attacks against the U.S.? If not, why not? If so, what resulted from your deliberations?

4. Do you personally know any enlisted servicemembers or junior officers [O-3 and below], those who are most at risk in combat? How about recent veterans of any rank?

5. We welcome any other information related to this topic that you may wish to share with readers of our blog.

Thank you very much for considering our questions. Please let us know if any further information is necessary.

Sincerely,

Operation Yellow Elephant

And the first follow-up:

14MAR2010: Follow-up: A few questions for Congressional Candidate Ben Quayle [sent Friday 12MAR]:

Greetings-

We just wanted to let you know that we very much welcome the Quayle for Congress campaign's responses to our questions. If you decide you would not like to respond, if you could please just let us know that fact, we won't have to keep following-up.

We have received an e-mail from the candidate's fiancee, Tiffany, but it is not clearly for public posting on our blog [we've asked] and does not address the questions about our topic. Nor have we seen anything new on the website.

Thank you very much for your help.

Operation Yellow Elephant

And the second follow-up:

19MAR2010: Second follow-up: A few questions for the Ben Quayle Congressional Campaign:

Greetings to the Quayle for Congress campaign-

We still haven't heard from you. If you will not respond to our questions, could you please just let us know that fact, so we don't have to keep sending to you, and you don't have to keep receiving, our e-mails?

If we don't hear from you soon, we'll just go with what we have, and note your lack of response. We do not think that this will reflect well on a campaign for a position of national leadership, and would prefer that the campaign engage - once - in a polite, civilized discussion of a relevant issue. That said, it's your choice.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Operation Yellow Elephant

OYE Comment:

Wow! He'll let his fiancee Tiffany defend him, but isn't man enough to speak for himself. But we did give them over a week just to let us know that they were working on it, and we never heard from them.