'WeAreGolf" Urging Politicians To Stop Criticizing Obama’s "Passion for golf"
/The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis reports that pro-golf lobby group called “WeAreGolf” is urging Senator Marco Rubio to refrain from criticizing Barack Obama’s “passion for golf."
“As we enter the final stretch of campaign season,” the group writes, “we write to make a request we hope you will receive in the same spirit in which it is offered. Please reconsider your political strategy of criticizing President Obama’s passion for golf.” (Emphasis theirs.)
Lewis notes that the call is not just limited to Rubio.
It’s unclear how many other elected officials have received similar letters, but the group says they are “asking all elected officials to abstain from political strategies and tactics that denigrate golf, directly or indirectly, because we think they’re unnecessary and undermine the industry at large, not just the individual target.”
WeAreGolf is led by the Club Managers Association of America, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, the PGA of America and the National Golf Course Owners Association.
**From We Are Golf spokesman David Marin:
We Are Golf’s request for a political cease-fire when it comes to golf is not aimed at Sen. Rubio, who’s been a great supporter of the industry, but at all elected officials, Republicans and Democrats. Similar letters have previously gone to members of both political parties.
The golf is industry is understandably sensitive to this line of politicking, because it reinforces misperceptions of the game that don’t square with the facts – and because those misperceptions, in turn, have led to unfair legislation and regulation. How else to explain, for example, golf’s exclusion, along with massage parlors and liquor stores, from post-Katrina disaster tax relief?
We’re not asking for special treatment; just fair and equitable treatment. And part of that is respectfully asking for a bipartisan political détente.
We get the context, the political calculus. But we no longer want to sit idly by when golf is maligned, even indirectly, because we’ve seen what can happen when we do so, and the nearly 2 million Americans whose jobs depend on the golf industry are asking us to get involved on their behalf.
