Posts Tagged → election
My body, my….self…?
My sense is that abortion was the issue of this week’s mid-term election. After all, all of the digital online advertising I received about Fetterman, Shapiro, and Mastriano was about that one issue. And Democrat Party poll workers confirmed their own belief that abortion would galvanize their voters. It seems to have worked, and fended off what was touted as a “red wave” of conservative response to failed governance in Washington DC.
My mind wanders back to 1972 or 1973, when I was a young kid, but old enough to become self aware. My hippie parents had the Our Bodies, Our Selves book laying out in the living room. When no adults were around I would look at this book and marvel at the array of hairy women parading their naked bodies in it. At an early age, then, I determined that naked woman was good, hairy was not good. One idea that sticks in my mind (having long ago eradicated the book’s “natural” images from my memory banks) is the novel concept that a person’s body is their own.
I think freedom-loving Americans can emphatically agree on this, that a person’s body is their own and nobody else’s. Where Americans diverge from one another is what is our body? Is it just the living, walking adult body, or does that also include young humans growing inside of it?
Reasonable people can and should debate this subject, and if pro-Life advocates want to make headway politically and culturally, then they have got to do a much better job explaining their perspective on when human life begins, why it is sacred, and how abortion-on-demand is not a my body, my self policy issue, but rather an “our bodies intertwined together” humanity issue. They must do a much better job, as this week’s election results demonstrate (assuming no election fraud occurred, which in some states is once again already obvious and in-your-face to the point of training voters to regularly accept it from one political party).
To be fair to the pro-Life anti-abortion voters, advocates, and candidates like Doug Mastriano, a lot of Americans felt like the two-year Covid1984 plandemic was one gigantic official assault on the idea of Our Bodies, Our Selves. A lot of voters this week showed up to vote against the unconstitutional government overreach, official lies, official illegalities, and government personnel self-enrichment that characterized the past two years of Covid1984. They thought other Americans felt the same.
Draconian lockdowns to the point of absurdity (lone sea kayakers being surrounded by heavily armed police boats and arrested for violating a “public health code,” sunbathers sitting totally alone on a beach, and married couples sitting alone in their car at scenic overlooks being similarly mistreated by aggressive police officers etc.), pointless and highly damaging school closures, useless mask requirements, and dangerous fake vaccine requirements that are now yielding an enormous number of vaccine-caused injuries and deaths, all and every aspect of the Covid1984 experience was one huge pile of Our Bodies, Our Selves books being symbolically burned by government staffers and leftist political activists in a joyous ceremony to mark the end of the idea that your body is yours and yours alone, and to emphasize that the government, their government, can do to you whatever it wants whenever it wants.
Conservative voters and candidates mistakenly thought that leftists would be consistent in their body sovereignty thinking, that everyone else felt the same (logically consistent) as conservatives about this disaster, and that they would vote accordingly.
And this is the confusing part of this my body, my self as a public policy issue and debate subject. On the one hand we have a lot of Americans who were and still are being severely damaged by the government’s purposefully bad handling of Covid1984, and they are pushing back. (Despite the Biden DOJ’s designation of them as “domestic terrorists” for merely speaking out in official taxpayer-funded venues.)
And on the other hand we have a lot of Americans who think that not only is the government’s brutal and useless Covid1984 overreach into your body and your body choices great public policy, but that the use of crushing government coercive force to implement it and force you to comply or be destroyed was just great, too. And yet a lot of these same people are the pro abortion Our Bodies, Our Selves believers who were animated enough to show up to vote this week.
This is confusing because it is inconsistent. Choice should be choice…right?
If you spend time reading this blog, then you already know I am not enamored of liberal/ leftist thinking, because I cannot make it make sense. And to be fair, most leftists and liberals I speak with about this are quite honest about it: They don’t care about logic, reason, or being consistent. They want their political issues the way they want them, and to hell with your criticisms.
In a democratic nation and in a Western Civilization based on logic, reason, debate, and persuasion, we have a conundrum here. Americans are talking right past each other, and not just about our bodies being sovereign from outside forces. Americans are failing to communicate with each other on a whole array of political and cultural topics. I am firmly on the side of reason, logic, and reasoned debate being at the center of our governance process, and so I stand firmly with the dreaded “conservatives.”
But I will say this to the conservatives, like governor candidate Doug Mastriano: If you are going to make the elimination or regulation of abortion your main public policy goal, then you had damned well better explain it to the public very carefully, frame it in context of the 2020-2022 Covid1984 government assault on Americans’ bodies, and you had better not do any interviews where snippets of your public statements can be used to paint you into a corner. At least half of America is not able or willing to discuss this subject, and to them only the axe-murdering abortion of a helpless and sacred child is their singular and joyous right; what the government does to their bodies the other 99% of the time is the business of the government and none of their own. They are not thinking clearly about this, and candidates must work hard to connect the abortion dot to the Covid1984 dot for future voters. Or don’t work on it, and shut the hell up about it.
And I will also say this to the liberals/ leftists: Your apparent worshiping of abortion as an act, to the point of killing the living, viable child at birth, makes you look like a primitive bloodthirsty death cult. This is not civilized behavior by people who advocate for myriad other intrusive government policies “if it saves just one child.” So long as you inhabit this childish shadowland of disconnected and strongly contrasting public policies, your fellow Americans will understandably deride you as foolish children who actually hate children.
Does this book also apply to the victims of bad government policies on Covid? If not, then there is no body sovereignty for anyone
Election Day field report
I worked the Harrisburg 14th precinct polling place today, from the morning until the mid afternoon. Mostly handing out a brochure for state representative candidate Dave Buell, because my Mastriano and Oz brochures were usually waved off or swatted away.
I may yet get back out there to hand out election “literature”, if my errands and work are finished. Having finished the gallon jar of pickled eggs last night, and now about halfway through eight pounds of smoked salmon, there is a good possibility I will get out to meet more voters. Gotta take care of my hungry kids first and foremost.
Couple of observations from my time “in the field” today:
*What is with the so so many angry, rude, disrespectful, hostile White Liberal Democrats? So many partisan White Democrat voters show up to vote unhappy, really just mean. One man angrily accused me of blocking his path to the voting place door, although I was nowhere near it and certainly not in between him and the door. I was about twenty feet away. It seems these voters either forgot or never knew that we are all Americans here. They certainly don’t seem to share much in common with me, which is sad. And dangerous to democracy.
*Black voters in contrast are overwhelmingly nice, willing to hear out a candidate or a poll worker promoting a candidate, maybe ask some questions. Blacks are the thinkers in the Democrat Party. While White Liberal Democrats would like to think of Blacks as robots, my experience today, as always, is that Black voters are largely curious, thoughtful, and thinking about their vote. If Blacks become emancipated from the Democrat Party, watch out.
*Turnout was high at Harrisburg’s 14th voting precinct, about 550 when I left two hours ago. This 550 number includes about 240 early mail-in voters. It will not be surprising if this precinct achieves 700 votes cast today. That is a good high percentage turnout. Whether this means anything for the rest of the city or for Democrat Party strongholds elsewhere, who can say. The 14th is largely home to political workers and state employees from both parties.
*Partisan Democrats do not care about inflation, crazy high gas prices, crazy high food prices, critical race theory, pedophile teachers and sexual grooming of school children, the open border and mass import of illegal fentanyl with the resulting deaths, FBI illegally arrested and jailed Republicans, etc. Nope. Partisan Democrats are not thinkers, they are not reflective, they are not curious, they are unwilling to engage in discussion, and they are simply focused on winning. Folks, this is a cult, not a political party.
*Establishment Republicans are a study in contrast. They don’t really give a crap about much except holding onto their political jobs. If White Liberal Democrats are laser focused on gaining absolute crushing control over every breathing thing in America, establishment Republican voters seem not to occupy the opposite end of the political spectrum, but rather somewhere else in the ether.
* Swing voters and “conservatives” are the most interesting people, and they do and will engage in discussion on their way to vote. Some are willing to be persuaded, and sometimes to try and persuade me to their view. I enjoy these voters the most. However fleeting and brief, this dialogue is the essence of democracy and representative government.
*For an hour this morning I enjoyed the company of a reporter named Sam, who works for the local public radio station here, WITF. We had a solid discussion about politics, Washington DC, political partisanship, fake journalism degrees and the corrupt partisan media that he works in, and related subjects. I have no idea how this discussion will play out on local radio. Maybe I will get SWATted.
This is all I have to report from my time volunteering at my local voting poll today. More to come as the attempts at election fraud and theft surely begin to appear in the coming hours….
Wendy and Dave Buell with yours truly. Dave is a candidate for state representative. If he gets elected, he will have to work hard to hold onto the seat. But state rep. Patty Kim is so lazy and unproductive that anything is an improvement.
The Democrat Party is *the* threat to American democracy
The Democrat Party is *the* threat to American democracy and freedoms, and you should vote accordingly on Election Day tomorrow.
Think about the unbelievable list of lawlessness and aberrant, extreme, way way out of the mainstream un-American behavior and policies the Democrat Party, its elected officials, and its professional policy groups have been pushing down our throats for the past three years:
*Sexualization of little children at government schools and public libraries by “teachers”
*Takeover of the American family, or in the alternative the destruction of the American family, through almost every taxpayer-paid public institution by taxpayer-paid public servants
*Ultra-violent daybreak raids by heavily armed federal “law enforcement” thugs against thousands of law-abiding Americans who have done nothing wrong, but because they have the “wrong” political views are falsely accused by lawless rogue Dept. of Justice staff, who continuously change the charges and manipulate the legal system to financially damage these innocent Americans.
*Mis-use of the Dept. of Justice for brazenly political purposes against political “enemies” of the Democrat Party, not the least of whom are the still incarcerated (most in solitary confinement and subject to regular beatings and deprivations of food and water) January 6th defendants who either have no charges officially leveled against them, or whose charges keep changing; not the least of whom are hundreds of thousands of taxpaying parents of school children who have been targeted by sexually perverted and child molesting school teachers and school administrators, and whose justifiably angry arrival at public school board meetings got them officially branded as “domestic terrorists.”
*The Biden Administration’s drunken sailor cashflow of hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars to everyone on the planet – Taliban terrorists, illegal aliens, Ukrainian officials, the Iranian government that is building nuclear bombs to blow up America – without any accountability or transparency.
*The purposeful violent crimewave across America, and particularly in Democrat Party-run cities and states, as a result of Democrat Party District Attorneys who refuse to enforce the basic laws on the books, and of the Democrat Party mayors and governors who have implemented no-cash bail for violent criminals who even after being arrested are immediately released and who then hurt and kill people immediately after. Not to mention the constant violent attacks by leftists on Republicans and conservatives, egged on by Democrat Party leaders, e.g. Lee Zeldin, Steve Scalise, family planning organizations, Republican protestors and and and and the list goes on and on.
*The Democrat Party’s purposeful war on oil, coal, and natural gas that our entire electrical grid – and YOUR HOME – depend upon to run every day. To the point where there are rolling black-outs in major Democrat states like California, which demands that its citizens drive electric vehicles but then will not send electricity to their homes so they can power said electric vehicles. Without a viable alternative to gas, coal, and oil – based electricity, the only outcome from this Democrat Party policy is… destruction of America.
*The Democrat Party’s aggressive enabling of China, America’s biggest and most threatening enemy. The hamstringing of American productivity in the name of “carbon reduction,” while not holding China to the same standard is but one example.
*The use of the federal administrative agencies (IRS, EPA, DHS, FDA, CDC etc) to illegally wage war against individual taxpayers and citizens and American small businesses, while simultaneously artificially helping global businesses who have no allegiance to America.
*COVID lockdowns and fake vaccines that are in no way vaccines and that did nothing to stop Covid1984, but which enriched major Democrat Party donors like Big Pharma and conditioned free Americans to act like sheep and relinquish their individual rights to the administrative state, while destroying small businesses and families.
We could go on and on here, but if you are going to vote for any Democrat candidate tomorrow, then you are voting for the above list of false, evil, extreme, and dangerous policies. And if you have any questions about this subject, feel free to ask me, or go online to Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, Zero Hedge, Epoch Times, and other news outlets that circumvent the partisan establishment media (CBS NBC NPR MSNBC ABC CNNLOL NYT etc) that continuously lies, lies, lies for a politically partisan outcome.
The Democrat Party is THE threat to democracy both in America and abroad.
So vote straight Republican tomorrow, even if the Republican Party’s flaws bother you, as they bother me. The Republican Party may have its issues, but it at least is still loyal to America and Americans and their democracy. That is what this election is about. If you like living in America, and you don’t want America to become Venezuela or Cuba or Ukraine or Russia or China, then you gotta vote straight Republican.
Turns out electric vehicles require special batteries with lots of rare metals that are only mined by slave labor in Africa
Turns out the Democrat Party’s unnecessary war on fossil fuels has cost Americans trillions of dollars that we cannot get back
The Democrat Party IS the American Nazi Party
Across America, Democrat candidates refuse to debate
Across America, Democrat Party candidates are refusing to debate their political opponents in the traditional way of testing the quality of one another’s ideas in public. Including here in Pennsylvania. They are literally just hiding in their basements and letting the mainstream media (MSNBC, NPR, CBS, ABC, etc.) promote them, without taking any risks that might expose them to the curious public.
This hiding is a goddamned shame is what it is. It is pathetic, and it demonstrates that across America the only thing standing between a political annihilation of the Democrat Party through the voting process and its basic nail-scraping-up-to-the-cliff-face survival is the Democrat Party’s ownership of the mainstream media. The Democrat media continues to act like it is a propaganda arm of one political party. And that is a disgusting shame, too. And I find it amazing that any American sits and absorbs the toxic bullshit that MSNBC and CNN (both of which I watched recently just to be reminded of how much these channels never say or try to figure out for their viewers) pour down the gullets of their lazy audience.
Here in Pennsylvania senate candidate John Fetterman, a rich playboy who pretends to be a blue collar working guy, who has never held a real job in his entire life, who has destroyed the small Pennsylvania town he served as mayor of in his first adult job, who says he wants to release 30% of the incarcerated violent felons back into our neighborhoods, refuses to debate Dr. Oz, his Republican opponent.
Fetterman is not just a liar and a poser and a faker, he is justifiably afraid of debating Oz. I am no huge fan of Dr. Oz. I was a Kathy Barnette supporter, and remain so. But at least stand up and show people what you are made of, you pussy, Fetterman. Fetterman knows his koo koo ideas cannot withstand the light of day in a public debate. And yes, it is true that Fetterman had a brain seizure and a stroke, rendering him a babbling incoherent mess in public and private. So to an extent we can understand his reluctance to appear publicly.
But if your health is that bad, Fetterman, then step the hell down and stop trying to be the candidate hiding in the basement! Being a US senator is a big deal and it requires the full abilities of the person serving in that capacity.
And what about the registered Democrat voters who are going to vote for basement dweller Fetterman, no matter what, no matter that he is a dysfunctional mess (forget that he is an admitted communist who says he wants to use his position to dismantle America as we have been for over two hundred years)? What the hell is that about? Are you voters really so tribal, so short sighted, so deep into your own partisan trench that you will vote for a candidate this bad?
Really?
In Washington State, Arizona, New York, in addition to Pennsylvania, Democrat candidates refuse to stand up and tell the voters what they believe in. They are relying on a spineless sold-out press to do that for them. And yet America actually still has a large number of voters devoted to this ridiculous political party, who will vote for any thing with a “D” after its name on the ballot.
Believe me, I don’t get the partisan Republican thing either, but at least they are not trying to turn America into a mushroom cloud or a mass of dead middle Americans killed by released felons, like the defund-the-police and release-the- prisoners soft on crime Democrats are. At least the Republican candidates show up, get stabbed by crazed Democrat voters (or run over and killed) (or shot like Rep. Scalise), and keep explaining why they love a constitutional America, with freedom, liberty, safety, and opportunity for all.
Once again, it is shame, shame, shame on registered Democrat voters for being so lazy, uncurious, and careless with their sacred votes. Sorry, folks, gotta say it. And yes, you can change. You do not have to vote for bad people like Fetterman.
Two proofs in 24 hours that the 2020 election was stolen
Within a single 24-hour period we have just witnessed two glaring smoking gun proofs that the Biden Campaign stole the 2020 election, stole the presidency, and hijacked America.
The first smoking gun with flames coming out of the barrel is the passage of a US Senate bill, to be signed into law by Biden, that funds the hiring of an additional 83,000 (yes, eighty three thousand) armed IRS agents to investigate and criminally charge every single American who the political bosses of the IRS target. If the IRS Lois Lerner politically partisan debacle past is any indication of the likely future, political conservatives will be swarmed by this literal army of political operatives. These agents will use “the law” to destroy their political opponents. Imagine millions of conservatives being turned upside down and having the loose change shaken out of their pockets, and then criminally charged for literally penny ante mistakes.
No wonder the IRS bought up millions of rounds of bullets in recent years; they anticipated this law, and guess who they are going to be shooting them at: YOU.
The Wall Street Journal just said that the IRS is “about to go into beast mode” against the American people, and only the most politically partisan anti-America authoritarians are cheering this on. President Donald Trump would never have signed this into law, because he would never support this kind of grotesquely big Sheriff of Nottingham- type intrusive government. An authoritarian was needed to sign this law, and only someone like Joe Biden would do it. So the election was stolen to get this kind of massive change on the American political and legal landscape. It is one more official weapon to be used against the political opponents of the Democrat Party.
The second smoking gun evidence is yesterday’s illegal FBI raid on President Donald Trump’s home, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. This unwarranted forceful entry raid was illegal in so many ways, but its purpose was not meant to be legal. It is meant to send a message: No innocent American citizen is out of the reach of the lawless, rogue Biden FBI and DOJ. They will falsely accuse you and unjustly charge you just to hurt you. Because you are different than them.
The conflict of interest here is obvious. Biden is misusing the federal government’s monopoly on coercive force under color of law to politically damage his likely 2024 political challenger. Only under an unaccountable authoritarian government (like Cuba, Venezuela, a zillion African countries, Russia, the 1940s communist takeover of Eastern European nations etc) can something this egregious be done against political opponents. And so the 2020 election had to be stolen in order to blunt change-maker Trump.
Friends, if the Biden rogues had won legitimately in 2020, and if like normal politicians they were at all concerned about being held accountable through the voting system, they would be treading very lightly. Instead, we see the federal government being hyper aggressively used to commit the most egregious, violent illegalities perpetrated in America’s history against political opponents of the Democrat Party, beginning in January 2021 and ramping up daily ever since.
This is powerful evidence that the election thieves feel invincible, and unaccountable. They stole the 2020 election in order to hijack the American government, and they are implementing that hijacking right in front of our faces.
Movie Review: 2000 Mules
When people say to my face that there is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from The People (not President Trump), I ask them what evidence have they looked at, because there is nothing but a humungous stinking pile of evidence of the election theft. You would have to literally ignore it purposefully to say the evidence doesn’t exist.
And you already know what these naysaying people say: Snide things, arrogant mocking things, stupid things. As if mere denial is equivalent with actual research or fact.
The truth is these people I talk with don’t care about stolen elections or proof of them, because they actually want the election to be stolen. And they probably want every other election to be stolen, too, because they simply want to win. What was that leftist chant… “by any means necessary”? So we are facing people, fellow Americans, who want full and absolute political power and official government coercive force, by any means necessary. No matter how destructive this is, no matter how illegal, or how dangerous. Because they simply want to coerce everyone else into doing what they tell them to do.
It is probably impossible to dialogue with evil people who want absolute control over other humans, and who will steal elections in order to illegally amass political power to gain that absolute control.
But for anyone and everyone else who is curious or inquisitive about things in general, and about the 2020 election in particular, or who wonders why tens of millions of fellow Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen in front of their faces, a recent movie called 2000 Mules shows how just one part of the 2020 election steal was done.
I bought two of the 2000 Mules DVDs, so that I could have actual copies of the movie when the book burners eventually purge it from the internet. And I watched the movie twice, because it is that compelling. Probably because I could not really believe what I had learned and seen the first time I saw it, I had to watch it again.
There are some things the movie could do better. I would have liked to have seen clips of Democrat Party politicians complaining about voter fraud, to reinforce that this is a subject the Left has long complained about. Even if they pretend it is a totally new subject, now that they have actually stolen a presidential election and thus sparked complaints of a stolen election.
And I would have liked to have heard more about how election fraud has been done historically, and from more than just Hans Von Spakovsky. Even if he is knowledgeable, Hans appeals to mostly one side of the political spectrum. Another voice or two from academia or think tank land would have added a bit more persuasion that election fraud is really a problem.
But overall 2000 Mules is a powerful and really intriguing movie for anyone who cares about One Voter = One Vote. You should see this movie, if you have not already done so.
Couple more thoughts on the November 2020 Democrat Insurrection Against America: First, if you want proof of the theft, just look at how the thieves are acting afterwards. They are on a lawless nationwide political manhunt for as many of their innocent political opponents as they can scoop up into the criminal justice system, to punish any way they can, using ruthless and limitless official power. The Biden Administration and the Democrat -run legislature are exercising lawless, totalitarian methods of consolidating political power to ensure they never lose an election again, to prevent anyone else from ever winning elections against them again. Or ever opposing the Democrat Party again. Nothing in the ham-handed way the Democrats are acting says that they are afraid of being held accountable for their lawlessness.
I suppose when you can control the outcome of elections, like the Democrats now do through bogus voting machines and illegal ballot harvesting, accountability with the voters is something you never worry about. Ruthlessness and intimidation are the only tools you need. As we can plainly see.
Second thing (thanks to nameless Internet commenter):
In conclusion, watch 2000 Mules, and if you have any further questions about it, its director Dinesh D’Souza has spent many hours clearly explaining its technical aspects and easily rebutting the most moronic efforts to “debunk” it (like the cell phone geo-tracking used in 2000 Mules isn’t accurate, except that it is accurate enough for law enforcement every day). Dinesh can be heard on Rumble.
Ten take-aways from my Election Day experience
With the Kerwin men, quality people
Primary elections are more important than the general election every November, because voters choose who is going to be representing them at the November election. And in the case of Republican Party voters, if you don’t vote for constitutional America-First candidates, you are guaranteed to have a Republican In Name Only (RINO) liberal running against the Democrat Party liberal in the November election. There’s not a whole lot of philosophical difference between the Republican liberal and the Democrat liberal, and after that November election between a RINO and a Democrat it’s just a question of how rapidly America is destroyed under your feet, slowly or quickly.
On Tuesday I volunteered at four different election polls, handing out brochures for Kathy Barnette, and I spoke with a lot of voters. Here are some take-aways from my experience during and after Tuesday’s Primary Election here in PA:
- Unsurprisingly, voters make both simple and complicated choices in voting for candidates. Simple choices can be lazy or principled, and complicated choices can be bizarre or carefully thought out. Candidate selection is as complex as any other choice in life, and I think that is a good thing.
- Party establishment endorsement is a negative among Republican/ conservative voters, who appear to increasingly view the GOP as a force for bad and not for good. For example, Lou Barletta’s campaign unleashed a tidal wave of Republican establishment career politician endorsements in the days before Tuesday’s election, and if anything these endorsements seemed to hurt Barletta at the polls, not help him; Doug Mastriano crushed Barletta.
- On the other hand, Democrat voters seem highly attuned to and in synch with their establishment, as witnessed by political newcomer Justin Fleming’s trouncing of long time Democrat Party activist Eric Epstein in the newly created 105th Legislative District (PA House). For at least ten years, and probably closer to twenty years, independent-minded liberal Epstein has run for everything from dog catcher to school board to state senate, almost always unsuccessfully but always with close-call results. Not this time. Apparently ten unions and the House Democrat Campaign Committee aggressively weighed in to stop Epstein from finally capitalizing on his well-known household name in southcentral PA. Fleming the unprincipled “electoral pragmatist” won with 61% of the vote.
- Money is not all that it used to be, but it can still matter in elections, no surprise. Case in point is a very small amount of money (like $157,000 total), old fashioned shoe leather, and reasonable social media networking got conservative grass roots favorite Kathy Barnette up to 25% of the vote in an eight-candidate race. This is a huge statement about the lack of importance of money. However, when the wildly false negative attacks against Barnette started pouring in during the last week from McCormick and Oz and their supporters, like Sean Hannity, Barnette lacked sufficient funds to get out her last-minute rebuttals on TV and radio that could have gotten her over the finish line to win. Enough confusion and obfuscation was created by the attacks to blunt Barnette’s position at the top, and allowed both Oz and McCormick to grow their own voter returns at her expense. Had Barnette possessed a million dollars to do last-minute TV and radio ads, she probably would have won the election.
- Negative advertising does work, and it also greatly suppresses voter turnout. At all of the five polls I was at yesterday, voting was down between 10% and 20%, and I believe many voters were just fed up and confused by all of the negative advertising. SO they stayed home and said “I will just vote in November for whoever wins this primary race.”
- Conservative voters are much more oriented toward ideology and principles than political party.
- Almost every primary election has one winner and some losers, and almost always the losers say they will take their ball and go home if they don’t win, and they won’t back the winner of their race. For weeks before and even after the election was over, I heard unceasing complaints from Republicans about how Mastriano is “too conservative” for Pennsylvania, and that his win will automatically hand the governorship to Komrade Josh Shapiro. I also heard unceasing complaints from Republican voters that Lou Barletta was too milquetoast to appeal to anyone in November, except for blue haired suburban GOPe Republicans. Folks, get used to these competitive races. They are good for us. This competition is just the nature of real and healthy primary races, something that Republicans really need, and something that the GOPe HATES. The Republican Country Club Party hates hates hates sharing decision making with the unwashed dirty masses, who keep gumming up GOPe dreams of easy ill gotten wealth and posh fundraisers. Sorry not sorry, GOPe, get used to ceding more and more decision making to the actual people you claim to represent. It is a good thing, and it is why Mastriano won by an enormous margin.
- For the most part, the GOPe got its ass kicked in PA and elsewhere in America. RINOs like Jake Corman (the sitting President Pro Tem of the PA Senate!!), Jeff Bartos, et al either dropped out or finished below 5%, while underdog candidates like Kathy Barnette and Dr. Oz scored big time vote returns against the establishment’s wishes. We are witnessing a power shift away from GOP party bosses, which is a good thing, because party bosses are corrupt and self-serving people.
- Charlie Gerow is still a good guy, and still not a catchy candidate. Once again, voters enjoy Charlie as an articulate proponent of conservative values, but not as a representative in government for their needs. Charlie is a salon intellectual in the mold of William F. Buckley, one of the 20th century’s great conservative crusaders. Not winning elections doesn’t mean Gerow isn’t relevant, it just means his strength is in policy debates and in the conservative salon of ideas. Nothing wrong with that.
- Finally, yard signs and road signs do not mean anything close to what they used to represent even ten years ago. At one time yard signs and roadside signs were a big part of electoral public outreach, but in this digital age, they are becoming less important. I would not say they are unimportant, because in some ways they can be used to get a sense of voter engagement. Like, lots of signs for Candidate X in a county or in a region probably means that Candidate X is well known there. But it does not mean that Candidate X is necessarily going to convert that name recognition into an Election Day win. Information is now moving so fast and so far across the political landscape, that just one gaffe or one slip-up by an otherwise reasonable candidate can mean the end of their lead or presumptive win. No amount of yard signs can counter a fifteen second video of a candidate doing or saying something ridiculous.
Thank you to all the voters who spent time talking with me on Tuesday. I promote candidates at polls on Election Day every year because these are people I believe in, and I believe in sharing the why and how I have arrived at my decision on whom to vote for. One thing that has not changed among voters at polls since I was a teenager is this: Liberal voters at polls are always surly, grumpy, dismissive, or disrespectful. Do not ask me why this is, but it does hint at how some people think.