Posts Tagged → GOPe
We The People 1, Uniparty 0
Overly preened, waxed, effete, phony pretty boy career politician and freaking corrupt as hell now former Speaker of the US House Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his brief Speakership yesterday. First time in American history, the vote on McCarthy represents a slowly turning tide in favor of We, The People as more and more of us American citizens struggle to regain control of our rogue government from an evil bipartisan Uniparty made of both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
McCarthy is the kind of flaccid, spineless, limp-wristed establishment career RINO “Republican” who does everything for his own personal gain, and for his party’s gain, and apparently zero for The American People’s gain.
Despite representing a majority in the US House, since becoming Speaker earlier this year McCarthy gave in on nearly every Democrat Party demand and Big Brother Government funding ploy. There was literally nothing the Democrat Party and the Biden White House demanded that McCarthy did not and would not cave to. An additional 87,000 heavily armed IRS agents? Sure, said McCarthy, why not have an even bigger helping of terrorized American citizens cowering from official jackbooted thugs in their homes.
Like most GOPe pukes, Kevin McCarthy is much more beholden to the politically partisan, far-left, America-hating, American-hating, Constitution hating, freedom hating establishment media like the Washington Post and the New York Times than he is to the US Constitution or even basic principles like individual freedom, small government, less intrusive government, etc. McCarthy is worried about what the partisan establishment media will say about him, and not about what his voters will think of him. His big dollar corporate donors make sure he has plenty of money to repel upstart challengers who might want more decision making put back into the hands of the American citizenry, and less in the hands of corporate lobbyists and their loyal lapdogs like McCarthy.
McCarthy did zero to represent his constituents or the tens of millions of voters who have increasingly voted to stop feeding the Washington DC beast, and apparently it was his secret deal with China Joe Biden to fund Ukraine yet again with billions of US Taxpayer dollars (as our bridges and roads disintegrate) that got him in trouble with his own caucus. Well, some of the Republican caucus, because there are waaaay too many “Republican” congressmen who are perfectly happy with the decisions McCarthy made. These are the congressmen who see themselves as the moderate wing of the Democrat Party, not as an opposition party. Gotta get these traitors out of office, Mister and Missus America!
Anyhow, kudos to Rep. Matt Gaetz for having the balls to take on McCarthy and hold him to the pledges McCarthy had made in order to become Speaker earlier this year. It is telling that McCarthy increasingly broke those pledges and seemed sure that he would not be held accountable. Unlike former speaker Nancy Pelosi, McCarthy had zero interest in unifying and holding his caucus together by giving in here and there to the conservative members by whose grace he ascended the throne (and by whose grace he was removed).
This is a telling fact: McCarthy had no interest in mollifying his conservative patriot wing. He gave them nothing, and gave the communist Democrat Party everything it asked for.
And thus it became apparent that McCarthy (and so many “moderate” “Republicans” like him) has no loyalty to a constitutional America. He blows bullsh*t up everyone’s butt, and then does the opposite. He ran as an R but acted like a loyal D. Hmmmmmmm, no wonder people ask how much secret payoff money McCarthy must have received from China or some other wealthy gift giver somewhere. Anyhow, it was time for McCarthy to be challenged and hopefully removed. Thanks to Rep. Matt Gaetz, We, The People scored 1 against the evil Uniparty.
I am surely not alone in being intrigued that GOPe Republicans and the New York Times alike are horrified, HORRIFIED at the “chaos” supposedly ensuing from McCarthy’s ouster. It is also intriguing that any action that goes against the interest of the bipartisan Uniparty, and which challenges illegal and increasingly un-checked Federal government power over us supposedly free citizens, or which legally challenges blatantly stolen elections, is immediately branded by the Uniparty and its establishment media outlets as an insurrection, chaos, illegal, etc. It is also intriguing that the Uniparty looooves a smoothly running rogue government, and hates anyone who questions it or challenges it.
Kevin McCarthy’s ouster from the Speakership is a really big deal. If nothing else it is a sign that there are at least a handful of patriots in the US House willing to take risks with their political careers for the benefit of We, The People. Turns out there are a few who understand that The Bigger The Government, The Smaller The Citizen. Turns out you and I are not completely alone in our dispute with our rogue federal government.
Some action items for the next Speaker: a) purge the US Capitol Police of lawless rogues who hate America, b) investigate and hold accountable all members of the US Capitol Police who committed unnecessary acts of violence against innocent protestors on January 6th, c) actually release all of the January 6th footage so that Americans can make up their own minds about what really happened, d) begin impeachment proceedings against lawless members of the Biden Administration, including FBI Chris Wray, AG Merrick Garland, DHS Alejandro Mayorkas, and others whose nonstop lying to Congress should land them in jail for the rest of their lives.
The mugshot heard ’round the world
President Donald J. Trump, the most illegally persecuted man in American history, had a mugshot taken late yesterday. This first-ever-in-American-history moment was associated with yet another fake lawfare prosecution by yet another lawless elected Democrat. This small but symbolic mis-use of the justice system is the loudest shot yet the lawless Democrat Party and their evil RINO partners have taken at the American electoral system, and it has been heard ’round the world.
As if two procedurally faulty and thus phony “impeachments” (the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court did not preside over the second fake impeachment, so that one was even phonier than the first), a host of hoaxes (RussiaGate, UkraineGate, whateva whateva whateva-Gate), seven years of nonstop lies from the mainstream media-Hollywood entertainment industrial complex, censorship by the mainstream media-Big Tech industrial complex, and three other fake and obviously politicized indictments and lawsuits were not sufficient, President Trump was just indicted in Democrat Party bastion Fulton County for having a political discussion with another elected official about an election in which Trump was a candidate.
Basic reasoning tells us you can’t have “election interference” when the election is over, but here we have it, another novel legal theory indictment that seems to run contrary to the basic tenets of all elections held in America, as well as our First Amendment right to free speech. What our reasoning tells us is that this fake indictment is illegally coordinated with the other fake indictments President Trump is subject to, in order to illegally interfere with the 2024 election, in which President Trump is already the clear front-runner against both Republicans and Democrats alike.
Meanwhile, hard evidence of Joe Biden’s longtime treasonous bribery is flooding Congress, and the GOPe running the show can hardly be bothered to talk about it, much less the Democrat Party mainstream media.
As many other people have commented, and as this blog has noted for years before it became common awareness, America is undergoing this illegal Democrat Party revolution because there is zero political opposition. The Republican Party is AWOL in this fight, and most of its members and officials seem to (erroneously) think that if President Trump is hung up on the cross, then no one else will be sacrificed.
What the Republican establishment does not realize is that if this illegal lawfare against President Trump is successful, then it will be implemented everywhere throughout and across America. Every single Republican will be subject to false charges, false arrest, false imprisonment, because the Democrat Party wants complete and absolute total control over every American. And why wouldn’t this be done? The Democrat Party seems to have an innate understanding of the Republican Party as a spineless, weak, feckless, fearful group of girly men and even girlier girls hiding under their beds. Only fools place their hope and trust in the GOPe.
Here in Pennsylvania we have very, very few elected Republicans who say anything about the January 6th political prisoners or about the lawless lawfare against President Trump. I get monthly emails from Republican state senator John DiSanto about things like dog collars, state grants, back-to-school events, and zero about election integrity or galvanizing citizens to protect our election system from further corruption. Nearby congressman Dan Meuser, a longtime GOPe puke, visited the World Economic Forum and fancies himself some sort of overlord, and says nothing about the J6 political prisoners or the lawless lawfare against Trump. My Republican congressman, Scott Perry, is one of the few members of Congress to say anything, to do anything, to fight back against the Democrat Party’s ongoing insurrection against the American People. But ever since the Democrat Party’s FBI thugs mugged Rep. Perry of his cell phone last year, he has been much quieter in his criticism.
We have already said it here a hundred times or maybe a thousand times, but it bears saying again: We, The People have only each other to rely on in the resistance against the Democrat Party revolutionary insurrection against our Constitution and self governance of, by, and for The People. Oh, we also have one important ally: President Donald J. Trump.
I intend to buy every Trump mugshot tee shirt and coffee mug the Trump folks are selling. I will wear them and use them with pride, because this one mugshot picture represents the most innocent man in politics being illegally persecuted for standing up for American citizens’ freedom and fair elections.
Sometimes a mugshot is a badge of honor. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. was, President Trump is being unfairly, illegally, lawlessly persecuted by Southern Democrats
Tomorrow is PA Primary Election Day
Candidates Josh Prince and Patricia McCullough are the key votes you can cast in tomorrow’s primary election, and you should vote for them. Josh is running for Commonwealth Court, and Patricia is running for Supreme Court. They each face a PAGOP-endorsed insider establishment opponent who is either not qualified at all or not nearly as qualified as Josh and Patricia.
Running against Patricia is GOPe-supported Carolyn Carluccio, a Montgomery County trial court judge, who, I am told by attorneys who have argued cases in front of her, cannot point to a single case where she she has upheld the constitutional rights of We The People. Carluccio + RINO = spineless jellyfish = The People Lose Again.
McCullough is the opposite, having spent her time on the bench doing what judges are supposed to do, which is protect the rights of The People.
Josh Prince is a well-known attorney in Pennsylvania, who has devoted himself to protecting our individual rights. We wrote about him earlier. He has been my guardian angel battling a lawless Harrisburg City’s illegal anti-gun ordinances. Incredibly, his opponent has never even argued a case in a court room. How does the political establishment even come up with candidates like this? So lame.
Please vote for Prince and McCullough tomorrow, Tuesday May 16th. You will not be sorry.
Why RINOs keep on RINOing
Despite my working out in the boondocks, I still cannot get away from the politics of presidential campaigns and Washington, DC. Not only do I pay attention because EVERY American should pay attention to politics – it is the lifeblood of our constitutional republic, and without the involvement of The People, it dries up and blows away – but I pay attention because this 2024 election is the last gasp we Americans have for freedom and free air. We are ever so close to losing our freedoms to the DC Swamp.
Two particular forces are at work against We, The People and our freedoms. One is the Left, which includes the entire Washington, DC, professional establishment, including federal employees at every agency and commission, the media, and the Democrat Party. The second force is the Republican Party establishment, or the GOPe, which includes Conservative, Inc. and conservative establishment media.
Members of this second group are often referred to as “RINOs” because they are “Republican In Name Only.” They are not politically or culturally conservative, and they usually stop well short of doing anything that actually challenges the Left. Some people call RINOs controlled opposition to the Left, but I think that is just an occasional role that the GOPe must play in order to advance what they think their own interests are. More than anything, the GOPe RINOs are deeply self-interested people, with their own values, their own visions and views, and the truth is, their views are truly unique.
Not that being selfish, unprincipled, and lazy on a battleground where if the Left wins, everyone loses all their freedoms tomorrow, is such a uniquely cool thing. But it is true that the GOPe is made up of people who in their own minds believe they occupy some unusual and well-considered ideological place. And while the rest of us can’t see it or understand it, and while the GOPe in all their ideological purity seems to be really no different than the Left, practically speaking, the truth is, we average Americans are dealing with a group of people who think very differently than we do.
Someone recently commented online that Florida governor Ron DeSantis can never understand a President Donald Trump, or even Trump’s voters, because DeSantis is a product of elite educational institutions (Yale, Harvard), while Trump is a product of street work and street smarts and making deals to make everyone on the street a winner in some way. I think that comment is a true insight, because it gets at the roughly 20% “White Wine” voters in the GOP who really like DeSantis and identify with him. They are elites, or at least see themselves as elites, definitely as superior to the rest of us unwashed beer drinking “deplorables” who work for a living. And thus, they feel none of the raw fear of failure that everyone else in America is feeling right now. RINOs don’t see Trump as a lifeline in a storm, they see him as blocking them from getting the control they want (and which they are very good at getting even from an inferior force and position in Congress).
And so political careerist DeSantis is going to keep trying to claw his way up the political ladder, whether he makes a good impression or not as a presidential candidate (few Republicans doubt his good abilities as governor of Florida). He has the backing of the GOPe, the RINOs, the Republican “elites” who are not ever ready to rumble to win. Someone quipped that the RINOs are the people who always show up with a bag of golf clubs and a little white “I surrender” flag, and while they are not quite that useless and fickle, there is more than a seed of truth in it. They are not brawlers.
So why won’t the RINOs support President Donald J. Trump, who already gave us the best four years America had enjoyed in a very long time? Because RINOs can afford the economic downturns that destroy most other people, and like the Left, with whom they are almost always in bed, and which is committed to communist revolution, the RINOs are just as ideologically committed to being “moderate” at any cost. Makes no sense, but it works for them in their heads.
So RINOs are gonna RINO and there is very little hope of persuading them to join the ranks of the people who clean their pools, maintain their golf greens, and work on their cars. The GOPe RINOs occupy their very own little place on the political map, and they intend to stay right there. Just like they tried and failed with neon-green RINO Dave McCormick in the 2022 PA senate seat race, the RINOs are trying to get a very similar Ron DeSantis into the White House in 2024. DeSantis has more of a good track record to run on because of his successes in Florida, so he is a real candidate for president, but as we have seen in the past few days, DeSantis on the national stage is like a deer in the headlights.
And that is because RINOs cannot ever have the genuine answers to the critical questions that real Americans want to hear. They can’t, by definition; they just don’t see the world the way the rest of us do. RINOs are neither leftist revolutionaries nor conservative pragmatic survivalists. RINOs are self-limited by their self interest, and by their belief that they alone should be in charge of running things, and when pressed to explain this in public, they bumble and stumble like Ron DeSantis has done the past few days. RINOism only makes sense to RINOs.
So count on Ron DeSantis staying in the presidential race, no matter what, even though he has a snowball’s chance in hell (assuming Trump survives the efforts to assassinate him) of winning. It is because DeSantis is the RINO protest vote against all the Deplorables and their leader, Trump. This is all they got, and they are gonna play it. RINOs gonna RINO…
So to all the Deplorables out there, move on and expect nothing but protest after protest from the GOPe. They are not on America’s team, they are on their own team. We are going to have to win 2024 without them.
Trump or DeSantis for president?
The question is being asked about which candidate we should support for president, Donald J. Trump or Ron DeSantis. The other compelling candidate is Vivek Ramaswamy, whose simple yet articulate promotion of basic American and Western values is a welcome breath of fresh air amidst all of the GOPe RINO DC Swamp trash talk coming from Chris Christie (career politician), Nikki Haley (career politician), Mike Pence (career politician and proven traitor to America) and other washed-up has-beens.
To me this is a super simple choice. On the one hand we have a proven warrior who has suffered terrible persecution for his love of our nation (which is seen as a threat by the enemies of America, both foreign and domestic), and who yet stands firm and unwilling to bend or break against a huge tide of evil and corruption. We know everything we need to know about this candidate, and we know his capabilities. This is President Donald Trump, a political savior and hero of historic importance.
On the other hand we have a guy who is doing an outstanding job as governor of Florida, just now starting to really prove himself. I like Ron DeSantis’ policy positions, and he has earned my admiration for all of the political heavy lifting he is doing in Florida. Recently re-elected Governor DeSantis is showing every other governor who cares how to effectively fight back against the culture war being imposed upon us.
The problems with DeSantis are: In order to run for president he must break Florida’s Resign to Run Law, which requires him to resign from the governorship he just won. Instead of resigning, DeSantis is trying to get the Florida legislature to eliminate the law. This law serves a valuable purpose of keeping power-hungry career politicians from using their current elected office as a power base from which to climb ever higher without taking some real risk of losing that same political power they have already achieved.
What this tells us about DeSantis is that he is yet one more young man in a big hurry. And frankly I can’t stand these kinds of people. If we have seen one we have seen a thousand of them, mostly young guys in love with themselves, with their image, just desperate to validate their grandiose self image by being elected to office. And whatever office they do get elected to is never enough. Their egos and ambitions are just too great, and we have all seen a thousand times before how there is no room for We, The People in the lives or thoughts of these self-centered guys. Unfortunately, the openly ambitious DeSantis falls squarely into this demographic. Time will tell if he is able to shake off the ambition and focus solely on public service.
Some other concerns about DeSantis: Where was his voice about the lawless FBI raid on President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home in Florida? Why didn’t DeSantis use the Florida state police to physically block the FBI Brownshirts? And where is DeSantis’ voice now that President Trump is being threatened with a totally phony arrest warrant from the blatantly corrupt New York City DA? Doesn’t DeSantis realize that whatever happens to President Trump is what is going to eventually happen to him, Ron DeSantis?
Governor DeSantis can tell any and all tin star lawless thugs from NYC that they will be arrested the minute they set foot in Florida. But he doesn’t. It is almost like DeSantis is happy to see President Trump be attacked so that he, DeSantis, will have the field cleared for him. Nope, Ron, that is not how this is going to work out. If you do not stand up for Trump now, then you will find yourself attacked similarly and you will have no one there to defend you when your own time arrives.
Finally, the people supporting Governor DeSantis are the usual GOPe suspects America cannot afford ever again. The Bush family, RINO Paul Ryan, you name it, DeSantis’ supporters are a league of war mongering DC Swamp uniparty villains. Again, this says everything about DeSantis’ intense ambition, and his lack of understanding about how the 2024 election is not about him, but rather about the well-being of America. So, no thank you, on this count, too.
President Trump is the only person who stands between us American citizens and the utter dissolution of our nation at the hands of self-interested politicians in both political parties and the Washington DC Swamp industrial complex bureaucracy. We have just this one last election in 2024 remaining to us voters before we are totally washed away in a tidal wave of lawlessness and vote stealing that will gut our constitutional freedoms and turn us all into slaves of big government.
For these reasons, President Donald John Trump has my unfettered support in his last and most important political campaign, the 2024 election for president. This is a campaign to save America, not just to make it great again.
The Uniparty. Corrupt Joe Biden with GOPe Kevin McCarthy palsing around together on the American taxpayer dime
General Robert E. Lee was a Democrat Party bigwig. The Confederacy was the Democrat Party. Slavery was a Democrat Party institution.
Are you in a (political) cult?
Politically active Americans pride themselves on having knowledge and basic principles that drive their political views and commitments. This goes for both left and right and especially the non-devoted “independents.”
But given how extremely out of kilter America’s economic and political landscape is right now (five dollar gasoline and 8.6% inflation by design of the Biden Administration, and lawless FBI thugs illegally performing the old Nazi Gestapo’s political function by arresting innocent political opponents of the Democrat Party), we have to ask if Americans on both the left and the right are politically devoting themselves to a form of cult worship. As in blindly supporting a political party or a political figure, regardless of how far away this devotion takes them from the essential beliefs they once held.
Because I was long ago a Democrat, and I have since fleeing that political party nonetheless long co-mingled with Democrat Party members, I have a base line for comparison, and so I will start here.
I am incredulous at how tenaciously so many Democrat Party members cling to that brand, despite so many widely deviating policy positions pouring out of it. John F. Kennedy, vaunted Democrat Party icon even today, would have zero in common with the Democrat Party of today were he resurrected and inducted back into American politics. Rather, JFK would by today’s standards be a far-right Republican. This is because the Democrat Party has now abandoned every essential principle on which it stood, and has instead embraced and championed every anti-America, anti-child, anti-woman, anti-freedom, racist, Marxist, anti-America policy possible.
Given that the Democrat Party now stands for everything that is the opposite of what it used to stand for, it naturally follows that we ask if those Americans who are nonetheless still devoted to this organization are mentally in a cult. Like, they don’t realize it, and their blind devotion to something so profoundly destructive is an emotional response and not a reasoned response.
Look, if you so closely personally identify with a political organization that has repeatedly and radically changed its policies not just over your lifetime but over the past ten years, so strongly that you take it deeply personally when someone criticizes that organization, then yeah, you have a cult follower mindset. Because you have lost sight of the fact that all organizations are created to implement certain goals, and they are very rarely a personal reflection of you. This particular Democrat Party organization has shown zero fidelity to what it once represented…so how can you continue to so closely identify with it?
So I think the answer is Yes, especially a great many older Democrat Party members today are in fact in a cult mindset. They are emotionally loyal to an organization that is killing their grandkids’ future, and that personal attachment, that emotional way of thinking is why so many older Democrats then become absolutely enraged and incapable of maintaining a calm, logical discussion about policy and politics when their political party is criticized.
No debate is allowed, walls go up, friendships and even family relationships are ended. We all see it. It is tragic. It is unnecessarily destructive, and yet, this cult mindset persists.
Now, let’s look at the political right.
The American right is splintering along several philosophical paths, and it is amazing that the Republican Party has been able to provide a big enough “tent” to house all of these different views.
One path is religious, and not just Christian, but Sikh, Hindu, orthodox Jewish, and probably a few others. These are traditionalists who value family and community structures above all, and who ascribe religion with the capability of holding it all together. The crazier and more stridently anti-religion the Left gets (First Amendment be damned), the more these disparate people find themselves sharing the same fox hole. And based on my own personal experience, there are religious Christians who strongly oppose other religions, or liberal factions of other religions, but who nonetheless find themselves in league with them by necessity or by happenstance. Nothing wrong with that, as America is based on different people with the same shared values.
Another philosophical path on the right is the Small Government/ Big Citizen American. These are people not very religious, but devoted to running their small businesses, caring for their families, enjoying life, planning for their future. They see and reject the Left’s policies targeting everything they have worked for. They are especially at odds with Big Government + Big Tech taking control of their every thought, decision, communication, and bank account, and thereby reducing the citizen to a very small role in what is supposed to be a representative government tailor-made of, by, and FOR the citizen.
Finally, there are the nationalists, for whom a constitutional republic America represents the penultimate in human achievement. Some nationalists may be religious, of course, but there are a lot of proud Americans who rightly worship the American flag’s unique symbolism of freedom, liberty, opportunity.
Into the ointment of these neat little conservative philosophical categories flies the presence of President Trump. Without question there is a well-earned cult of personality surrounding President Trump, to whom myriad supporters often ascribe superhuman powers of discernment and strategery. It is a fact that President Trump saved America from the uniparty in 2016, and probably created a great national revival and awakening by having his re-election stolen in 2020. And so he deserves our adoration and appreciation, even if he isn’t really magic.
However, if there is any cult-like mentality on the right, it is among Trump Faithful who follow his every political endorsement, no matter how poorly reasoned or considered. Trump has made a bunch of frankly bizarre political endorsements around America that has left many of his supporters scratching their heads, like Dr. Oz here in PA and RINO Minority Leader Congressman Kevin McCarthy in California. Quite lovely primary battles are unfolding in Arizona and Nevada, where a couple of Trump’s endorsed GOPe candidates are being strongly rejected by Trump Faithful voters. They say that Trump showed them the way to the promised land, and that he has now has gotten bogged down in politics, which was never his strong hand.
And that right there shows that even among the Trump personality cult following on the right, there is both careful reasoning for why he earns support, and how there is disagreement with him over politics. Americans are understandably drawn to the only truly pro-America and non-political political candidate in many decades, President Donald J. Trump. Even those who openly adore the man also openly disagree with him.
I don’t think there is a political cult on the right. There definitely is one on the left.
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.