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Cantor loss is shocking only to those who are not paying attention

Yes, yes, yes, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) was an important man, high up, famous, powerful…blah blah blah.  And he lost his five-million dollar primary campaign to a grass roots candidate who spent a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Hey, Republican establishment folks, are you now paying attention?

Do you maybe now understand what so many of your own voters have been telling you for years?

To wit: America is worth saving, and it can only be saved by breaking from the creeping Big Government identity of “moderate” Republicans.  That means No on amnesty, No on gun control, No on universal background checks aka gun owners database, No on ObamaDon’tCare.

In other words, Hell Yes on freedom and liberty.

Cantor failed on these issues, and his voters punished him for it.

While the NRA lost out to Gun Owners of America in this race, probably no group was more closely identified with Cantor, and the Republican establishment around him, than the Republican Jewish Coalition, a nice group I have had some exposure to.  Sadly, RJC mishandled Cantor’s loss in a gargantuan way that may spell the organization’s descent or even demise.  In many ways, Tuesday night’s RJC is emblematic of the larger Republican establishment, which also seems determined to drive itself over a cliff.

Late Tuesday night, 11:26 PM, to be exact, the RJC issued a brief lamentation about Cantor’s electoral loss and how great Cantor was and blah blah blah.

Did RJC acknowledge that REPUBLICAN voters had spoken?  Nope.  Did RJC congratulate the winner, economics professor David Brat?  Nope.  Did RJC publicly stake out hopes for Brat to follow closely in Cantor’s pro-Israel shoes?  Nope.

Instead, RJC came across as soundly rejecting the wisdom of REPUBLICAN voters in Cantor’s former district, and failing to acknowledge the Big Government issues of a) gun (citizen) control and b) illegal aliens, who are destroying American democracy, disenfranchising American voters, and robbing American taxpayers.

RJC may be a small group with great intentions, but Tuesday night, they were the lost voice for the entire Republican Establishment.  And it shows just how out of touch the establishment is with the American citizen.  Every conservative activist who reads the RJC statement will wonder what the hell is in the DC Beltway water, because it sure isn’t anything they’d want to drink.

The folks who ran and funded Cantor’s campaign, who issued public statements for him, who stood by him when he wafted in the wind on critical issues, and who bewailed his loss, are incredibly out of touch with the actual voters, taxpayers, citizens, moms, dads, students, and out-of-work-car-won’t-run Americans who are slowly, surely, awakening to the crisis we are in, and who are not not shocked that Cantor lost.

But the experts…they are shocked.

What does this portend or mean to Pennsylvanians? Here is one suggestion: Political parties are supposed to represent the voters and stand for principles. Once the PA GOP returns to that model, winning elections will be easy.

Happy Birthday, Pennsylvania!

333 years ago this week, Pennsylvania was born, when King Charles signed the Penn Charter, granting William Penn millions of acres of land in the New World.  Ever since then, Pennsylvania has been a leader in religious tolerance, democracy, and citizen liberty.  Contrast our liberties with, say, adjoining states New York and New Jersey.  ‘Nuff said.

Condolences to the Mowery family, who lost former state senator Hal Mowery this week.  Hal was a gentleman, cheerful, intelligent, thoughtful, charismatic, and without question the best looking man to ever serve in the Pennsylvania legislature.  He will be sorely missed.

Curious things afoot in our American republic

Some time ago, actually not too long by the measure of human history, Communists, Capitalists, and Fascists fought each other in the streets of Weimar Germany.

Each fought for what they believed in. What the Fascists and the Communists believed in was equal amounts of totalitarian evil, served up slightly differently. Only the capitalists had a track record, and it was a successful one that had led Germany to a place of such prominence and financial success that human nature and poor judgment had then sought to use those riches for imperial gain and human subjugation.

Weimar Germany was bad for every German. What naturally followed on its heels – Nazi Germany’s National Socialism – was bad for the entire world.

Capitalism creates such great wealth, across such a large number of people, that like bees to honey, the evil inclination of human nature is drawn to it with bad intentions.

Politicians of all stripes cannot keep their hands off of the private money created through capitalism. Whether it’s high taxes to fund government grants to preferred political allies, or outright confiscation/ theft and wealth redistribution, politicians always seek to appropriate capitalist success for their own careers and their own ends.

Yesterday I had the unfortunate experience of watching New York City’s new mayor, Bill deBlasio, get sworn in. De Blasio is a kook, a radical whose communist views are well known. No one can predict for certain what will befall the Big Apple after one term of his management, but it probably won’t be pleasant to watch from Pennsylvania (he is first-off aiming to end the handsome cab business, where tourists get pulled around in horse-drawn carriages in Central Park). And my New York friends will probably suffer significant losses to their home values, businesses, and other investments they have made in the area. Wealth would naturally flee de Blasio’s presence.

One cannot help but be intrigued by the similarity between Weimar Germany’s otherwise unremarkable circumstances, and those America is sliding into today: High unemployment, sliding currency value, inflation, and increasingly hot friction wherever mutually exclusive political interests collide.

Human history repeats itself so often that it’s both kind of silly to even suggest that America will become another Weimar Germany, and it is also silly to blow it off and pretend it isn’t happening.

De Blasio has his sights set on other people’s private wealth, and he is likely to lose a great number of wealthy people from NYC as a result. What is more worrisome is the friction that will arise and ripple out as he presses forward and is met with the natural resistance reasonable people expect to greet thievery.

“Income inequality” is his byword, and it’s just another way of saying he’s going to steal from the makers and give to lazy takers, using the coercive power of government force and threat of loss of liberty for dissenters. Other politicians are watching de Blasio, and they have already signaled their inclinations to follow his lead in their local venues.

It is difficult to imagine a more explosive arrangement or set of circumstances. Once again, one is reminded of either the 19-teens and 1920s, or even the 1850s in America. Such incompatible political philosophies are afoot, banging into one another, and one must win, and one must lose.

I hope de Blasio loses. I hope. To think otherwise is to be against the very American republic that first created the wealth he is now after.