Posts Tagged → primary
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.
Kathy Barnette campaign files over 10,000* signatures!
The campaign for Kathy Barnette for US Senate has filed over 10,000* ballot petition signatures from registered Republican voters in Pennsylvania, well beyond any other candidate.
*UPDATE March 21st, 2022: Final ballot petition signature count for Kathy Barnette’s campaign is over 12,000! HOLY COW! This is serious grass roots support!
Pennsylvania requires 2,000 ballot petition signatures to qualify for a place on the ballot as an official candidate for US Senate. Although a candidate’s campaign may file the requisite number of signatures, there is a small but serious cottage industry in disqualifying both voter signatures off of ballot petitions, and in DQing entire ballot petitions altogether. So, having a large (in Barnette’s case it’s huge) buffer of extra signatures and petitions means that opponent candidates will have a much harder job knocking a candidate off the ballot altogether. In this case I believe it is impossible for Barnette to be knocked off the ballot, because her signature margin is so large.
What an enormous indication this is of Barnette’s grass roots popularity. While her campaign may not yet have the zillionaire funding of Bartos or McCormick, Barnette does have the support of the voters. And if there is a lesson that establishment candidates have been taught more and more since 2008, it is that the voters don’t care about fancy campaigns or flashy candidates with impossible promises. What the voters want more than anything is a real candidate, an authentic American, which Kathy Barnette is.
Candidates Dave McCormick, Carla Sands, and Dr. Oz all recently “moved” to Pennsylvania to run for this senate seat. Only Kathy Barnette and Jeff Bartos are actually from Pennsylvania, and of these two only Barnette is a conservative working person. Bartos is a flashy RINO…yuck.
It is quite clear that Barnette is the voter favorite. Her polling is already ahead of Bartos and Sands, even though Barnette is starting fresh with no name recognition. Barnette’s public support is only going to grow.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing for the other candidates to set aside their egos and their big financial dreams, drop out of this race, and start supporting Kathy Barnette now, so that she is in her best possible position to win when the November election arrives? Why are they putting us all through this charade? Kathy Barnette already has this primary race won!
Kathy Barnette, honest to goodness all-American candidate for US Senate
Why Kathy Barnette has my support for US Senate
Kathy Barnette is an all-American lady, with personal roots all working people can relate to. Unlike her opponents (Dr. Oz, Dave McCormick, Carla Sands, Jeff Bartos), she is not false, or misleading. Her candor and earnestness are refreshing, because most politics today is a sea of garbage through which voters must carefully pick and swim.
Three of the four candidates opposing Kathy Barnette are from out of state (Carla Sands, Dave McCormick, and Dr. Oz), and they only recently discovered/ manufactured their Pennsylvania connection when they had an opportunity to run for senate. Each has a history of promoting far-Left policies (e.g. red flag laws that place law-abiding gun owners at risk of politically motivated SWAT teams kicking in their doors) that are exactly what America is dying from right now, so their sudden embracing of conservative policies that Republican Party primary voters want is waaaaayyyyy suspect.
Jeff Bartos is a proud, unabashed RINO (Republican In Name Only liberal) who changes his positions with the wind. He says he was pro-Trump when he was not pro-Trump. He says little about the blatantly stolen election of November 2020. Bartos only appeals to GOPe insiders who have zero contact with the Republican/America-First voting base.
Bartos would be a disaster as a US senator, probably following exactly in the footsteps of outgoing RINO Senator Patricia Toomey, whose 55% conservative/ 45% leftist voting record hardly represents what Americans want and need. Guys like Bartos and Toomey are overly sensitive to the Democrat Party’s Media-Big Tech industrial complex, whose anti-America partisanship knows no limits. And so Bartos would vote like former senator Arlen Specter used to vote and how Toomey has voted. I am positive Bartos will be no friend or ally to law abiding gun owners.
So away from the swampy quagmire of Bartos/McCormick/ Sands/Oz stands Kathy Barnette, a US Army veteran, working mom and wife. She is also black, which means she knows first-hand how destructive the liberal policies are that her opponents promote. And her policy positions reflect her down-to-earth life experiences.
I am proud to circulate ballot petitions for Kathy Barnette, to help her get onto the primary election ballot coming up for your vote in May.
I hope my fellow America-First voters will support Kathy Barnette for the US Senate.
PA’s ballot petitions are a Jurassic-era holdover from the days of political party collusion for control of the voters. Anyone should be able to run for office with minimal hurdles. But until we reach that pro-democracy point, I am proud to circulate petitions for outstanding candidates like Kathy Barnette
Kathy Barnette for US Senate. A pro-gun, pro-freedom candidate with beauty and brains
Kellyanne Conway’s figurehead on Jake Corman’s dead pirate ship
Kellyanne Conway, Trump advisor and advocate extraordinaire, has hired her political gun out to the Jake Corman for Governor campaign. What an odd couple, this highly principled, positive, and well spoken woman with this unprincipled, mean-spirited, spoiled, corrupt product of nepotism, Jake Corman.
It is easy for Pennsylvania conservatives to smack their foreheads and cry out “Why Kellyanne, WHY?” Because her action here is at a right-angle inconsistent with what she said and did when she was in the Trump Administration, where she fought daily against RINOs just like Jake Corman. You can’t find two more different people in politics than Conway and Corman…and yet, politics makes strange bedfellows.
I am willing to bet that Kellyanne Conway suffered a lot after the stolen 2020 election. I will bet that her private life and her finances took serious beatings, and I will also bet that she has been very nearly canceled out of just about every aspect of her prior life. She probably went from international spotlight articulate presidential spokeswoman and advocate for America First principles in January 2021, to almost a political nobody in January 2022.
That has to be tough to take. If this same kind of crushing lifetime cancellation landed on you or me, like all negativity when we went to restaurants or the library or the food store, we would be desperate to get some aspects of our former life back. It would be too painful to ignore, unless a person is substantially independently wealthy. And even then those ultra wealthy people tend to live inside their own weather system, so that even small disruptions to their personal lives are artificially magnified and extraordinarily painful to them. And if you aren’t independently wealthy, and I do not believe Conway is, then all the more so does an opportunity like this political consulting job with Corman become attractive.
I think we can all understand her needs and what this job provides her. There is no need to judge Conway harshly. And there is no need to take her seriously, either.
Thus, even a corrupt RINO like Jake Corman has something to offer Conway: some redemption, a small opportunity to re-enter public life with some dignity and public standing; some recognition of her former importance. And some big, big bucks.
Because we just know that the GOPe is writing her a huge check, because so much RINO-ism and continued political corruption is riding on the success or failure of a corrupt man like Corman. The GOPe and their little pet Jake Corman need every swinging awesome woman on deck they can get. I would not be surprised if Conway is being paid a million dollars or more for her campaign role as symbolic figurehead until Primary Day this Spring.
And what does Jake Corman’s campaign get out of spending crazy money on a figurehead like Kellyanne Conway? He gets some of that Donald Trump aura, some of that gen-u-ine all-America-First patriot that Jake Corman himself cannot produce and does not himself represent and can never have. Corman is too well known in Pennsylvania, and especially in his own senate district (where he was about to get primaried), as a corrupt phony and backstabber, to ever stand on his own two feet. After all, his entire career is due to his daddy being a state senator before him. Jake has literally never had a real job!
And oh, the irony of an anti-America RINO like Jake Corman trying to bathe himself in the stars-n-bars Trump glow, transmuted by Conway, because Corman is the primary reason why Trump’s voters never got an election recount in Pennsylvania. Corman not only did all he could to block a recount or an audit of the stolen 2020 election, but he then fired all of PA Senator Doug Mastriano’s senate staff when Mastriano got too close to starting an actual election audit.
Corman’s campaign is like an evil, rotting, dead pirate ship slipping through dark waters, trying desperately to attach a new figurehead to the bowsprit to fool voters from afar. Many people are sad to see Kellyanne Conway in this figurehead role for someone as gross as Jake Corman. I hope it is worth it, honey, because the Pirate Corman stench will never really rub off.
Welcome to PA.
Former President Trump advisor and spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway
If political pirate Jake Corman had a ship, this evil, demonic skeleton would be its figurehead
What RINO Jake Corman is hoping his evil pirate ship’s figurehead will turn into with his hiring of Kellyanne Conway
You say you want an audit of the PA 2020 election?
Lots of Pennsylvania voters are saying they want an audit of the obviously fraudulent 2020 election. A big petition is circulating, digitally. Groups of citizens in almost every county are personally demanding their elected officials get up off their butts and do the audit. Several go-getter PA state legislators traveled to Arizona and toured the election audit taking place there.
OK, so you, too, want an audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election? Well OK, here is what you must do to get it.
The biggest hurdle to a genuine audit of the PA 2020 election is the GOPe itself (GOPe means the establishment GOP, not conservatives, not patriots, but careerists who look out for their careers first and foremost, not for their constituents). In particular, Republican PA legislators Jake Corman, Kerry Benninghoff, Brian Cutler and Seth Grove are stonewalling an election audit. State senator Dave Argall may be on board with an audit, or he may not be. He’s all over the place, which is no surprise for such a crafty old political survivor.
So, dear reader, while I admire your enthusiasm and optimism for the possible audit process that is right in front of us, the best path to getting an audit is finding serious primary contenders for these above GOPe RINOs in the near future. Getting primary challengers has the effect of scaring the GOPe into action now while possibly removing them later.
Off and on for five years, I’ve been trying to get someone to primary Corman. It’s tough. Three years ago I bombarded the super voters in his district with absolutely brutal emails detailing Corman’s nepotism, laziness, lack of care for his constituents, insider dealings etc. Feedback from super voters there was overwhelmingly positive, but I was unable to recruit an actual primary challenger.
However, the effects of that email carpet bombing showed clearly when Corman was challenged in the general election that Fall by a liberal Jewish kid from out of town who openly disliked PSU and guns. Which is sacrilege in Centre County. Nonetheless, Corman hardly had a big win. There was just single digit separation between this so-called “Republican leader” and the liberal idiot flatlander. For someone so tough and important, Corman should have had a huge lead over the kid.
One can only imagine how that race would have gone with a serious contender. Even more so a serious primary challenger before we have to let some leftist fool take a Republican seat. Corman among all of these RINOs listed above is vulnerable. No one likes him. He has no allies, outside of a few PAGOP staffers and “leaders.” Getting a solid primary challenger to face Corman next spring could really help Corman find a way to do the 2020 election audit.
This is my considered response to those voters who say they want an audit. You are going to have to work on tangentially related things – personnel changes in the Pennsylvania legislature – to come back around to getting what you really want. This approach prevents us audit advocates from relying on others to do the audit, and particularly unreliable and disinterested others. It keeps the heat on those who can do the audit right now, while giving us the possibility of removing them from elected office entirely not too far from now.
So, if you live in one of these political districts (seats held by Corman – Centre County, Benninghoff – Centre County, Cutler – Lancaster County, Argall – Schuylkill County, and Seth Grove – York County), then start talking to good candidates who can effectively challenge one of these failed elected officials. Set up an election committee, get your candidate on the ballot, and then get them more votes in the primary election than the failed incumbent we need to remove from office. You might just get two birds with one stone.
Somebody Primary RINO US Sen. Pat Toomey
Few personality types bother guys more than weak, weasely, whiny men, and US Senator Pat Toomey is all that in spades, and much more, or less. It stinks to have an elected “leader” like Toomey demonstrate so little leadership quality, and even worse, to publicly flout his less-than-manly characteristics. Always appearing in public with some kind of fakey senatorial bearing, Toomey’s speech is similarly a fake serious tone, a kind of deeply thoughtful grasshopper. What a show. He reminds us very much of another phony RINO, congressman Charlie Dent, now thankfully gone from public life where he also did so much damage to the American people.
Pat Toomey is one of the great RINOs of today’s Republican Party. For the uninitiated, RINO means “Republican In Name Only,” which really translates into a liberal. Not a conservative. In it for the money. Not committed to freedom or liberty or the US Constitution.
Toomey exhibits weak-kneed indecision and back-stabbing liberalism traits pretty much every day on the job. He does not have the president’s back, but much like another RINO senator, Mittens Romney, Toomey seeks to falsely burnish his credentials by actually blocking, damaging, or criticizing the one person who is trying to right the American ship, President Trump. As if Toomey is so, so thoughtful and carefully considerate.
Toomey has been a real go-getter on disarming law abiding citizens, hatching one gun-grabbing scheme after another, always punishing the law-abiding and never, ever being tough on actual crime and real criminals. The other day he was one of a few US Senate RINOs to vote with the anti-America Democrats against the president’s border emergency wall, as if there is no border crisis, no illegal invasion crisis. Toomey might as well join AOC down at the border handing out taxpayer-funded sombreros and bottled water to illegals on their way into the taxpayer funded haven of America.
And on this new Trump-Ukraine phone call fake scandal, where a rogue spy within the American defense system filed a fake “whistleblower complaint,” Toomey says the President’s phone call may have been “inappropriate,” but not impeachable. Since when was the effort by the US President to bring to justice a treasonous and corrupt American, Joe Biden, inappropriate? America and Ukraine have an anti-corruption treaty that the president was implementing, as is his job. Toomey should have pointed to admittedly corrupt Joe Biden as the subject of this scandal. Biden used his previous Vice President position to blackmail Ukraine and to enrich his family.
Is Toomey against bringing Biden to justice?
Even worse, several US senators from the Democrat Party actually visited the Ukraine and wrote a letter, directly threatening Ukraine leaders, saying they would vote to withhold promised US defense funds if the Ukraine actually DID investigate Joe Biden’s son. How is that for hypocritical and bald-faced lying irony?
And yet, where is Pat Toomey on all of this? He says nothing about his senate colleagues blackmailing Ukraine and is ho-hum about the US President just doing his duty as president.
Like just about every other Washington, DC political hack, spineless career politician Pat Toomey remains purposefully and deeply insulated from reality, and yet he has so much negative impact on the real lives the rest of us lead. If there is one solid RINO candidate for a strong primary opponent, it is Pat Toomey. The guy has no fight in him, not for us, and it would be easy for a good primary opponent to simply tick off the laundry list of assaults Toomey has led against citizen rights and needs over the years he has inhabited this seat. Someone please primary this bad guy. You will get a lot of support from real Republicans. That is, patriots and conservatives.
Chief Weasel and RINO king, Pat Toomey, begging for a primary opponent
Feeling vindicated feels good
Like genuine apologies, vindication for having taken an unpopular but principled stand comes all too infrequently. And boy does it feel good.
Ten years ago, after an adulthood spent in politics of some sort or another, I finally became personally engaged in electoral politics.
In 2009, after the first six months of the disastrous Obama presidency AKA The Eight Years War Against The US Constitution, I decided to run against the local and then-incumbent Blue Dog Democrat congressman, Tim Holden. Holden had become a symbol of Obama and how radicalism was overthrowing the Democrat Party of old.
Just a handful of years before that, I had been the keynote speaker at Holden’s first and only debate with then-incumbent George Gekas, a fairly conservative Republican from Harrisburg.
After giving what I heard from many audience members was the best speech they had ever heard (no lie, no brag, and I did it in shorts and sandals), about my experience helping create the Flight 93 memorial, I then sat down next to that conservative Democrat and gave him advice on how to beat Gekas at that debate.
Here I was, an active Republican from a prominent local Republican family, sitting at the dais, next to the Democrat challenger of one of our family’s longest political friends, whom I had just publicly called “a formerly close family friend,” giving advice to Holden, which he effectively employed that day.
Holden went on to beat Gekas that Fall in a Republican-dominated congressional district, with a balance of pro-Life, pro-gun Democrats. It was Gekas’ seat to lose, and he did lose it.
Schuylkill County Sheriff Tim Holden represented the grass roots at that time, and he garnered an overwhelming number of Republican votes. Holden was a staunch pro-business, Second Amendment advocate and he earned his blue collar support in every other way, too. He crushed Gekas.
What had made me turn against a long-time political ally and family friend, Congressman Gekas? Probably the same things that made so many other Republicans vote against him. He had become what today we would identify as an ossified establishment politician, a careerist who would show up to vote and to eat at every free lunch, and who would do very little else.
Gekas and I had met together earlier that year, and I had left his office seething with anger at how selfish and self-serving he had made himself. Where had the patriot gone? Where was the campaigning small-business owner, the Everyman who everyone could identify with, regardless of political party?
In today’s parlance, Gekas had gone DC Swamp, and as a result he had lost my support. Back then I would not have said it in those terms, but the bottom line was that he had made the seat all about him, and not his constituents or the principles that made America great, and which I had seen first-hand were under serious assault in Washington.
Fast forward a handful of years later, and I myself was itching to run against the then-incumbent congressman, Tim Holden, Democrat from Schuylkill County.
By then Holden’s party had become the majority, and Holden was voting with radical Nancy Pelosi 93% of the time. Not the 55/45% he had done previously.
So much for the independent-minded Blue Dog Democrat! Holden had gone DC Swamp, too, and the region was on fire to get rid of him.
In 2009 I declared myself a candidate for US Congress and ended up running in a four-way primary race. At the end of the race our campaign did not win, but we finished very strongly third (with the two top vote-getters within a few hundred votes of one another). A lot of politicos and lobbyists complimented our grass roots campaign. The highlight of that campaign was getting over 50% of the vote in that four-way race in Perry County, one of five counties in that congressional district. Perry County was then, and is now, symbolic of the American heartland, so getting the majority of their votes made me feel all-American forever.
But along the way in that race I had received some harsh words, too. Some from old friends or erstwhile political allies, admonishing me for running against the GOP-picked favorite (he was an elected official and went on to lose to Holden in what many insiders even today are convinced was a thrown race).
I had written to one of them, working as a high level appointee in DC at the time, that the grass roots was “on fire” and there was a sense of “rebellion in the air.” A few more emails exchanged between us, and I don’t think he “got it” or frankly even cared that the grass roots voters were rebelling against the ossified, elitist, self-serving political class.
This was right as what was to become the Tea Party was forming, and it all began right here in Central Pennsylvania. Berks County and Lebanon County, to be precise. We did not know what we were doing then, except that we were challenging that entrenched, deaf, self-serving political elite class that depended upon us for votes, but who would then sell us out when it came to giving in on quintessentially American principles to an increasingly radical Democrat Party.
And now here we are, mid-2018, and a huge wave of grass roots, stridently anti-establishment, pro-citizen, pro-taxpayer, pro-America-as-founded candidates are winning primary elections all over America.
And the GOPe is reeling.
Sure, they got Mittens Romney as the next US Senator in Utah, and they got a Democrat elected in Alabama over conservative Roy Moore. The GOPe was bound to win one or two. But they are not winning like they used to win ten years ago. A political revolution is taking place.
Having been at the bleeding edge of that movement\ revolution ten years ago and again and again as a state senate candidate nose-to-nose with the state GOP, and having suffered personally for it, and then partially vindicated by the PA Supreme Court in a landmark case that tossed the GOP gerrymandering plan because of my state senate district and restored me and our campaign to my original state senate district, it now feels good to be vindicated by the recent electoral successes of our ideological successors and soul mates across America.
After the past month, it turns out what at one time seemed like a very few of us are not alone in yearning for a return to the basic American values and principles that allowed for the greatest, broadest diversity of success, freedom, and opportunity the planet has ever seen. The American People are largely behind us, and seemingly increasingly so by the week.
Along with thousands of other risk-takers across America who also made sometimes costly and painful personal sacrifices to run on principle against an unprincipled bi-partisan political establishment early on, I know now that I, we, are now all vindicated. Our fellow Americans are proving this by voting for their own true interests (as opposed to the selfish interests of corporations, The Koch Brothers, unions, political parties, illegal immigrants, economic immigrants, violent jihadist immigrants, socialists, etc), and electing good people who best represent those all-America interests and values.
And that feels good.