Posts Tagged → republican
Forget Recriminations, Move America & The Republican Party Forward
Forget Recriminations, Move America & The Republican Party Forward
By Josh First
November 14, 2012
More than enough recriminations are flying around about who and what caused Mitt Romney to lose last Tuesday’s presidential election: Foolish staffers, inaccurate polling, Obama redistributing private property of America’s makers to the takers and thus buying their votes, a prolonged, punishing primary, poor ground game by complacent Republicans, uninspiring/insipid/kind/tepid/limp/weak/tame/nice/flaccid moderate Republican candidates, etc. Rather than re-hashing and reassigning the blame, let’s move America and our core, traditional values forward, analyzing things we can change to guide us.
Out of all of the reasons, causes, and excuses for last week’s unimaginable election failure, two solvable challenges do stand out: 1) Biased media reporting, and 2) the poor relationship between many Republican voters and the Republican Party establishment.
‘Media’ includes both the various faux news political advocacy outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, NYT, MSNBC, Washington Post, etc. and otherwise known as the mainstream media, as well as the entertainment shows like Letterman, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, et. al.
Republican Party ‘establishment’ includes the careerist elected officials, bureaucrats, pollsters, financers, lobbyists, apparatchiks, consultants, and other functionaries and rock star groupies whose often low-risk, insulated careers and financial interests comprise the don’t-rock-the-boat wing. Registered Republican voters and tea party activists are not necessarily included in this group.
Last Tuesday’s voting data show that Romney received fewer votes than McCain received in 2008, even as Obama also received far fewer votes than his all-positive campaign got in 2008. So, despite Obama’s catastrophic economy, foreign policy failures, gaffes, corruption, and bizarre running mate, Republican enthusiasm for Romney was actually lower than Republican enthusiasm of four years ago. Despite all that was on the line, Republicans were unwilling to go to the polls. Why?
As noted, the anti-Republican mainstream media artificially propped up a failed, corrupt Obama administration, and the Republican Party establishment again demonstrated its disdain for Republican voters and activists. These two issues are totally fixable. If Republican leaders want to fix them.
That the American mainstream media are political advocates first and foremost, and won’t report facts unless they hurt Republicans and conservatives, is well known and easily proven. Well, folks, stop whining about it! Fix it, change it, shape that battlefield! For all the money that goes into promoting Republican and conservative causes, why can’t we come up with more friendly news outlets, comedians (like Larry the Cable Guy, Jeff Foxworthy), and TV shows set up for them? Breitbart, The Blaze, Drudge Report, Washington Free Beacon, Frontpage Magazine, Project Veritas and other new media deserve our support and are making headway, but wouldn’t it help if wealthy Republicans purchased some of the nation’s failing newspapers and rejuvenated them to get back to reporting factual news, like the Benghazi cover-up? Wouldn’t it be enjoyable to see some of Breitbart’s investigative reporting show up in print in hometown newspapers, or on a news channel? Can no one create a conservative stand-up comedy club, or a conservative comedy TV show, to give a platform to Jon Stewart’s alter ego? Yes, we can. Richard Scaife can’t do it all by himself.
The second issue is Republican Party vs. Republican voters, sometimes called the grass roots. As in, profit vs. principle, or, “There seems to be a struggle within the Republican Party between the traditional leadership and the conservative grass roots individuals and groups that are probably more mobilized now than they were a few years ago,” said Lehigh University professor Frank Davis, back in February. “The Republican Party has used these grass roots individuals to further the party establishment’s interests, and I think these people may want to choose their own representatives, rather than rely on the leadership,” Davis observed.
The onus for reconciling the two groups is fully on the Republican Party leaders, staffers, and functionaries; the “professionals.” Many Republican Party leaders have engaged in high-handed, controlling behavior that has alienated a growing number of registered Republicans, even the most dedicated. Republican voters and volunteers have been treated as wind-up toy soldiers, turned in a direction and told to march. Party intervention in primary races is one of the worst abuses. No matter how much the establishment may want Yes men to support the establishment’s intertwined political and business interests, the final costs are just too high. Stay out and give the people a voice, and you’ll be rewarded with more inspired voters, more volunteers on the ground, more elections won.
Some examples: First, running a gazillionaire for president during the worst economy in 70 years, where his wealth contrasted with citizens’ daily needs…does that make sense? It sure did to the Party establishment, which was long ago greasing the skids for Romney staffers into county Party offices well before the last primary closed. Sure, I like Romney, admire his business acumen, donated to his campaign, went door to door for him, blogged for him, and voted for him. But someone more blue collar, more authentic is needed to connect to and persuade regular Americans.
Second example: Grass roots candidates lost several recent US Senate races, which establishment candidates would have had no greater chance of winning, but the establishment demanded they step aside. Here in Pennsylvania, candidates hand-picked by Republican Party leaders were also disastrous failures, from the primary to last week’s general election. These candidates made perfect sense to insiders. But when trotted out into the public venue, these perfect candidates went down in flames.
The professional class of Republicans say they know what they are doing and everyone just needs to move out of their way and let them do their job. Maybe it’s true that the new grass roots activists lack professional judgment, but the professional class suffers from an inspiration gap, pushing plain vanilla, pre-fabricated, cookie cutter candidates who are “supposed” to win, but who fail after spectacularly expensive investments. The Party does actually need Republican voters to get their candidates across the goal line, so will they listen to the voters?
Which leads to the second solvable challenge — successful candidates, their Party backers, and establishment leaders must unify the Republican Party. That means putting aside egos, picking up the phone, calling their opponents, and asking to meet with them, for their support and help. Having myself run in two Republican primaries in the past three years, let’s look at how that works. In one race, the insider victor, state senator Dave Argall, graciously contacted me, asked me for help in his general election, gave me opportunities to speak in public on his behalf, and turned my hard work into a benefit, rallying the Party. Dave has had a lot of races in the past few years, and he has won all but one of them. Establishment or not, the guy knows how to treat people right, he benefits from it, and so does the Party.
Contrast Argall’s generosity of spirit with the treatment I got over the past eight months from state and local Republican officials, who did everything possible to exclude and punish me for exercising a simple American right. Despite running one hell of a strong, last-second, pick-up campaign for state senate back in January (thanks to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court), most of the establishment pros treated me like some sort of disloyal pest, with a couple guys behaving outright disrespectfully to my face. One primary voter, a supporter of my opponent, gave our volunteer the middle finger from his front door; when we looked him up on the Internet, it turned out he is a leader in our opponent’s church. You know what? My supporters noticed this stuff. The establishment candidate from my race lost in the general election, attracting far fewer Republican volunteers and votes than he should have otherwise gotten in Republican bastions. From these circumstances the Tea Party recruits its newest members, and Republican voters stay home.
If I sound cranky, let me just get an honest answer to this one question: Is there sufficient humility among our Party leaders to learn from these mistakes, to look inside, and make the necessary tough changes?
In sum, if Republicans want to win elections, they need to be the Party of Opportunity. Change the media battlefield, and also act like a good man to your Party members, including the more conservative, independent-minded ones. We are all in this together, let’s start acting like it.
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Did Voter Fraud Occur in Dauphin County? How Would You Know?
Did Voter Fraud Occur in Dauphin County? How Would You Know?
By Josh First
November 1, 2012
PoliticsPA recently mentioned the question raised about voter fraud in Dauphin County during the April 2012 primary election, and as the subject of that question, it is necessary to describe its genesis.
On April 24th, voters cast their ballots in the primary election, in which I ran for state senate, as a Republican, against John McNally and Bill Seeds. The final results were surprising in several ways, encouraging our team to look closely at the numbers. What we found seemed too symmetrical to be coincidental. We were then discouraged to learn that Dauphin County’s voting machines (indeed, all electronic and computerized voting machines) are reportedly easy to tamper with, and that Dauphin County’s machines are stored in a non-secure location where access is neither controlled nor monitored.
When I then asked Dauphin County Bureau of Elections to explain the physical controls surrounding the voting machines, my request was forwarded to Dauphin County’s elected political leaders, the same people who had opposed me in the primary. Their May 31st, 2012, official response through the county solicitor was to reject everything I asked for: “Dear Mr. First, This office has reviewed your letter to the Bureau of Elections, Dauphin County, and we must advise that your request is denied…your request cannot be honored…the information and access requested is not proper.”
Despite voting machines forming the foundation of America, one would think that elected officials would be the first people to instill confidence in the voting process, not undermine it. Here in Dauphin County, you’d be wrong.
What piqued our curiosity back on April 24th were the following factors:
1) Political unknown John McNally received many more votes than voters we surveyed indicated was likely.
2) McNally’s electoral success was contrary to surrounding voter trends, where Republican Party-endorsed candidates Steve Welch and Jenna Lewis were trumped by underdogs.
3) Many other Republican primary candidates have also grossly out-spent their competitors, only to lose, so huge infusions of Party money were no guarantor of McNally’s success.
4) Political unknown John McNally received more votes than Bill Seeds in Lower Paxton Township, where Seeds has been a popular supervisor for 20 years and had every reason and expectation to win big. Similarly, in locations where I had done very well in the 2010 congressional primary race, McNally garnered amazingly high results.
5) McNally appeared to receive one vote for every other vote cast for Seeds and First, in every single precinct but one, a mathematical improbability if not an impossibility. Think hard about this.
6) Simple research indicated that mechanical and electronic voting machines are easily subject to fraud through pre-programming; paper ballots are probably more reliable. All that is needed is five minutes and a device from Radio Shack, and a voting machine will give you whatever results you tell it to give, and unless someone crawls inside the chip’s code, no one will ever know.
7) Given the politics and criminal investigation surrounding the Harrisburg incinerator debt, sufficient motive exists to commit another crime. Whoever wins this state senate seat will have enormous influence on the criminal investigation in Harrisburg.
Now, I am not accusing anyone of voter fraud. We don’t have the evidence. But, enough factors and conditions add up to make me wonder if something happened; it certainly could happen. The subsequent lack of transparency and resistance by county officials didn’t help restore my confidence. After being turned down by the county solicitor, I submitted a Right-To-Know request, which was honored at the end of the 30-day period. To summarize the response, Dauphin County’s voting machines, and the little computer chips that run them, are not treated like the nuclear launch controls they should be treated like. Instead of elected officials from each party having only half of the access, all of the access to the machines and their chips is held by one or two people from one political party. If that’s not a recipe for problems, then what is?
So, if voter fraud occurred in Dauphin County, how would we know? More to the point, will the county adopt strict measures to guarantee that our sacred voting machines cannot be tampered with?
Trust in official institutions is the defining characteristic of American democracy. It’s the centerpiece of the rule of law, which we simply take for granted. Your confidence in public institutions is the cornerstone of our democracy and civilization. When shared institutions are corrupted, or harnessed to serve narrow interests rather than the broad, public interest, then democracy fails. Don’t let that happen.
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Finally, A Sign of Life in Harrisburg
Finally, there’s a sign of life in Harrisburg.
Tonight I attended the candidates debate between Democrat Rob Teplitz and Republican John McNally. It was held at the MidTown Bookstore, owned by leftist activist Eric Papenfuse. While his business can’t be hurt by hosting these debates (a bunch have been held there in the past), Eric still gets kudos for opening his doors to the community as a common gathering place. Thank you, Eric.
Kudos also go to Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, the founder of Harrisburg Hope, the convening organization. Alan puts a significant amount of his own time into these efforts, and the community benefits. Way to go, Alan, thank you.
As a former candidate, the format allowed me to ask a question of each candidate, and I did. Alvin Q. Taylor, also a former state senate candidate for the Democratic Party, was also allowed to ask a question, but he got in about ten questions each for McNally and Teplitz. Maybe they were more accusations than questions.
My question for Rob Teplitz: “Knowing that our individual Second Amendment civil rights are a big part of Central Pennsylvania’s culture, including both Democrats and Republicans, do you support more gun control efforts, or more crime control efforts?”
Teplitz disavowed knowing much about guns, because he has had little exposure to them, he said. He said the question posed a false set of choices, because the correct answer is both, not necessarily gun control versus crime control. Teplitz said that he supports hunting and the hunting culture, and that guns should not be in the hands of felons, domestic abusers, or children.
Liberals always mistakenly equate the Second Amendment with “hunting,” and they mistakenly equate gun control with crime control, but that last group he listed caught me by surprise. Like me and like a huge number of the children in Dauphin County, my own kids have been raised with a gun in their hands. Each of my three children has been shooting guns off the cabin porch since they were three or four years old. Nina asked for and received a rifle for her 12th birthday, and when she turned 14, she asked for a handgun. With an arsenal of knives already in his responsible possession, 9-year-old Isaac is almost ready to get his own gun. That kid can shoot.
To say that guns don’t belong in the hands of children is foolish. That is exactly where guns belong so that kids can learn how to use them properly. Like sex education before it, we need mandatory gun safety education in all schools.
To say that the beloved Second Amendment is about hunting is also silly. The Right to Bear Arms is enshrined in all of the state constitutions as well. It is about individual liberty, not duck hunting. Teplitz should take a page out of the Casey or Holden play books, answer his NRA questionnaire, and seek out an NRA A rating, but I doubt he will.
My question for John McNally was, ” As immediate past-chairman of the Dauphin County Republican Party and a quintessential Party insider, you received unprecedented financial and logistical support from the Republican Party and elected officials in your primary campaign against two other fellow Republican candidates this spring. Knowing that you owe your success to their intervention, just how much will you actually be able to maintain independence from party leaders, as you say you will in your ads?”
Thinking quickly on his feet while turning beet red, McNally said that it was me who had sent him an email right after the April 24th election “thanking” him for splitting the vote, as though I had somehow magically won the primary. McNally got it all wrong factually, but give that guy credit for both thinking on his feet and trying to turn back around the pointed question. He just might be a politician yet.
[My April 24, 2012 email to John McNally was sent at 10:33 PM and says “John, Congrats. You owe me for splitting the vote! Good luck against Taylor.”]
I gave him a raised fist pump, which he acknowledged, and he was then off to the races, accusing Teplitz of being a bigger insider and of taking more special interest money, etc etc etc. Give McNally credit for not answering the question, too. Most candidates who duck the question look foolish, but McNally attacked his opponent with such gusto that the audience was carried along with it. I like to think it was me he was really thinking about as he vented real frustration on poor bewildered Rob Teplitz. And while we are pitying people, pity the poor bewildered Republicans who voted for “the conservative outsider” John McNally (the consummate liberal Republican insider), whose campaign literature set new records for blatant horse hooey. Hand it to him, he sold himself as right, left, up down, green, red, blue and yellow all at the same time to the same people, and he got away with it. Talent like that, lying or not, requires earnest recognition. You got it goin’ on, John!
About 80% of the debate was about education, 5% about character flaws, and the remaining 15% was about other policy stuff, like abortion, racial politics, political funding, and who gets to own the fiery crash Harrisburg educational system and $350 million incinerator debt. It was a good debate.
Included in the follow-up policy wonk questions were angry denunciations, plaintive pleas, and weirdo whining for legalized pot from a yenta from Brooklyn wearing a tye-dyed tee-shirt and an explosive Jewfro. It was a really good debate.
Me? I enjoyed sitting with local coroner Graham Hetrick and sharing observations. I also really enjoyed asking McNally the one pointed question he will ever get in his career.
Because taking risks, making sacrifices, and facing adversity builds character, I really want to see the Republican Party stay the hell out of primary races, and let the candidates stand on their own two feet. I want to be able to vote for people who have strong character, chiseled out of hard work, taking bullets, and drinking buckets of crap. Sadly, this race does not include anyone meeting those criteria.
But Alvin Q. Taylor, running his uphill write-in campaign, he IS a character, and as with many other disenchanted Democrats and Republicans around here, he just might get my protest vote.
What to do with Republican “Moderates”
By a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare “as a tax.” Because Congress has the authority to levy taxes, Obamacare’s mandate is held not unconstitutional. It stands.
Obama sold Obamacare as “not a tax.” Obama lied. You are now even more greatly taxed by the Federal government.
Two takeaways:
1) Republican “moderates” are in fact liberals with a conscience, meaning that on big issues of vision and founding principles, moderate R’s are not on your side. SO: Actively support and vote for conservatives only. Moderates will sell you out on the key issues.
2) Republican senators have always allowed Marxists and other unqualified nominees to the Supreme Court to be confirmed for a hodgepodge of technical reasons. These R senators are always lauded by the press as being “high minded.” Democrats always argue that conservative nominees are “out of the mainstream,” and they fight them tooth and nail.
The result is that we get a Supreme Court stacked with justices who do not share the views of America’s founders, who think that the US would be better served with a Constitution like that of South Africa (Ginsberg), and that requiring US citizens to buy something is just fine and in keeping with the way America has always been run.
SO: Encourage US senators to fight liberal nominees to the US Supreme Court on the grounds that they are out of the mainstream and therefore unqualified.
Take back your country, folks!