Posts Tagged → RINO
Did FOX News throw the fight?
Much left-windrow hay has been made over the past week over FOX News settling out of court with Dominion Chinese Voting Machine Co., which FOX News had correctly, accurately, and with great piles of evidence described as being inaccurate and likely corrupted by the machines’ illegal connection to the Internet and to flashdrives.
Plus there was Dominion’s Eric Coomer bragging about how he did or would or had used his position at Dominion to block President Trump from receiving the actual vote tally Trump had earned on Election Day 2020. Coomer was Dominion’s director of security and had unique access into and control of the voting machines across America, and so his threat or bragging really amounted to something substantial. Basically the guy was bragging about having tampered with the most important election in Western Civilization in the past 100 years.
Coomer’s many partisan gaffes and showing of illegal playing cards, so to speak, would play quite well in a court room in favor of FOX News. A jury would have a tough time discounting Coomer’s claims to have illegally thrown the 2020 election.
So why did FOX News suddenly settle with Dominion, when the legal eagle work, like depositions and evidence production and cross examination and arguments, had just begun? Normally, it makes no sense for someone who has the evidence on their side to suddenly roll over and give up. And again, on the left side of the hay windrow, this settlement is being purveyed as an indication that President Trump was wrong to criticize the 2020 election outcome. This legal settlement is being interpreted by some as a vindication of Biden’s claim to have won the 2020 election fair and square.
So here is what seems to be happening to my jaded eyes: FOX News sure looks like it is unnecessarily rolling over and dying in order to paint the widespread claims of 2020 election interference and vote fraud as baseless, empty, and without merit.
And why would FOX News do this?
Because FOX News is owned by never-Trumper Republican Rupert Murdoch and his two registered Never-Trumper Democrat Party sons.
Not too long ago the Murdochs had already gone to one great and painful length to hurt President Trump’s 2024 re-election possibilities by officially declaring Trump persona non exista and persona non grata on FOX News. That is, FOX News reporters and talking heads and hosts were/ are not allowed to even mention President Donald J. Trump’s name on air, unless it is in a negative context. The Murdoch family’s goal is to make Trump invisible and thereby politically irrelevant.
The Murdochs’ political declaration of war on Trump via a supposed news reporting channel is an open declaration of war against the politically conservative FOX News audience. This is not a bluff, this is literally laying all your cards on the table, come what may. It carries real risk to the FOX News brand and to the Murdochs’ financial future.
So…Dominion…when it has now become apparent to everyone watching American politics that all the bogus criticism of Trump and the fake lawsuits against Trump and the fake criminal accusations against Trump are not only having no effect on Trump’s standing with American voters, but are actually bolstering his claim among voters to be the greatest innocent political victim in human history, and thus bolstering his just demand to be the re-elected president in 2024, it appears that the Murdoch Family had only one card left to play: The Dominion card, which looks to me like either the Joker card or the Suicide King card.
The FOX News settlement with Dominion appears to be a last-ditch effort by Trump’s FOX-RINO enemies to undermine his complaints about the 2020 election.
Because normal people would not normally give up the princely sum of $787 million dollars to settle with someone they believe to be unworthy of the money, it appears that the Murdochs are falling on their sword here to create the very public impression that they were unable to press forward with the Dominion lawsuit. Because, you know, the 2020 election “was soooo secure” and “sooooo clean.” Because in truth it was not, but such is the Murdoch family’s collective hatred for President Trump that they will deliberately pop a sacrifice fly ball or throw the fight in order to help the other side win, even at such a great financial and credibility cost to themselves.
And here is the thing the Murdoch family members don’t realize about this crazy expensive gesture of theirs: Normal people are already hip to the crazy shit that super rich people like the Murdochs do, and this throwing of the fight with Dominion looks like just more crazy rich people shit.
And given how corrupt all the Never Trumper people have been, all the lies they have told and unethical things they have done to try to stop President Trump, who is to say that this “settlement” isn’t just an even bigger charade, where Dominion quietly signs the money back over to FOX News? These people, Dominion and FOX News and the Murdochs, have very little credibility with most Americans, because it already looks like they will sell their grandmas for ten bucks to try to hurt Trump, again.
Long Live King President Donald John Trump, mofos. Nice try, but We, The People are going to run the table next year and coronate our guy, our hero, our savior.
UPDATE: FOX News has terminated its employment relationship with host Tucker Carlson, one of the very few journalists remaining at FOX News who was trusted by at least half of America (conservatives). This is yet another act by establishment elites (Murdoch family) to limit the accurate information available to American citizens. Yes, the Murdochs are damaging their Fox News business by behaving this way, but they care more about getting control of you than they care about money. They already have a lot of money, and that has whetted their appetite for getting something even better…control of you. And they can most easily achieve this by limiting the information available to you and then shaping your opinions with the fake news and misinformation they dole out. Bye bye Fox News!
Fox News played its self-defeating last-ditch card, the so-called suicide king
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.
Trump wants to be liked by the mean boys
President Donald Trump is a good guy, and it is why he keeps making the same mistake over and over with people who are not good. He understandably sees himself as a reasonable person, a respectable person, a responsible person, and he also desperately wants to be somewhat, even a little bit, inside The Republican Club.
This is why he endorsed politicians who were openly antagonistic to him: Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Brian Kemp (Georgia), to name just two. Trump keeps thinking, and hoping, that the Republican politicians who hate him and reject him will nonetheless ultimately come to like him, admire him, and appreciate him. This is why he keeps on trying to play their insider game, and he keeps on losing at it.
The problem is that the career Republicans are mean boys (and a few mean girls), occupying their own little tree house club house. And while they may have vicious squabbles amongst each other inside that tree house, their hideout remotes a closed club to outsiders. Closed even to people who may think the tree house is plenty big enough for more people, and in fact might benefit from having more people in it.
We have seen this exact same dynamic play out even down to the legislative staffers in Washington and in state capitals across America. A sense of elitist prestige and exclusive specialness. These people have spent their entire careers knitting together personal power by carving out a niche for themselves inside the bureaucratic spiderweb, and by God, they are never ever going to share that power with anyone they don’t have to share it with.
President Trump’s latest mistake is constantly weighing in on behalf of US Congressman Kevin McCarthy, a highly preened, plucked, scrubbed, and unprincipled careerist from California who desires to be the next Speaker of the US House. We can see by now, after seven failed votes among US House members, that McCarthy obsesses over and craves the Speaker’s gavel and office like various brainwashed victims in The Lord of The Rings who are caught caressing The One Ring and calling it “My precious.”
McCarthy even moved into the Speaker’s office despite not actually being elected Speaker!
Anyhow, President Trump. What a window into his mind this endorsement business has been, this public craving of his to be accepted into the mean boy RINO club, or at least to be publicly valued and acknowledged by the RINOs. It is why he keeps giving them unearned endorsements. And he knows that even if he helps McCarthy prevail and become Speaker, he will still be ignored and cast off afterwards. It is like Trump is so loyal, and so earnest, that he simply cannot fathom the treachery and selfishness endemic to career politicians like McCarthy and McConnell.
No, President Trump, these careerist jerks will never change. Stop thinking they will.
The good news is that a cool black guy, Byron Donalds, got the most dissident votes for Speaker today. Smart, articulate, brave Byron Donalds is exactly what the Republican Party needs from top to bottom. But the bad news is that instead of grooming Donalds for future leadership, the so-called “leaders” of the House Republicans (Scalise, McCarthy) are running around twisting arms and trying to hurt and threaten fellow House members for not supporting McCarthy for Speaker.
Kind of interesting how this mean boys club works. It is almost like it doesn’t matter which political party these people are in, at the end of the day they are all the same: Mean, coercive, uninterested in listening to people who disagree with them, unwilling to negotiate a settlement, and vicious. They never back down no matter how much people reject them, they are always selfish and demand that we all acknowledge their selfishness and reward it. In short, McCarthy et al are gross yucky people. Not nice.
President Trump, this is not your fight and these are not your people. Forget about it, let this play out without your participation. You can’t win here, no matter what you do. You are not a career-long mean boy and you don’t belong in this squabble.
Will DNC repay SBF illegal donations?
Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”), the badly misnamed would-be crypto Ponzi schemer who now will not be freed by the Bahamian court because he is a flight risk, was arrested two days ago because of his many criminal financial acts. Among the many criminal acts with which he is being charged are the tens of millions of stolen dollars he illegally donated to Democrat Party politicians.
SBF bypassed all kinds of well known and highly placarded legal restrictions on political donations so that he could be the number two largest donor to the Democrat Party. He was only slightly behind international villain George Soros, who reportedly donated about $40 million to Democrat Party candidates and causes in 2021.
SBF made his mega political contributions despite knowing that his Ponzi scheme FTX company was going down the drain. And many of his recipients accepted the tainted donations, despite knowing that the money was dirty and that something was gravely amiss with the baby-faced kid who had never made an honest dime in his young life, but who was now slinging mega cash like chipped beef hash at a greasy spoon diner.
And yes, SBF accepted all of the public accolades, speaking opportunities, awards, and mainstream media interviews even while he knew that FTX was dying and would soon be declaring bankruptcy. Sam Bankman-Fried is not just a criminal liar and evil destroyer of people’s hard-won savings and retirement funds, he is the extremely disappointing heir to a 3,000-year legacy of telling the truth, being straight in your business dealings, and living a clean and blameless life. It amazes a lot of people how so many of SBF’s ethnic kin have also recently fallen down on the job #1 of being a Light Unto The Nations, and instead traded in their inspiring religious heritage for a “mess of bank-note colored pottage.”
The danger SBF and his fellow financial rapists pose to the rest of the otherwise blameless members of the tribe is huge. SBF’s victims will be many for a long time to come, not just financial but also people who had absolutely nothing to do with him in any way. Such is the judgment received; as unfair as it is, so has it always been. What a huge piece of sh*t SBF is, as are those who enabled him in the first place.
What is intriguing is whether or not the Democrat Party will repay its ill-gotten gains blood money from SBF. Will the illegally donated money be given back to SBF’s creditors, so that they might be made whole? That would be the right thing to do.
*apparently Sam Bankman-Fried donated to some RINO Republican candidates, people who make a career-long living working hand-in-glove with the Democrat Party. To the working American taxpayer citizen, there isn’t a hill of beans difference between these RINOs and their chums the Democrats. Practically speaking, SBF’s political donations were 100% made to people who are either directly implementing the Democrat Party’s Marxist agenda, or who are enabling its implementation.
Samuel Bankman-Fried in handcuffs in custody of the Bahamas police. Soon to be extradited to America, this pasty faced, pudgy piece of crap deserves to spend the rest of his grotesque life behind bars for the incredible damage he has done
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.