Posts Tagged → RINO
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.
Conservative media for hire, for sale, for what
While the big media news these days has politically active people atwitter about Elon Musk’s market purchase of Twitter, a quiet and evil trend has thrown some data points up on the graph chart next to Twitter that demonstrate some conservative news outlets have their own issue. Not necessarily with censorship, but with selling favorable coverage to political candidates the conservative base despises.
Twitter has always censored conservatives, outright deleting their posts, blocking their links, suspending their accounts, or even deleting their accounts, as happened with President Donald Trump, for ridiculous reasons. All while allowing the most evil, barbaric, cruel, misogynistic, anti-gay, racist accounts to remain fully active Twitter accounts, such as Hezbollah, the Taliban, and Iran’s government. To say that liberals/ Leftists/ Democrat Partiers can’t stand the truth or even a dissenting point of view is an understatement, but at least they do it openly.
Something similar and sinister is up in the world of conservative media. But it is not aimed at liberals/ Leftists/ Democrat Partiers. Rather, it is aimed at buoying up and promoting known liberal GOPe Republicans/ RINOs.
When I first saw Steve Bannon’s War Room taking up a cozy role when interviewing Pennsylvania state senator and known corrupt RINO Jake Corman, a red flag went off in my mind. Because Steve Bannon is supposed to stand for everything that Jake Corman is so obviously against. It was written about here months ago.
But then the same thing happened at Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, the Washington Examiner, and the New York Post. Each of these conservative outlets either promoted Jake Corman or some other well documented GOPe RINO who is despised by the conservative voter base, like Dave McCormick. Some of the articles are written by different people, but share the same photos and some of the same text, as well as the same thrust (usually the inevitability of Dave McCormick’s eventual win in the PA primary, or an unwillingness to confront Corman on his overtly and highly publicized corrupt behavior).
Below are some screen grabs from some of these conservative outlet stories. When I plotted these data points on an X-Y graph, the only factor that correlated strongly with them was… guess what… Money.
By all appearances these conservative news outlets are taking what can only be, would have to be, huge amounts of money to write what is essentially paid advertising posing as news. Not only is this slimy and dishonest, but judging by the comments left on these articles and videos by the product consumers, the target audience smells a rat each time and doesn’t buy it.
The only result is that The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Bannon War Room, and others not mentioned here lose credibility with their audience.
Must have been a sh*t ton of money they got to so blatantly trade away their reputations selling snake oil candidates.
Steve Bannon giving GOPe RINO Jake Corman the fake and unearned but best friends forever headline
Originally titled something like “Looks like a winner is emerging in Pennsylvania senate race,” the writer edited the title after she and I exchanged some thoughts about how honest it was.
Simply judging by their happy faces, Steve Bannon and corrupt RINO Jake Corman are indeed very happy together. This is a disgrace for Bannon. How many pieces of silver, Bannon?
Same picture and sharing some of the same wording in a New York Post article about the same race, this calls into question how honest Breitbart is being here with their rah-rah “report.” Treating an internal puff poll like it is real takes money, not professional reporting.
Although The Gateway Pundit is the primary anti-GOPe conservative news outlet, it does not seem to hold GOPe Jake Corman to the same standard. Nice smiling stock photo, no questions about Corman’s effort to stop PA senator and fellow gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano from auditing the 2020 election. Total dishonest puff piece this and others by TGP about Corman. For shame.
Talk about fake news…Oz as of the date of this article is several points ahead of McCormick, who is neck and neck with Kathy Barnette. But it sure seems that money buys favorable headlines in conservative media outlets
“Only Trump can destroy Trump”
For five long, brutal years President Donald Trump withstood a non-stop cyclone of misinformation, disinformation, lies, hoaxes, endless false accusations, two fake impeachments, and outright mutiny and insubordination by federal employees and military officers.
President Trump handily won re-election in November 2020 with the devotion of his ardent supporters, and the big lie that basement dwelling corrupt, doofus failed career politician Joe Biden was president only became an official narrative because that cyclone of official insubordination and mutiny around President Trump reached its climax from November 4th 2020 through January 2021 with the help of Big Media lies and Big Tech censorship. All statutory and constitutional safeguards set up to protect sacred American voting from being tampered with failed, because the people entrusted with those safeguards deliberately failed.
And all throughout that five year period tens of millions of American voters kept faith that President Donald Trump would prevail, because they knew that only he, of all of America’s elected officials, believed in a free America with liberty and justice for all. Despite the Democrat Media – Big Tech industrial complex’s best efforts to divide Trump’s followers from Trump, the Trump Train continued full speed ahead. As it does even now, when Trump draws huge crowds to his rallies.
Radio personality extraordinaire Rush Limbaugh used to explain how the Big Media people just do not understand the connection that Trump has with his followers. Rush said many times “Only Trump can destroy Trump’s relationship with his followers. Because that bond of trust between them is so strong.” In other words, it would take a betrayal of that trust by Trump to sever that bond. No big lies, no hoaxes, no fake impeachments would ever dent Trump’s popularity.
And I think we are beginning to see that bond fraying, only because President Trump is fraying it through his own deliberate actions that directly alienate his strongest supporters. No one ever accused President Trump of being a politician, and in fact it is his greatest pride that he is not a politician. He didn’t think that way and he didn’t act that way. But by trying to act like one now, Trump is reaping the kinds of results that politicians invariably get when they literally play politics.
In the past week we have seen President Trump officially endorse for US Senate a known Hollywood liberal RINO candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, instead of a true conservative candidate who actually lives in Pennsylvania. This endorsement was so bizarre that many people are booing its mention at voter gatherings here in Pennsylvania. It is not a popular decision among Trump’s followers.
And now President Trump is actually, incredibly, unbelievably encouraging PA Swamp RINO problem child Jake Corman to stay in the PA governor’s race. Even though Corman has been the biggest obstacle to conducting an official audit of the stolen 2020 election here. Which makes people wonder if Trump is going to endorse Corman, who was just about to file paperwork to withdraw his name from the race, but who is now following Trump’s advice to stay in.
So many old adages address this situation. One goes “If you have nothing positive to say, then say nothing at all.” Another goes “It is better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” And of course Rush Limbaugh’s warning to President Trump (paraphrased here): “Only Trump can destroy Trump.”
If President Trump continues destructively mucking around in Pennsylvania politics, of which he knows little, and in which many of us have devoted decades of our lives at great personal cost while battling the corrupt PAGOP and the Harrisburg Swamp, then Trump is going to break his bond with us.
All of my friends are saying this, and I am saying it, too, as painful as it is. President Trump, we will follow you to Hell and back, if we believe that you have our backs. But when you behave this destructive way and hurt us, then we no longer trust you.