Posts Tagged → Steve Welch
Party Endorsements Damage Freedom
Party endorsements are common practice in Pennsylvania. A vestige of the bad old days of smoke filled back rooms, where party bosses selected candidates to receive party support and favors, endorsements have come under fire in recent years.
The most compelling reason is that voters feel disenfranchised. Another reason is that endorsement processes appear to favor weak, moderate, wishy-washy candidates who do not stand on their own merits or strong personal character, but rather people who will do and say what they are told.
Feeling fed up with milquetoast candidates who seem to stand for nothing but being everything to everyone, increasing numbers of Republican voters are rejecting the party endorsement process.
Pennsylvania is one of the last states to do endorsements, and the effort to end it is from the ground-up, led by grass roots candidates as well as former elected officials now on the outside of the party. Rick Santorum and Sam Rohrer are two examples. Santorum is running for president, and Rohrer for US senate.
Governor Tom Corbett recently endorsed Steve Welch for the US senate nomination, but it may boomerang. Welch was recently a registered Democrat who apparently voted for Barack Hussein Obama. I met Welch, and he publicly denied voting for Obama, but like others in the room at the time, his disavowal seemed untrue to me and was met with great skepticism by the conservative activists in the room.
It’s likely that Welch will come under fire for this as well as his unclear positions on important policy positions. He does come across as a heck of a nice guy. But more and more conservatives want gritty leaders who will stick to their guns, and they reject endorsements that promote candidates like Welch.
My own wish is that the Republican Party not make any endorsements.