Did Bob Hugin arbitrarily put NJGOP on the side of LGBTQ+ Curriculum?

By Rubashov
 
All across America, parents want the right to control the sexual indoctrination of their children. They are trying to re-establish primacy over when and what their children will be exposed to. Until recently, parental primacy over such matters was a given – universally accepted. My house, my rules.
 
Special interest money – their lobbyists and activists – ran a successful stealth campaign that undermined parental rights. Until the COVID pandemic sent school children home and distance learning exposed their parents to the curriculum they were learning from. The backlash was predictable.
 
Many in the academic, media, corporate, and political establishment are in hock to the special interest money that looks upon public schools as their house, their rules. Of course, what they forget is that property tax payers pay for most of the public education in New Jersey – and income tax payers pay for the rest. That’s whose house it is. The establishment are really just a group of squatters. Illegal trespassers. Which is why they need to cheat.
 

***

 
If you are a member of one of the world’s traditional religions – and literally billions of people are (billions) – the word “pride” carries a warning with it. Throughout the world’s great faiths, “pride” is something to keep in check. The Buddha warned to “let go of anger, let go of pride.” In Hinduism, pride is a poison that presents an obstacle to one's peace and happiness. Islam warns us that “evil is the abode of pride.”
 
In the Christian tradition, pride is the original sin. Thomas Aquinas argued that all other sins stem from Pride, making this the root sin and the most important to focus on: “Inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin...the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule.”
 
In modern America (and elsewhere in the West) we no longer celebrate many of the Christian holidays, but we do celebrate the Advent-long festival of Pride, named after one of the seven deadly sins of the Bible (listed, in order, as “pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth”). What anthropologists of the future will make of it we can only guess?
 
Who came up with such a name might be their first question? Apparently, it is generally accepted that the term was first used during an act of violence – specifically, a riot, directed at the police. Think of it as if America celebrated the Boston Massacre instead of Independence Day. The Stonewall Riot (“Stonewall” being the name of a bar) took place on June 28, 1969. It has also been called the Stonewall Uprising and the Stonewall Insurrection. The term “Pride” came from the brain of one of the insurrectionists, Brenda Howard, known as the “Mother of Pride”.
  
Brenda Howard was a Marxist and anti-war activist who became a feminist because she believed the anti-war movement was too dominated by men. According to Wikipedia: “In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help co-ordinate services to the region's growing Bisexual community. She was also an active member of the early bisexual political activist group BiPAC/Bialogue, a Regional Organizer for BiNet USA, a co-facilitator of the Bisexual S/M Discussion Group and a founder of the nation's first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals. On a national level, Howard's activism included work on both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation where she was female co-chair of the leather contingent and Stonewall 25 in 1994. In addition to being openly bisexual, Howard was openly polyamorous and involved in BDSM.”
 
That said, Brenda Howard’s most profound accomplishment must be her etymological feat of turning what had been every religion’s sin – Pride – into America’s foremost high holy month. A stunning achievement by any measure.
 

***

 
The advance of so much of the “Pride” agenda has been done apart from the democratic process. Public pressure, threats, name-calling, and ostracization have featured heavily in moving the agenda forward. Special interest group lobbying, political contributions, and appointed judiciaries won victories instead of democratic argument and the votes of both legislatures and electorates. America didn’t get it done the way countries like Ireland did, by a democratic vote of the people, and so the winners have never been comfortable in the way that those who win the hearts and minds of actual voters can be.
 
And so the ceaseless, insecure demands continue. The insistence that more can always be done… must always be done. What should have been a celebration of “live and let live” or “do your own thing” has taken the form of religious proselytization – a replacement religion of a kind America has never had: Standardized, mandatory, practiced everywhere and by everyone… or else, face the consequences.
 

***

 
Democracy requires humility. It requires the wisdom to reject certainty, that one side has all the answers, and the good nature to accept that “this time we lost but there is aways next time”. Religion is not like that. Religion seeks adherence because it believes that there is only one truth and that everyone should accept it. That is how “Pride” resembles a religion – because it leads otherwise honorable people to subvert democratic solutions in favor of “getting the job done, one way or the other”.
 
And so, we come to the NJGOP and its Chairman, Bob Hugin. Instead of calling for a meeting of the members of the Republican State Committee, to put before them the question of whether they wanted the NJGOP to formally go on the record as celebrating the secular/religious holiday of “Pride Month” (just as they acknowledge and celebrate the secular/religious holiday of Christmas), either Hugin or someone in authority at the NJGOP arbitrarily did so without a vote. The May meeting was cancelled. A June meeting has yet to be held.
 
Sussex County’s Nick D'Agostino, the newest member of the Republican State Committee, bravely took on the party. Under the “Pride flag” posted on the NJGOP’s website, Nick wrote:
 
“You don’t speak for all of us in the NJGOP. Many of us believe the American Flag represent ALL of us and refuse to pander to the woke left. Many of us believe God is in control and not cancel culture. Many of us understand that voters choosing between a Democrat and a wannabe Democrat, will choose the actual Democrat… almost every time. Ultimately though, the people are in charge. They are waking up and they are sick of losing elections and their freedoms. Soon, every weak Republican will be replaced with true patriots and principled conservatives. Then, and only then, NJ will turn red!”
 
Nick D'Agostino spoke up for democratic principles and the consent of the governed. Nick spoke truth to power. That took guts and leadership. Godspeed.

Sussex County Republican State Committeeman Nick D'Agostino and wife Breelagh.

Nick also serves as President of the Sussex-Wantage Regional Board of Education.

Author and civil rights pioneer Lillian Smith gave this sound advice when she accepted the Charles S. Johnson Award for her work:

“It is his millions of relationships that will give man his humanity… It is not our ideological rights that are important but the quality of our relationships with each other, with all men, with knowledge and art and God that count.

The civil rights movement has done a magnificent job but it is now faced with the ancient choice between good and evil, between love for all men and lust for a group’s power.”

“Every group on earth that has put ideology before human relations has failed; always disaster and bitterness and bloodshed have come. This movement, too, may fail. If it does, it will be because it aroused in men more hate than love, more concern for their own group than for all people, more lust for power than compassion for human need.”

“We must avoid the trap of totalism which lures a man into thinking there is only one way, one answer, one option, and that others must be forced into this One Way, and forced into it Now.”

Reagan’s 11th Commandment and the hypocrisy of the political class

By Steve Lonegan

A group of political grifters (such as Anthony Scaramucci and George Conway) and career liberals (including Bill Weld and Christine Todd Whitman) put out a letter condemning the RNC for censuring two GOP members of the congressional commission investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Two former New Jersey Congressmen (Rodney Frelinghuysen and Leonard Lance) signed that letter. Their letter ignores the fact that the January 6th riot capped off a year of political riots and violence, which kicked-off a wave of street crime that continues to this day.

Instead of looking at the totality of what happened in America and figuring out why it happened, the Democrat-controlled commission and its Republican cheerleaders want to narrow their focus for political purposes. They want to ignore the hundreds of incidents that happened, that killed and harmed many, and cost billions – to focus on just one. The reasons are transparently political and most fair-minded people know this.

The letter attacking the RNC contains this piece of vile hypocrisy: “There can be no justifying the horrific attack that day, and we condemn the Committee for excusing the actions of men and women who battered police officers, ransacked our nation’s capital…”

Didn’t we watch countless members of the media and the political class justify a year of politically inspired arson and violence visited on America’s cities during 2020? Didn’t we hear the excuses as the police were denounced, attacked, battered, and murdered? How many businesses, places of employment, were ransacked and burnt to the ground?

To top it off, didn’t a chamber of the New Jersey Legislature pass a resolution praising the organization behind those riots and the torching of America’s cities? What did Congressmen Frelinghuysen and Lance do then? Did they send a letter condemning the Legislature for being apologists for violence and anti-police hatred? No, they sat on their hands – in silent consent.

It’s so predictable but always amusing when a liberal Republican pulls out the mythological 11th commandment of Ronald Reagan. It’s the only time liberal Republicans reference the Great Communicator and conservative icon. New Jersey’s liberal NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin pulled this maneuver out of mothballs to deflect from his vote against the National Republican Party’s resolution censuring of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for failing to investigate the year of political violence that struck America’s cities, and instead shilling for the Democrat Party in their abuse of prosecutorial power for political gain.

Hugin used the often-misplaced 11th commandment attribution as an excuse for initially dodging questions on how he voted on the censure. In fact, it was not Ronald Reagan’s at all. It was attributed by Reagan to California Republican State Chairman Gaylord Parkinson. A Wikipedia entry notes:

The goal was to prevent a repetition of the liberal Republican assault on Barry Goldwater, attacks which contributed to Goldwater's defeat in the 1964 presidential election. East Coast Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller labeled Goldwater an "extremist" for his conservative positions and declared him unfit to hold office. Fellow Republican candidate for Governor George Christopher and California's liberal Republicans were leveling similar attacks on Reagan. Hoping to prevent a split in the Republican Party, Parkinson used the phrase as common ground. Party liberals eventually followed Parkinson's advice.

Christopher would lose to Reagan in the Republican primary, and Reagan would go on to defeat incumbent Governor Pat Brown, the father of future California Governor Jerry Brown.

Reagan followed this "commandment" during the first five primaries during the 1976 Republican primary against incumbent Gerald Ford, all of which he lost. He abandoned this approach in the North Carolina Primary and beat Ford 52–46, regaining momentum and winning a majority of delegates chosen after that date.

In 1976, after losing the New Hampshire primary and trailing Gerald Ford, the Reagan campaign moved to North Carolina. It was in NC that Reagan met with Senator Jesse Helms and my good friend and mentor Arthur Finkelstein, may they rest in peace. Reagan had been nice to Ford up to that point, but Helms and Arthur told him it was time to go on the attack. Ronald Reagan took this advice, abandoning any 11th Commandment nonsense and ripping apart Ford for the selling the Panama Canal. Reagan won North Carolina and would go on to win Texas (with 100 delegates), shocking the liberal Republican establishment. It was too late in the primary for Reagan to recover from his earlier losses but he became a force that would change the face of the Republican Party, despite the best efforts of the liberal wing of the party to stop him.

At the 1976 convention the nomination went to Gerald Ford who later that night invited Ronald Reagan to speak. Reagan delivered one of the greatest speeches in convention history. I believe that on that evening many delegates on the floor realized they had nominated the wrong guy.

Apparently, the youngsters who work for Bob Hugin are not aware of the history behind the so-called 11th Commandment. Since Reagan’s presidency the tables have turned, and the 11th Commandment has been more often used by liberal Republicans who don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.

The actions of the NJGOP over the last month should be a wake-up call for conservatives of all stripes to face the obvious fact: The liberal Rockefeller wing is back and Bob Hugin is its leader. Hugin is hostile to the views of the vast majority of registered Republican voters in this state. And if you don’t believe me, do a poll.

- Mayor Steve Lonegan is the Father of the Conservative Movement in New Jersey.

Ronald Reagan addresses the Republican National Convention in 1976. Talks platform and freedom and unity, outreach, & victory.

It is worth watching.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

Is the NJGOP’s Bob Hugin a “Reagan Republican”?

By Rubashov

A few hours after a Jersey Conservative column by Steve Lonegan asked the question, NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin confirmed he had opposed an effort by supporters of former President Donald Trump to pass a motion censuring the efforts of two GOP congress members serving on the commission investigating the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. Hugin had dodged answering for several days, until Lonegan, the Father of the Conservative Movement in New Jersey, posed the question in these pages on Monday afternoon.

In explaining his opposition, Hugin issued a statement that was quoted yesterday in the New Jersey Globe: “As a Ronald Reagan Republican who believes in his 11th Commandment, I believe we should be laser focused on beating Democrats and holding Joe Biden accountable, and so I voted against the resolution.”

Hugin continued: “That being said, while I believe those who broke the law on January 6th should be held accountable, the Commission set up by Pelosi does no such thing because it is being weaponized as a partisan, political tool and a sham attempt to distract from the many abysmal failures of Joe Biden and the Democrats.”

In other words, Hugin opposes an effort by Pro-Trump Republicans to criticize Anti-Trump Republicans who are criticizing Pro-Trump Republicans. Hugin believes the vehicle for this criticism is a partisan “tool” and a Democrat “sham”, but he wants to refrain from criticizing the Republicans involved in it. Why? Hugin claims he is doing this because he doesn’t want to criticize other Republicans.

That is a rather convoluted statement dreamed up by the staff at the NJGOP. In contrast, National Committeeman Bill Palatucci was direct in his opposition to the motion to censure: “Terrible action by the RNC but too few of us in the room to object and stop it. The Resolution we should have considered would commend Mike Pence for standing up for the Constitution and saving the Republic.”

You might disagree with Bill Palatucci, but that kind of honesty is refreshing. You can’t ask for more from someone than an on-the-level statement like that.

What struck us odd was Chairman Hugin’s claim to being a “Ronald Reagan Republican”. Words have meaning when they are not being used as slogans to pacify and obscure. Behind words, there are policies that inform their meaning.

Ronald Reagan, the author of a book that takes a Pro-Life position on abortion, is well remembered for the Pro-Life plank he insisted be part of the RNC platform. Generations of New Jersey Republicans have opposed the Reagan abortion plank, and Bob Hugin’s position appears to be in that vein. As a candidate for the United States Senate in 2018, Hugin was clear about his anti-Reagan position. A Bergen Record/ NorthJersey.com story from October 22, 2018, reported Hugin’s position:

Abortion rights: "I am pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, and strongly support equal pay for equal work. Politicians would rather point fingers. I will be different." — campaign ad, nomination speech

The same article provided U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin’s position on the Second Amendment:

Gun rights: "I’m a big believer in the Constitution and the protection of our civil constitutional rights. But I think New Jersey has strong anti-gun laws, or strong gun-control laws, which I think I’m supportive of. I believe teachers and children should be our priority, and safety is our No. 1 issue ... I believe in sportsman’s rights, rights to own the gun. I think you have to look at the specifics of legislation to make sure it’s appropriate, but I’d always side with teachers and children as my first priority.” — interview with USA TODAY Network New Jersey

In contrast, here is Ronald Reagan speaking on the subject…

President Ronald Reagan discusses the Second Amendment and gun control with members of the NRA.

So as a candidate for the United States Senate, on at least those two big issues, Bob Hugin was decidedly not a “Ronald Reagan Republican”. In fairness, Hugin might have changed his positions since 2018. If so, he needs to make them clear.

What remains clear is that the staff at the NJGOP, under Hugin’s chairmanship, have allowed a hostile atmosphere to develop towards the new legislative leadership of the State Senate and Assembly. This is mainly due to them being sore over who was brought in to quarterback the effort to gain a legislative majority in 2023. Instead of going with the Hugin-Ciattarelli team of operatives, a team with roots in Governor Chris Christie’s statewide victories and with President Trump was brought in.

The fact that this new legislative leadership is strongly both Pro-Life and Pro-Second Amendment – genuine “Ronald Reagan Republicans” – should not be lost on Chairman Hugin and the staff at the NJGOP. If Ronald Reagan’s referenced “11th Commandment” means anything to the NJGOP, it demands their focused cooperation on serving the needs of the legislative leaders and their team who are charged with the task of scraping together a majority in 2023.

The Republican Party’s existential struggle in New Jersey shouldn’t come down to institutional jealousy over which political consultant is getting the buy. That would be too sad. Too ridiculous. With elements of both tragedy and farce.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell

NJGOP: A balanced approach or a cult of personality?

By Rubashov

There’s a reason why cults habitually target the young. The young look for easy answers and for heroes to lead them. Youth is most open to certainty.

Hard experience makes people into skeptics, cynics even, and leads to the understanding that even heroic figures are a mixed bag. That nobody should be worshipped. With experience we learn that principles, as opposed to personalities, are the standard by which we should measure the words and actions of men.

We’ve been observing an interesting phenomenon since gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli’s defeat last November. Despite Ciattarelli’s insistence that he wants to be the candidate in continuum through to 2025, the young people who administer the Republican Party in New Jersey appear to have found a new “rock star” upon which to focus their enthusiasms… NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin.

Bob Hugin owes his job to Jack Ciattarelli. It was Ciattarelli who appointed the socially liberal Hugin in June 2021, after Ciattarelli captured the Republican nomination for Governor with a plurality of the vote. Hugin closely matched Ciattarelli’s social liberalism on issues like illegal immigration, the Second Amendment, and abortion.

Hugin ran a heavily self-funded campaign for the United States Senate in 2018, which he began by embracing socially liberal positions on issues like abortion. He lost that campaign but went on to create or help to create a number of funding platforms (PACs or SuperPACs and such) which are designed to or function to “remake” the New Jersey Republican Party into a more “woke” political institution.

For example, an independent expenditure committee controlled by Hugin called Women for a Stronger New Jersey spent around $30,000 on direct mail, text-messaging, robo-calls, and social media in an attempt to defeat a conservative State Committeewoman in Mercer County and replace her with what would have been the first transgender State Committeewoman to represent the GOP. The effort ultimately failed, but one can only ask why such resources – scarce in the best of times – would be wasted on such a silly primary, for such a silly cause. Surely, with so few legislators and counties in the GOP column, $30,000 would be better used to defeat Democrats.

Ideologically, Bob Hugin could not be more different from the last two men at the helm of the NJGOP. Chairman Mike Lavery – the man Hugin replaced and who defeated Hugin in a head-to-head vote by the State Committee just half-a-year earlier – was an unashamed conservative. Chairman Doug Steinhardt, who Lavery replaced, championed issues like the Right-to-Life, the Second Amendment, an end to rewarding illegal immigration, tax cuts, and traditional values.

The presence of someone with the “woke” prejudices of a Bob Hugin might be a problem for the Right-of-Center voters who dominate the New Jersey Republican Party, if the Chairman of the NJGOP was the only leadership figure in the party. Fortunately, that is not the case, and so the party should be able to avoid an open schism.

The way it works is this. In the absence of a Republican Governor, THREE figures constitute the leadership of the New Jersey Republican Party. They include the ELECTED Republican Leader of the State Senate and the ELECTED Republican Leader of the State Assembly – in addition to the appointed (and confirmed by 42 State Committee members) Chairman of the NJGOP.

The Republican Leaders who head their respective legislative caucuses are both solid conservatives – particularly social conservatives – whose records share the values of Republican voters on issues like Right-to-Life, the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, and Medical Freedom. So, there is balance in the leadership of the Republican Party in New Jersey.

But you wouldn’t know this from the NJGOP website. The young folks who run it appear to be in full cult-of-personality mode. Under “leadership” there is just one photograph, one godhead – Bob Hugin. The two other members of what should, properly, be a triumvirate, have been erased – Orwell style.

https://www.njgop.org/leadership/

In fact, when you click on the “State Senate” and “State Assembly”, there is no mention of either Legislative leader. In fact, the legislators listed reflect those from before the November 2021 election. It is a thorough, comprehensive dismissal of the NJGOP’s ELECTED leadership as irrelevant. Such is the thought processes of these young cult-makers.

https://www.njgop.org/leadership/state-senate/

https://www.njgop.org/leadership/state-assembly/

Going back to the “leadership” page – the one featuring Bob Hugin alone – there is displayed a revealing window into the minds of those who administer the NJGOP. Instead of placing the photos and offices of the ELECTED Republican leaders of the two legislative chambers, the logos of four Washington, DC-based organizations are listed: the RNC (Republican National Committee), the NRSC (Republican National Senatorial Committee), the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee), and the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC).

There are established Trenton-based GOP political consultants connected with each of these entities, from which they extract millions. So, are these young folks telling us how they see the world, who they intend to answer to? Or is it simply aspirational? Is this how they would like it to be? Is this what they are working towards – cutting out the conservatives, making a cult-figure out of the liberal, but really – in the end – it’s about the consultants who they have worked for in the past and who they will work for in the future?

The group that is particularly intriguing is the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC). Here is what they say their mission is, from the group’s website:

The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) is the largest organization of Republican state leaders in the country and only national committee whose mission is to recruit, train, and elect Republicans to multiple down-ballot, state-level offices. Thanks to our growing network of grassroots supporters in all 50 states, we help deliver wins for Republican state legislators, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, agriculture officials, and state judges across the country.

It sounds like the RSLC is in direct competition with the Senate Republican Majority (SRM) and the Assembly Republican Victory (ARV) committees run by the two Republican legislative leaders for the benefit of their respective caucuses. And why aren’t SRM and ARV listed on that leadership page?

The RSLC logo on the NJGOP “leadership” page takes you directly to a page where you can donate. Why aren’t the SRM and ARV pages listed? Why is there no link to donate to them?

Well, maybe they don’t employ the right consultants? The RSLC certainly does.

What is needed here is a balanced approach. Nobody is suggesting that Bob Hugin’s photograph shouldn’t be there – just that, alongside the more liberal NJGOP Chairman, should go those of the more conservative legislative leaders. Sure, the GOP is a “big-tent” party, but it is a conservative party too, and the NGOP should reflect that.

Nobody is suggesting that the logo of the RSLC shouldn’t be there. But so should the logos of SRM and ARV – two NEW JERSEY based committees – and links so that people visiting the NJGOP page can donate to the important work that these committees do.

Finally, nobody is blaming Bob Hugin for the NJGOP website. He didn’t design it, he doesn’t administer it, we doubt if he wrote a word of its content. But personnel does equal policy, as Ronald Reagan said. In our opinion, he needs to be firm with the young crew he leads and let them know that it isn’t about him alone but about the entire party. Its entire leadership, working together.

The NJGOP should reflect the New Jersey Republican Party’s entire voting composition, both its conservative majority and “big tent” wings, working to elect more Republicans. That would be the balanced approach.

As there can be no recruitment or voter registration drives without a message -- an annunciation of principles -- here is a short video that expresses the oft forgotten, more often ignored, "first principles" of the Republican Party.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

NJGOP: Controlling the narrative by controlling the data

By Rubashov

Last November, New Jersey Democrats weathered a national tidal wave that swept away Democrat majorities and gave the GOP its first gubernatorial win in Virginia since 2009. New Jersey Democrats maintained healthy majorities in both chambers of the Legislature and Phil Murphy bucked history to become the first Democrat governor to be re-elected since 1977.

But in the fantasyland inhabited by the cabal of consultants who dominate the NJGOP, New Jersey Republicans really won last November. The tide rose high enough for the GOP to pick up a respectable number of legislative seats and local offices… but Republicans still didn’t win control of the governor’s office or a single chamber of the Legislature. And the loss of two longtime Republican counties – Burlington and Somerset – was only more firmly established.

Why then is last November being sold as a “victory”? There are three reasons.

First, the consultants who have spent millions in losing the GOP congressional delegation, key counties like Burlington and Somerset, and dozens of other GOP candidates at the statewide, legislative district, county, and municipal levels have a reputation to maintain. They need something to pitch potential clients and keep existing ones. If you don’t have a victory to pitch, these guys have the talent to come up with a pitch that sounds like a victory – even when it isn’t. Hey, we all know bullshit fuels politics. This is just one example.

Second, Jack Ciattarelli is running for Governor in 2025 and he’s invested in this narrative. He needs to convince existing and potential donors to invest again, so it’s important that the blame not fall on his campaign and consultants. So the story goes: “We didn’t leave any votes on the table, did everything right, achieved something like a victory, and next time…”

Third, these consultants might as well own the NJGOP. They recruited Bob Hugin, made him a statewide candidate, and their latest statewide candidate – Jack Ciattarelli – handpicked Hugin for the job of NJGOP Chairman.

A big part of their narrative is that the Bob Hugin-Jack Ciattarrelli model of campaigning, in particular the turnout model, is the only “viable” way forward (to use their favorite term). Unfortunately, the two times that their model was actually used (2018 for Hugin and 2021 for Ciattarelli), it lost. And that’s kind of the opposite of “viable”.

You might have noticed that in contrast to past years, these consultants are going all out to present an examination of the data. They claim it will show how successful they were in not winning the governor’s office, state senate, and state assembly. The Save Jersey blog just did a post-mortem of sorts and the NJGOP is planning to put together a dog and pony show in March to further “prove” their point.

Some wags have pointed out that all this activity was hastened after the announcement that the GOP legislative leadership would conduct its own post-mortem into what was done and how it failed to capture a single legislative chamber. This is nothing new. Every legislative leadership in every state does it after every election cycle.

But the wags have also pointed out that this is the reason why NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin is withholding access to the data necessary to complete a legislative post-mortem. Yes, it’s the Republican National Committee’s data, granted to each state committee as a resource for legislative and other party leaders to study voter history, conduct post-mortems, create voter turnout models, recruit candidates, and create direct-mail databases.

So why isn’t Bob Hugin and the NJGOP sharing this data with Republican legislative leaders? Could it be that they don't want the legislative post-mortem to happen? Why else would they want the NJGOP to be a one-idea operation?

Hugin and his consultants have the data. They are making selective use of it to create a narrative supporting the theory that the Bob Hugin-Jack Ciattarrelli model of campaigning, in particular the turnout model, is the only “viable” way forward. By withholding the data from competing models – like the one Bill Stepien’s team is working on for GOP legislative leaders – Hugin and his consultants are attempting to abort a potential competition of ideas.

Is this kind of cheating the Big Pharma way? If you fix it so there’s no competition allowed, you can pretty much do what you want and not be held to account for it.

For our part, we don’t like cheating. We think New Jersey Republicans can handle more than one way, in other words, a choice. And we don’t think they will explode just because they have more than one idea to consider.

Don’t cheat. Different perspectives are good things. Don't try to block them from happening. Don't try to stop them. From them, maybe you’ll figure out how to win… for real win. Not fantasy spin win.

What happens when you spin yourself and fail to come to grips with reality.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

Why is Trump-hater Alan Steinberg backing Republican Nick DeGregorio?

By Rubashov

Be careful Republicans!

After pissing on every Republican in America for the last five years, Whitman Republican (or more precisely, former Republican) Alan Steinberg is now trying to anoint candidates for next year’s Republican congressional primaries. Steinberg has called Republicans every foul word he could muster – from “fascists” to “racists” – and followed up those insults by publicly excusing the worst excesses of the Democrat Party.

Steinberg’s sudden interest in directing support within the NJGOP to candidates for Congress in next year’s GOP congressional primaries is worrisome. Especially so when you remember that Steinberg’s mentor – former GOP Governor Christie Whitman – has already released a statement endorsing two Democrat incumbents (Josh Gottheimer in CD05 and Andy Kim in CD03) for re-election.

Writing in yesterday’s edition of InsiderNJ, Steinberg spent more than 1,000 words in a panegyric to a little-known, first-time candidate for Congress by the name of Nick DeGregorio. The photograph of DeGregorio that Steinberg chose to grace his sales pitch resembles that of a youngish monk from the 15th century.

Of course, Steinberg could not begin promoting his Republican offering without first offering up some praise before his Democrat masters – predicting the election of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and an upturn in President Joe Biden’s polling numbers. This is something Democrat pollster (and Gottheimer pal) Mark Penn seems skeptical about, as this short interview makes clear…

Across America, Democrat poll numbers are crashing (especially over COVID). Why not New Jersey?

We were especially amused at these lines by Alan Steinberg: “Biden’s actions regarding Afghanistan will be a definite political popularity asset for him. Botched withdrawal or not, Biden will be recognized as the president who got us out of that quagmire, saving America thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and reversing the extraordinarily foolish Afghanistan policies of both his Republican and Democratic predecessors.”

Yes, this from a member of the administration that sold us the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lie and expanded our military involvement throughout the Middle East. A NeoCon, Steinberg boisterously supported the expansion of the Security State – with its spying on American citizens and its use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers. Too bad it took you two decades, trillions spent, and a million or so dead to change your mind.

Alan Steinberg proceeds to try to sell us on his protégé, Nick DeGregorio, calling DeGregorio a “growing formidable challenge” to Josh Gottheimer in CD05. Okay, but the latest information out of the Federal Elections Commission shows DeGregorio with zero dollars on-hand and Gottheimer with more than $11 million. Steinberg goes on to anoint DeGregorio “the current frontrunner for the 2022 Republican Congressional nomination in the Fifth District.” Based on?

Well, like Bob Hugin (who apparently DeGregorio models himself after), DeGregorio was an officer in the Marine Corps. If memory serves, Steinberg said that would be the clincher for Guy Gregg too. He also touts DeGregorio’s “academic credentials” and his Wall Street experience.

Hey, all of that is good, but what’s going on in DeGregorio’s brain is what matters. What is the young man thinking about? What are his policies (we certainly hope he doesn’t share in Alan Steinberg’s enthusiasms)? What does he really believe when he stops pretending, when he puts away the script and stops being a candidate? Is he the kind of man who can be on the level with those he wishes to impose himself on? In short, is he honest? Time will tell.

Alan Steinberg was well-cared for by the NJGOP. The party got him jobs in the administrations of Governor Whitman and President George W. Bush. Fat paying jobs. And he rewarded them by flipping out when conservatives took charge, calling them names like “racists” and “fascists” – eventually quitting the GOP.

Steinberg closed his promotional piece for DeGregorio with this bit of ridiculousness:

“I also have seen more enthusiasm for Nick De Gregorio among both rank-and-file Republicans and leaders than virtually any other Republican Congressional challenger over the past four decades. He is indeed a phenomenon.”

After all his years of hating Republicans and calling conservatives every filthy name he could come up with, we doubt if any self-respecting “rank-and-file Republican” would take the time to piss on him. Alan Steinberg is as welcome in conservative circles as a skunk on a wedding night.

Nick DeGregorio picked one hell of a spokesman for a Republican primary. Good luck.

Political Greatness
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame;
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts,
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man, who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

Murphy extremists are fighting to keep control of School Boards

By Rubashov

On Monday, Governor Phil Murphy’s state Democrat machine put out a press release attacking the concept of parents and property taxpayers having a voice in education by running for local school board. Calling it a “troubling trend among candidates running for school boards all over New Jersey” the Chairwoman of the NJ LGBTQ Democrats, Lauren Albrecht, issued the following statement:

“What we’re seeing is a very small but very loud group of individuals who are running for seats on Boards of Education all over New Jersey in a campaign coordinated by, and funded by an extremist and Evangelical agenda, with the singular goal of pushing animosity aimed at LGBTQ+ students and the LGBTQ+ community in general. These candidates, and their backers, have one goal: to fill school boards with fringe extremists whose sole aim is to destroy the progress that’s been made for the LGBTQ community in our state.”

“An extremist and Evangelical agenda”? Is Ms. Albrecht preaching hatred towards specific religious groups? And why does her organization not embrace the “+” in LGBTQ+? Her statement specifically accuses this “extremist and Evangelical agenda” of “the singular goal of pushing animosity aimed at LGBTQ+ students and the LGBTQ+ community in general.” But her group lacks the “+” so, why is that?

Could it be that part of that “+” is “K” for Kink? Is it that Ms. Albrecht understands sado-masochism as a life-style choice, at least for the moment, makes even politically fashionable suburbanites pause? Ms. Albrecht needs to explain just which part of “+” her organization is so uncomfortable with.

This attack by Governor Murphy’s NJ LGBTQ Democrats could be in response to the success of a group, formed by Pastor Phil Rizzo last year, which successfully fulfilled its mission under the leadership of Lafayette school board president Josh Aikens this year. The group, AriseNJ, has recruited more than 400 candidates statewide – representing both major parties, some belonging to no party or third parties – who are bracketed and running together in over 100 school districts.

AriseNJ helps people to run for school board who believe in parental and taxpayer control over education, who embrace the Bill of Rights, and who oppose Trenton authoritarianism in the form of unfunded mandates and curriculum diktats. That is not “extremist” but rather the very idea of democracy for which the Democratic Party is named.

As Ms. Albrecht knows, the Democrat Party has non-profit groups set-up to train and run candidates for school board. They understand the existential importance of this level of government. Unfortunately, the Republican Party does not.

Contrary to Ms. Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats’ assertion that the parents and property taxpayers who now want a say in their children’s education are “well-funded” – the NJGOP is not helping them at all. Quite the opposite.

The Chairman of the NJGOP, Bob Hugin, appears to favor funding a very different agenda. The former Big Pharma executive has busied himself with changing the face of the GOP. Since his 2018 campaign, Hugin appears to have more deeply embraced identity politics.

For example, an independent expenditure committee controlled by Hugin called Women for a Stronger New Jersey spent around $30,000 on direct mail, text-messaging, robo-calls, and social media in an attempt to defeat a conservative State Committeewoman in Mercer County and replace her with what would have been the first transgender State Committeewoman to represent the GOP. The effort ultimately failed, but one can only ask why such resources – scarce in the best of times – would be wasted on such a silly primary, for such a silly cause. $30,000 would be better used to defeat Democrats – or to fund parents and property taxpayers who want a say in their children’s education.

Lauren Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats are pushing for an agenda that interferes with the traditional role of parents – teaching their children how to negotiate their sexuality in the world – and with the traditional role of consumers – the right to choose which product they pay for. Property taxpayers are consumers. They pay for a product. They shouldn’t be forced to pay for a product they don’t like. Not without a way of exercising their right to petition the governing body. No consumer should. Democrats once understood that. Liberals – true liberals – still do.

But liberals are few and far between in the Democrat Party of today. Even Leftists – honest Leftists who don’t buy into the security state or the permanent war machine or bailouts that help Wall Street infinitely more than Main Street or executive orders that throw you out of a job but don’t make sure you have a means to pay for health care – Leftists like that don’t inhabit the Democrat Party. Instead you have Wall Street operators like Phil Murphy and government authoritarians like… also Phil Murphy. That’s your Democrat Party today, which is why they need Trump so much as a hate object to unite them.

Apparently without considering the institutions that founded education in America, Albrecht writes: “These candidates no more belong on Boards of Education than religion belongs in our public schools.”

So, is that the position of the New Jersey Democrats under Phil Murphy? If you believe in God or some form of higher consciousness or even possess a spiritually informed conscience of your own, you have no place on a school board? Do they really believe that education belongs only to those who make money from it? To greed alone? To the education establishment, the fat-paid administrators, the insider vendors (like Garden State Equality), and to all those politically-connected who trouser the green from the grease machine? Everybody else shut-up and just keep paying?

Even more disturbing, given recent moves by the National School Boards Association and the Biden administration to criminalize speech at school board meetings, is this weird threat from Lauren Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats:

“It’s time for our community and allies to identify and expose these extremist candidates (and their backers) who are exploiting this fraught moment for their own brazen political gain with little regard for the support, safety, and academic achievement of New Jersey public school students. It’s time to send a clear message at the polls that again, hate has no home in New Jersey.”

Lauren Albrecht proves Hank Bukowski right again: “The best at hate are those who preach love.”

Here Tucker Carlson exposes the Biden agenda for restricting the right of parents and property taxpayers to petition the governing school boards that tax them:

Will the Biden administration criminalize speech at school board meetings and use the Patriot Act against those who petition a governing body?

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
George Orwell

Big Pharma lobbyist LeRoy Jones defends Big Pharma’s Bob Hugin.

By Rubashov

In a remarkable intervention, the State Democrat Party Chairman came to the aid of his GOP counterpart, after the Republican was criticized for what the Democrat characterized as “attempting to introduce some level of diversity in candidate selection to (the state Republican) party.” On Friday afternoon, Democrat Chairman LeRoy Jones issued a press release defending State Republican Chairman Bob Hugin.

The two do share a degree of commonality. Jones is a Trenton lobbyist who counts Big Pharma among his clients (as well as Dominion Voting Systems). Hugin is a former Big Pharma executive. And, of course, both are members of the Trenton political Establishment.

It should be pointed out that, as a matter of fact, both oppose any real diversity in candidate selection – beyond that of a candidate’s surface appearance. No matter the outer husk of a candidate, you can be sure that both look to select so-called “party loyalists” – candidates who will be obedient to the needs of the Trenton Establishment. This is different than candidates who follow their party’s platform, or who have an ideological or policy benchmark.

If it were otherwise, Jones and Hugin would do away with the “county line” – a truly undemocratic institution, unique to New Jersey, that would be disqualified by the United Nations from use in an election anywhere in the civilized world. Jones’ party also wouldn’t spend enormous sums trying to stamp out reformist elements whenever they pop up.

Jones’ vision of “diversity” means that you can have candidates with a great many shades of skin coloring, or sexual interests, or gender identifications – so long as at their center there is the same corruption – the same, uniform, rot. That is how many different “identities” are managed in a way to ensure the same results: The same insiders making more money. The same taxpayers paying.

Nevertheless, it was a remarkable intervention by one member of the Trenton Establishment, on behalf of another. Jones’ press release reads, in part:

The latest NJ GOP turmoil comes from a highly critical blog post in the influential JerseyConservative.com, which attacks Ciattarelli and Hugin for attempting to introduce some level of diversity in candidate selection to their party. The post reads in part:

One high-ranking party boss in South Jersey said that Bob Hugin told him the NJGOP wants “new” looking candidates… youth, women, “minorities”, anything but old white guys. What’s going on in your head doesn’t matter… issues, policies, ideas, solutions, ethics, integrity, honesty… these things don’t matter. It is all about how you look and how they can market you. Sad, especially because they almost always lose anyway.

“It’s sad to see the Republican Party unable to reckon with a concept as simple as representing and respecting the diversity that makes our state unique, dynamic and powerful,” said NJDSC Chair LeRoy J. Jones, Jr. “If this is what Jack Ciattarelli’s Republican Party is fighting amongst itself about, how can it be counted on to address the issues of systemic racism and inequality that exist in our state and our nation? The answer is that it can’t, and the only party interested in advancing the cause of racial, social and economic justice is the Democratic Party..."

First, the Jersey Conservative post did not attack GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli. It did question the waste of GOP resources – by Bob Hugin and others – in the active pursuit of pointless primary battles. One reason for these primary battles – suggested by Hugin when he targeted an incumbent Mercer County State Committee woman and in the passage quoted by Jones, above – was the pursuit of “diversity.”

Let us, for today, leave aside the fact that LeRoy Jones is partnered in his lobbying business with a longtime member of the Republican Establishment. Jones and this Establishment Republican make money together. Lots of money. This Republican is very close to the Republican operative who recruited Bob Hugin. Some operatives benefit directly from these primary fights within the GOP – generally in the form of monetary commissions, vendor mark-ups, and direct consultancy fees. Others benefit through professional contracts and such.

Viewed in context, could this remarkable intervention just be a case of the State Democrat Chairman doing a favor for his Republican business partner? And if so, how should the average Democrat feel about that?

Second, Jersey Conservative in no way represents the “Republican Party” organization in New Jersey. So, this is hardly a case of “fighting amongst itself”. Jersey Conservative takes a skeptical view of the Trenton Establishment. We are contrarian by nature. And while open to pretty much anyone who wishes to publish, it mainly exists to raise uncomfortable questions – to challenge Establishment opinion – much in the same way that someone like Sue Altman does within New Jersey’s Democrat/ liberal circles. Granted, we have yet to be physically assaulted and manhandled the way Altman was, at the direction of her party. Perhaps Chairman Jones might wish to comment on this, to assure us that diversity of opinion within his own party will, in the future, be tolerated?

Finally, the Jersey Conservative post was an appeal for less marketing (celebrity-style branding) and more results-oriented thinking. The post’s punchline reads: “More than branding, the GOP needs thinking. Come up with solutions to the problems voters face and then tell the story of how you are going to do it, so that they believe at least you’ll try.”

“Diversity” is a species of marketing. It is craven and opportunistic in the way that only something obsessed with the outer husk of a thing can be. “Diversity” is the last line of defense for many villains, among them, the very worst – as LeRoy Jones well knows, being a lobbyist for Big Pharma. Look at all the investments in “diversity” made by all those pharmaceutical companies caught killing kids through opioids. “Diversity” is a means to get people to look away from, for example, the fact that for decades you suppressed evidence that your product was giving women uterine cancer: “Don’t worry about that, we’re LGBTQ+ friendly… we are underwriting the PRIDE parade!” It is scumbag behavior.

Don’t believe us? Well, perhaps LeRoy Jones should ask those on the honest Left. There are some in his own party’s reform wing…

LeRoy Jones’ concept of “diversity” looks to be a very narrow one. He concerns himself with surface appearances and “identity” but ignores deeper values – such as religious beliefs, philosophical and political ideas, and economic class – along with human considerations like ethics, morals, honesty, and integrity.

That’s why Jones’ party doesn’t mind running and advancing the careers of convicted criminals. It has no ethics committee. His party has an LGBT caucus – but none representing Roman Catholics, the state’s largest “minority” group. It has a Standing Committee on Affirmative Action, but none on Universal Health Care (even through the pandemic), or the Bill of Rights, or Fair Trade, or (here’s a novelty) Peace (as opposed to Endless War).

Jones claims that “diversity… makes New Jersey “unique” and “dynamic”. It certainly cannot be called dynamic – more like economically stagnant. And as for diversity making it unique, who is he kidding? Diversity is (for the moment at least) everywhere.

Globalism has created new waves of migration that, in the natural course of things will turn “diversity” into a global “melting pot”. What Jones’ idea of “diversity” offers is a coercive segregation of the mind – because only segregation can preserve “diversity”. If you convince people they are different, then you can get them to stay apart from people who they have been taught to perceive as opposed to them. In this way they will maintain “diversity” by segregating themselves. It’s quite unnatural.

Jones’ “diversity” reminds us of those last-gasp European “ethnics” from the 1970s, who – around the time of the Bicentennial – successfully pushed to have ethnic ancestry placed as a question on the U. S. Census for 1980. That’s why we have figures today on the relative numbers of people with Irish or Italian or Polish ancestry in a given state or census tract. For the briefest moment it got people thinking in terms like “Armenian-American” before it all fell apart and evolved into “White”. In fact, even by the time of the 1980 census it had become an act of mere self-identification, the vast majority of Americans by then being of mixed ethnic ancestry. Ultimately, Jones’ “diversity” will be a similar fool’s errand.

Jones suggests there is “systemic racism and inequality” that exists in New Jersey and the nation. There he goes again with those husks – and of course, he would, being more liable than most for the systemic effects of the Establishment of which he is a big part. As a lobbyist, Jones must be aware that just about every reformer on earth points to his profession as the most visible cause of the corruption at the heart of our system of government. The reformers at Represent.US clearly finger Jones and company as the movers and shakers behind the systemic bad shit happening:

The system, of which LeRoy Jones is a part and by which he trousers large gobs of money, led a Princeton University study (Gilens & Page, 2014) to conclude: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”  Maybe we should call it systemic Jonesism?
 
As for inequality, well, here at long last progressives like Brandon McKoy actually have something “white” they can legitimately blame society’s problems on: White-Collar Government.  The bad news for LeRoy Jones is that his party (and Hugin’s) is a major reason we have White-Collar Government.
 
In White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, Duke University Professor Nick Carnes cites studies showing that while a majority of Americans work in blue-collar employment, only 2 percent of Congress were blue-collar workers before being elected and only 3 percent of State Legislators are employed as blue-collar workers.  Carnes and others hold that this disparity reflects the economic decisions and priorities of legislative bodies in America.  So, there’s your inequality – staring back at LeRoy Jones when he looks in the mirror to shave every morning.
 
This lack of blue-collar “diversity” shouldn't surprise anyone looking at the Legislature's agenda.  And it shows why Democrat political leaders in Trenton don't give a damn about New Jersey having the highest property taxes in America.
 
LeRoy Jones – Trenton lobbyist and Democrat State Chairman – argues that “the only party interested in advancing the cause of racial, social and economic justice is the Democratic Party”.  That’s a strange formulation, because justice – being blindfolded – isn’t supposed to be about race or social status or economic class.  If you murder someone or rape a child, that stuff is not supposed to matter.  You get what is coming to you, regardless.  Maybe not in LeRoy Jones’ world, but that’s the ideal.
 
As for his Democrat Party and “justice”, LeRoy Jones could advance the cause if he could get his boss, Governor Phil Murphy, to cooperate with the families of the more than 8,000 residents of nursing and veterans’ homes who died as a result of Murphy’s Executive Order #103.  Have an investigation, get them answers, and don’t make the same mistakes again. 
 
Justice would also be served by addressing the inequality of the state’s school funding formula – which forces poor families in rural and suburban New Jersey to subsidize the property taxes of rich people in wealthy towns like Hoboken and Jersey City.  The poor subsidizing the rich.  Where’s the justice in that?
 
And, in the interest of justice, maybe LeRoy Jones should recognize – and ask his party to recognize – the growing police response times in urban areas, caused by the Defund the Police movement.  Jones and his party should recognize that a single mom has no place to hide with her children if some street thug decides to break in and take their lives.  The police, who were already overstretched, cannot get to her in time.  So, when she applies for a firearm permit, create a process that works, in the interest of justice, so that she can defend her life and her children – so they don’t need to die.  Either that, or have your party pay for a guard and station him outside her front door… forever.  That would work too.
 
We welcome a continuing dialogue with Chairman Jones.  If you wish to write a response to this or anything else, we will happily publish it.  Thank you for taking the time to address us through your press release on Friday.  Please do so again.  
 
 

“If it were 1860, the Democrats would be bragging about their first transgendered slave-owner.”

Jimmy Dore

NJGOP: Will Bob Hugin cause a civil war for Jack Ciattarelli?

By Rubashov

First, a hearty welcome to our new readers in the Washington Metro area.

Later today, former U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin will become the new Leader of New Jersey’s Republican Party. Ideologically, Hugin is very different from the last two men at the helm of the NJGOP. Outgoing Chairman Mike Lavery is a behind-the-scenes guy who shares a similar issue grid with the Chairman he replaced, Doug Steinhardt, an unashamed conservative on issues like the Right-to-Life, the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, taxes, and traditional values.

Of course, Hugin spent $36 million on a campaign to convince voters that he wasn’t a conservative. Nevertheless, he had more than enough connections with President Trump for the Democrats to define him. His campaign provided insiders with six-figure jobs, made some consultants rich, but was otherwise a disaster. While suppressing the GOP base, Hugin drove up swing Democrat turnout in several congressional districts that Hugin won – and the Republican Congressman or congressional candidate lost.

Last December, Hugin ran for Chairman of the NJGOP and came up short. Since then, the former Big Pharma executive has busied himself with changing the face of the GOP. Since his 2018 campaign, Hugin appears to have more deeply embraced identity politics.

For example, an independent expenditure committee controlled by Hugin called Women for a Stronger New Jersey spent around $30,000 on direct mail, text-messaging, robo-calls, and social media in an attempt to defeat a conservative State Committeewoman in Mercer County and replace her with what would have been the first transgender State Committeewoman to represent the GOP. The effort ultimately failed, but one can only ask why such resources – scarce in the best of times – would be wasted on such a silly primary, for such a silly cause. Surely, with so few legislators and counties in the GOP column, $30,000 would be better used to defeat Democrats.

Women for a Stronger New Jersey is run by Bob Hugin’s 2018 U.S. Senate campaign manager, who also benefits as a vendor to the committee. Hugin’s spouse is a member of the three-member board that runs the committee, according to its webpage. And as if anyone needed clarification as to the ideology of the candidates the committee is looking to promote, the Women for a Stronger New Jersey website is very clear on this:

“We're working to grow the number of women serving in elected office at the state and local level by building a diverse network of moderate Republican and Independent women throughout the state and expanding the pool of women considering public office.”

That’s right, conservative Republican women need not apply. But independents – as in non-Republicans – are okay. That’s kind of a sucky formula, isn’t it?

Earlier this year, when the state’s senior Pro-Life Senator decided to run for re-election, Women for a Stronger New Jersey was there wasting resources and urging a primary. And there was a primary – not for the Senate, but for the Assembly – with another enormous waste of resources. In total, Republicans have pissed away about $2 million on avoidable primaries – and that’s not counting the gubernatorial race. Insider vendors and consultants trouser the proceeds and benefit, but the party doesn’t. Because money doesn’t come easy.

Women for a Stronger New Jersey is not the only committee Bob Hugin has set-up that seems drawn to killing its Republican brethren. Jersey Real is a federal independent expenditure SuperPAC that has spent hundreds of thousands in Republican congressional primaries in seats that we later failed to pick-up. The Treasurer of Jersey Real happens to be that same candidate who was hoping to become the first transgendered Republican State Committeewoman. Small world.

Jersey Real is already active fomenting primaries in two congressional districts for next year: CD05 and CD03. Jersey Real’s choice in CD05 worked on Hugin’s 2018 campaign. It doesn’t appear to matter to anyone that the Democrat incumbent is sitting on $9 million. Nobody has asked, let alone answered, the question about how Republicans spending a million or more dollars bashing each other is going to help that arithmetic. Hey, the consultants and vendors will trouser a lot of cash – but the poor GOP donors shouldn’t expect a return on their investment.

One high-ranking party boss in South Jersey said that Bob Hugin told him the NJGOP wants “new” looking candidates… youth, women, “minorities”, anything but old white guys. What’s going on in your head doesn’t matter… issues, policies, ideas, solutions, ethics, integrity, honesty… these things don’t matter. It is all about how you look and how they can market you. Sad, especially because they almost always lose anyway.

After the scandal of Watergate, steps were taken to make our election process more democratic. In the time since, the Courts have destroyed those reforms, ruling that money is speech. Today, the average voter feels shouted down by a few very rich oligarchs who count for a very few votes but whose money allows them to scream very loudly and shout down millions of voters.

This disparity led a Princeton University study (Gilens & Page, 2014) to conclude: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Voters believe in the ideal of democracy but increasingly understand they do not have it.

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

In an opinion column, published in yesterday’s New Jersey Globe, Fairleigh Dickinson’s Peter Woolley wrote: “Jack (Ciattarelli) barely mustered half of the Republican primary vote though running against two candidates who were, to put it most charitably, marginal.”  It’s actually worse than that, because most Republican voters weren’t excited enough or mad enough to vote at all. 
 
Bob, you have been chosen to lead the NJGOP by the 2021 gubernatorial nominee.  His name is Jack Ciattarelli.  He is job one.  Along with every legislator and legislative candidate and all the county offices and local elected offices.  The party has candidates who face do or die THIS November. 
 
Don’t get ahead of yourself worrying about how to put your stamp on the 2022 congressional primaries so that the GOP establishment nominates a bunch of lefties nobody cares about.  If you are going to do that, you might as well take Alan Steinberg’s advice and just embrace critical race theory and then – for all your money – prepare to be the state’s third party.
 
Finally, you need to accept that this is a grungier, more blue-collar party now.  A candidate can get by perfectly well just by repeating the word “Trump”.  Of course, that is not a policy or a solution.  But neither is the first transgendered (fill in the blank).  More than branding, the GOP needs thinking.  Come up with solutions to the problems voters face and then tell the story of how you are going to do it, so that they believe at least you’ll try.          

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

Eric Hoffer

Hugin should think before hurting the GOP any further

Bob Hugin’s campaign for the United States Senate was a disaster.  Everyone associated with it should be embarrassed, should wear the scarlet letter “L” as an external sign of their shame and contrition.

But there will be no contrition because these are people too proud to admit that their “vision” was flawed, that they outspent an extraordinarily flawed incumbent three to one and still lost badly.  Hugin lost to Bob Menendez, a Democrat incumbent so flawed that one in three Democrat primary voters rejected him.

What’s worse is that the Hugin campaign was deliberately designed to suppress traditional Republican turnout while enormous amounts were spent to create a surge amongst “soft” Democrats and Democrat leaners who had soured on Menendez.  The result of this strategy is best summed up when veterans of the Hugin campaign brag that they “won six Congressional districts.” Too bad that in five of those six districts, the Republican candidate for Congress lost, including two incumbents.  

As recently as 2016, all six of those districts had been represented by a Republican.  Now, just one remains.

Writing in the New Jersey Globe today, David Wildstein notes the re-emergence of Bob Hugin, addressing a meeting of Mercer County Republicans, placing his stamp of approval on the state’s first transgender candidate for the Legislature.  Here we go again. Let’s not learn the lesson that $40 million wasn’t enough to convince voters that Republicans are more reliable social liberals than Democrats, instead… try, try again.

The candidate Hugin spoke on behalf of is Jennifer Williams.  She is running for Assembly in the 15th Legislative District, a district that Republicans have almost no chance of picking up in 2019.  But because Jennifer Williams is the first transgendered candidate of either party to run for the Legislature, she will become a focal point of the 2019 campaign cycle.  Williams worked on Hugin’s campaign, so perhaps Hugin will provide her with the resources to make her campaign even more of a focal point.

The trouble is, 2019 will be a low turnout election, and Republicans are not fighting a statewide campaign but instead, are fighting to hold on to a few remaining Republican enclaves.  Is this the time to be highlighting “a different kind of Republican” or is it time to drag everyone who is likely to vote Republican to the polls? And as for non-traditional Republican voters, are these more likely to be LGBTQ voters or poor working class Roman Catholics?  Yes, there are choices to be made and making one choice often negates the other. So which is the surer bet?

Unfortunately, from all the hype, all we know about Jennifer Williams is that she is what some call a “transwoman”.  That is likely to be of little use in motivating traditional Republican turnout and – in the era of Donald Trump – unlikely to motivate enough LGBTQ voters to make up for what you lose.  The hoopla resulting from this “first” will most certainly bleed beyond the borders of the 15th District, turning off and giving up as it goes.  So that Republicans could neither gain the 15th or the boost necessary to save endangered seats.

For the good of her party, Jennifer Williams should play down the significance of her “gender” and instead focus on a message that aggressively defines the Trenton Democrats as what they are.  But can Williams even use the term, “Trenton Democrats”, as a negative in Legislative District 15? Williams claims to be a “conservative”, well this would be the time for her to craft a message that illustrates what that means.

Candidate Williams has secured the endorsement of the GOP establishment in Mercer and Hunterdon Counties.  We suspect that there will not be much competition for such a thankless task. We wish her well but hope that she does not become the “face” of this year’s Republican legislative campaign in New Jersey, and we hope Bob Hugin doesn’t make it his mission to make it so.

Why NJ Republicans are falling behind other states.

How come Republicans do better there than here?  That’s a frequently asked question… and is just as frequently noted.

New Jersey Republicans have lost Republican legislators throughout the Christie years.  Whether we hold the Governor’s office or not, we lose.  Why?

Could it have something to do with our message and who it’s aimed at?

As a comparison, let’s look at neighboring Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania went blue before New Jersey did… but went red in 2016 – providing the electoral margin that gave Donald Trump the presidency. 

In Pennsylvania, both parties play to their base.  As a result – according to a recent Philadelphia Inquirer analysis – blue areas are getting bluer and red areas redder.  What that means is that even when the top of the ticket loses – as it did in 2014 and 2018 – Republicans in the Legislature hold their majorities in BOTH chambers of the Legislature.  Take a look at the map of Republican representation in Pennsylvania’s Legislature in 2008.  Red is Republican and Blue is Democrat…

Now here is Republican representation in Pennsylvania’s Legislature ten years later – in 2018:

In contrast, both parties play to the Democrats’ base in New Jersey.  As a result, the situation is quite different for the GOP in New Jersey… “in retreat” would be a kind way of putting it. 

According to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study, 70.6 percent of Americans self-identify as “Christian” – with 25.4 percent belonging to  Evangelical Protestant denominations, 14.7 percent Mainline Protestant, and 20.8 percent Roman Catholic.  With most Evangelical denominations, there’s over a 40 percent spread in favor of Republicans when it comes to voting habits.  So it follows that it would make sense to at least keep in touch with these voters and turn as many out to vote as possible.  And that’s exactly what happens in Pennsylvania.

But not in New Jersey.   

Transgender people only make up about 0.6 percent of the U.S. population—and of that already slim minority, just two percent of respondents to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey said they were Republican.  Too often, this is who the GOP targets its message towards in New Jersey.

Don’t believe us?  Then read this statement from the Bob Hugin for United States Senate campaign:  “Bob Hugin strongly supports equality and opportunity for the LGBTQ community and will be a leader on these issues as senator.  If President Trump wants to roll back equality and opportunity for the LGTBQ community, Bob Hugin won't hesitate to stand up to the president.”

Can anyone point to a similar campaign statement made on behalf of the Pro-Life community?  Or the Evangelical community?  Or traditional values Christians of any kind?  All of these groups are far more inclined to vote Republican and are far greater in numbers than 0.6 percent.  But instead of making the most of what would come to them naturally, the GOP in New Jersey too often finds itself trying to expand that 2 percent of 0.6 percent… and hoping it will become a wave.

How else can you explain the fact that New Jersey was the only state delegation in America to send a transgendered person to the 2016 Republican National Convention?  And this is NEW JERSEY, where the party establishment selects carefully chosen insiders to run as delegates to the Republican National Convention.  In this case however, the candidate didn’t even need to run and instead was selected as a special, add-on delegate. 

How many Evangelical pastors got to go to the 2016 Republican National Convention as part of the New Jersey delegation?  How about some real diversity?

Hey, if a transgendered person can swallow the RNC platform, she or he is more than welcome in our big tent… but don’t throw out everyone else just to make it comfortable for her.  That doesn’t get you a big tent, it gets you the sack… you lose elections.

The transgendered person who got to go to the 2016 National Convention is a well-known activist for LGBTQ causes and is active with the LGBTQ Victory Institute Candidate & Campaign Training program for 2019.  The Victory Institute is in the process of training dozens of liberal candidates to take on traditional Republicans throughout the country.  In a recent news story, this LGBTQ activist/ RNC delegate had this to say about traditional Republicans:

“As a Republican, I’m disappointed.  I’m disappointed at how a minor offshoot of the Republican party—one that's very bent on religious freedom—is really directing our current administration to take away the liberty, freedom, and equality that millions of Americans who just happened to be LGBTQ currently enjoy.”

Traditional Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Evangelicals are not “minor offshoots” of the Republican Party.  It’s the majority of America.  It’s a majority that enjoys its religious freedom and holds it dear.  It is a majority that does not want to see its daughters made to shower with anatomical males.  It is a majority that doesn’t like the creep of criminalization occurring in other countries when supposedly free people fail to use the “correct” pronoun to describe someone.

Save Jersey’s Matt Rooney recently wrote a well-received call to arms for New Jersey Republicans to rediscover social issues.  As we have seen, the embedded social liberalism and ongoing contempt for Christian conservatives by well-placed Republican operatives in New Jersey will make progress towards Rooney’s goal difficult but not impossible.  There is a lot of work to do.

Is AFP even a conservative organization anymore?

Can we get serious?

In America, there is a consensus, a generally accepted agreement as to what the word “conservative” means.  Take a poll.  Ask the average voter what the word means.  The four pillars of modern American conservatism are pretty easy to remember:

(1) The Right to Life.  Conservatives, real conservatives, Reagan conservatives, we oppose abortion.  Full stop.  

(2) The Second Amendment.  Hey, how many court rulings do you need before you finally get that the government has no duty to protect you?  In a Republic, that is on you.  Conservatives oppose the anarchy of crime.  We support gun rights, local police, and laws that are tough on crime – especially violent crime.

(3) Less Government/ Lower Taxes.  Conservatives know that smaller government and less government regulation leads to less spending and debt, which enables governments to cut taxes.  Conservatives also know that crony capitalism is a form of political corruption and as such is itself a tax on the goods and services used by ordinary citizens.

(4) Illegal Immigration.  Conservatives like America and American culture.  We welcome anyone from anywhere who wants to come here and join us and become an American.  We don’t want to be colonized by foreign cultures with authoritarian or anti-democratic traditions.  We don’t want to be told that we need to change to accommodate those who gate-crash the laws of our country. 

In order to call yourself a conservative in America, you pretty much need to be all four of the above.  Maybe you can get away with being a little mushy on one and still be considered a “soft” conservative.  But if you are bad on more than one, you need to think about why you are a Republican.  (Hey, haven’t these people ever read the PLATFORM of the party they claim membership of?)

That’s not to say that anybody is a “bad” person.  It’s just saying that you’re not a conservative.  See, the word “conservative” actually does mean something.  It’s not just a term of praise used in the proper setting to describe people we happen to like… or want to suck-up to. 

“Conservative” doesn’t mean “libertarian”.  It is per se a traditionalist point-of-view.  Conservatives want to C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E the traditions and values of our American Republic.  Unlike our libertarian brethren, we don’t want to replace Mom and Apple Pie with the Orgasmatron and the Orb.

That’s not to say that conservatives and libertarians (or anyone else for that matter) can’t agree on certain issues and work together.  But having a conservative point of view on this or that issue doesn’t make one a conservative.  Heck, Bill Clinton called himself a “fiscal conservative” – that didn’t make him a conservative.  It made him a liberal who saw the political advantages of conservative policy on issues like welfare reform.  He was still a liberal. 

And so we come to the especially Jersey-style, end of year crap that recently went spewing itself all over the Internet.  For years now, New  Jersey has been working very hard at being the place words go to lose their meaning.  Reading “The Right 40 Women to Watch in 2019” (written by AFP’s head honcho in New Jersey) it’s now clear that this trend has reached new depths of meaninglessness – with many of those mentioned being members of the “Right” only in the way that Hillary Clinton can be considered being to the “Right” of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

AFP – Americans for Prosperity – is the group formed by the super-rich Koch brothers as the political and lobbying arm of their business empire.  Anyone who knows anything about the Koch brothers knows that they come out of the Libertarian Party – in fact, one of the brothers actually ran against Republican Ronald Reagan on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980.  Yes… THAT Ronald Reagan. 

And what a ticket that was… it supported everything from the decriminalization of narcotics and prostitution to America’s standing down as a world power.  If that crew had been elected, we’d still have the Soviet Union (and maybe they would have won).  But happily, Reagan won and the Koch operation was forced to rebrand itself as fake “conservative” – a move that started the process of unwinding the meaning of the word. 

Over the last decade or more, the Koch operation has done much to corrupt the conservative movement in America – in an effort to remake it in their own crony capitalist image.  Now they’ve come full circle and are back to advocating a soft-on-crime approach while pushing to flood the open market with recreational marijuana… this, in the midst of an opioid epidemic that is killing upwards of 50,000 people each year.

In fact, AFP in New Jersey has become so crony capitalist, so establishment, so anti-conservative values, that it has taken to shilling for far-Left politicians like U.S. Senator Cory Booker.  Just before Christmas, AFP paid for a mailing that lauded Senator Gropicus (a great moniker, courtesy of SaveJersey’s Matt Rooney) for a soft-on-crime package of feel good “reforms” that miss the problem entirely, but make for good media ads for his 2020 run against President Donald Trump.  Why the heck would AFP do something like that?  The Democrats don’t need the resources – they already have George Soros – now they have the Koch operation’s millions too? 

Among those women on “the Right” we were asked to “celebrate” were a half dozen who made the list because of their service on the just completed campaign of Bob Hugin for United States Senate.  Now maybe the writer didn’t get the memo, but Bob Hugin didn’t run from “the Right” and his campaign did all it could to distance itself from said “Right” – starting with millions in advertising assuring the electorate that he was a “different kind of Republican” who explicitly rejected at least one of the four pillars of modern American conservatism.  So WTF?

And since when did the legalization and sale of marijuana become a conservative issue?  Hasn’t anyone read about the vaping problem in our schools?  And this is with nicotine… imagine what it will be with marijuana?  And edibles?  How will policing the use of chocolate bars, peanut butter cups, and cookies work?  Candy for children… So how the heck did the “co-founder and executive director of the New Jersey Cannabis Industry Association” make a list of “women on the Right”???

Get out of your offices and talk to average people sometime!  Ask them if they think legalizing and selling an entry level drug in the midst of an opioid epidemic is a conservative political position?  Average voters will think you have lost your mind.  But there she is, on the list for being “at the helm” in her quest to “unleash a new industry within the State.”  What’s next?  Narcotics?  The legalization of human trafficking?  Prostitution?  Body parts?   Wait… it will come.

Rosemary Becchi made the list too.  She’s the president of a “new grassroots advocacy organization” formed in 2018 “to fight Jersey’s high taxes and propose policy solutions to the state’s complex financial problems.”  Except that she hasn’t.  Ms. Becchi is a DC lobbyist who has donated to the Democrats.  Hey, we get that lobbyists do that kind of thing, but let’s not call it conservative. 

Nobody has seen Ms. Becchi testifying in Trenton, or providing information to legislators, or even returning telephone calls from those interested in finding out more about her “organization”.  Cynics would say that it is nothing more than a front – a cover for her personal ambition to run for Congress.  This is something she openly explored against incumbent Congressman Leonard Lance (R-07) a year ago, with her “grassroots” organization forming a kind of parentheses between that and her expected formal announcement for 2020.

But as far as labeling her a “conservative” – we don’t really know where she stands on big government and taxes, leaving aside her unknown positions on abortion, the Second Amendment, and illegal immigration.  So who is trying to fool who here?

Finally, AFP’s list is memorable because of the genuine conservatives – four pillar conservatives – that it leaves out.  Champions like Marie Tasy and Christine Flaherty and Rev. Mandy Leverett… they are fighting to maintain the value of human life, to recognize the threshold of fetal pain, to end the trafficking of human beings and the sexual exploitation of women and children.  Of course, in today’s cash register world of “new industries” like pot and such, none of that matters – except that it does matter to conservatives, and there are a great many of us.

Also dissed were Freeholder Deborah Smith of Morris County – a great advocate for the Second Amendment – and incoming Sussex County Freeholder Dawn Fantasia who took down an incumbent Freeholder by winning 63% of the vote!  Nobody who made AFP’s list ever beat an incumbent.  Why are conservative winners ignored and pot pushers lauded as “conservatives”?   And how about an operative like Kelly Hart, the executive director of the Sussex County Republican Committee.  A four pillar conservative who actually won for Bob Hugin by more than was expected – outperforming everywhere but receiving scant recognition for it.  Obviously, there is a “cool girls” table, just as in high school, and some are not part of it… no matter how much they actually WIN elections. 

So in future, be a bit more judicious in who you label “conservative.”  Be honest with voters.  Stop telling them that you are something you’re not. 

Yes, we expect to hear arguments from pro-abortion, mushy on illegal immigration, soft-on-the-Second Amendment types who claim that they “feel” they are conservative.  But isn’t that just the times we live in?  We’ve all heard of gender-fluidity… well, these people are ideologically fluid.  And just as our chromosomes determine whether we are male or female, how we stand on the four pillars make us conservative – or something else.

Hey, don’t worry.  Not being conservative doesn’t make you a “bad” person.  And it doesn’t mean that you don’t hold conservative points of view on this issue or that.  You can still work with conservatives.  It just means that you recognize that you don’t come from the same ideological place that conservatives do.  And in your heart, you already know that, so let’s cut the bull and get honest with the voters.  Restoring their faith in the labels politicians apply to themselves will perhaps restore some measure of trust… for when the very words people use to describe themselves have no integrity, what confidence can voters have in anything?

The illusion of LGBT’s power to help Republicans…

Yes, we know it’s about the parties.  Who wouldn’t want to be invited?  The music is cool, the drinks well poured, the energy is just… better.  But none of this is about politics.

Once again we must, sadly, point out that Republicans do not benefit by currying favor with Garden State Equality and the state’s LGBT political bosses.  To have GSE high priest Chris Fuscarino’s benediction means nothing in a General Election and even less in a Republican primary.

Two incumbent Republican congressman came to an understanding with GSE that meant keeping social conservatives at arm’s length.  In return for dissing their base, their Democrat opponents lost Fuscarino’s blessing – but won (or appear to have won) their elections anyway. 

As with the case of Bob “I am a different kind of Republican” Hugin, wrapping oneself in a rainbow flag meant not a jot on the profit side – but very much depressed the base on the debit side.  Conversely, the one unabashedly social conservative Republican in the congressional delegation – the one specifically targeted for defeat by Garden State Equality – won re-election without much difficulty.  It appears he will now be New Jersey’s only Republican member of Congress. 

We suspect this is why the ever watchful David Wildstein placed GSE’s Chris Fuscarino in the losers column on Friday, over at NewJerseyGlobe.com.  Wildstein noted that the portly Fuscarino “missed the boat” by failing to endorse the Democrat challengers to the two GOP incumbents and instead “making his top target the only Republican congressman who won.”

Sigh… When will Republicans learn that the only sure way to earn the support of people who vote like LGBT is their top priority is by executing a change of registration form and running in the Democrat primary.  It’s all about the shoes, and red is just so out of fashion. 

The Hugin campaign would have done better in a Democrat primary.

Bob Hugin is a great guy.  Really.  He’s a good and decent man.  It was unfortunate that he found himself in a Republican primary… this year.  The fact that he persevered with such confidence and grace makes him a heroic, somewhat tragic, figure.  

Bob Hugin could have run in the Democrat primary.  $35 million… against Bob Menendez?  Hugin had the issues right for a Democrat primary… and the media wouldn’t have pounced on a Democrat Bob Hugin the way they did a Republican Bob Hugin.  The media love rich members of the One Percent when they are Democrats (it is a capital sin when you are a Republican)… they love woke, right-on pharma folk of the proper political affiliation.  They would have forgiven him everything.

But Bob ran as a Republican, and he ran this year.  A year when the media he wanted to appeal to was working to nationalize the election – to make it about Trump.  That media ended up vouching for Bob Menendez, despite having formerly called for his resignation. That media still cuts it with the people who Bob Hugin wanted to convince:  Democrats and liberal-leaners.   

Rather than shutting down Menendez, Hugin’s attacks were used by the media as evidence that he – Bob Hugin – was a “bad” man.  Of course, this only works with those who are open to receiving a message from the likes of Tom Moran and MSNBC.  Unfortunately, they were precisely the voters that the Hugin campaign was aimed at. 

Can we put aside the myth that Republican voters will come out no matter what, and dutifully vote Republican?  That myth should have finally, once and for all, been discarded after the low turnout Assembly races in 2015, when Republicans AGAIN lost seats in the Legislature and were AGAIN provided with irrelevant excuses for having done so. 

Oh the excuses!  One year it is Christie’s fault, the next it is Trump’s, and in between, the dog ate it!  New Jersey Republicans should set up their own public relations firm specializing in excuse-making.  Excuses aside, New Jersey’s GOP establishment should understand that the days of Republicans “holding their noses” and voting are over.

Republican voters are like anyone else.  Ignore them, say you are embarrassed to be with them, that you are “different” from them… and they will reward you in kind.  As an experiment, try some of that language next time you are in public with your wife and her family (or your husband and his).  Invite them out to a restaurant, then tell the host:  “I’m a different kind of member of this family, I’m not really one of them… They are a little, umm… backward.”  And say it so they hear it.  Say it loud, like ten million dollars’ worth of loud, and see how they like it.  Go ahead, try it.  Get back to us on it.

And that’s what the whole Hugin campaign was based on, wasn’t it?

“I’m a different kind of Republican.”  They are a little backward, a little off, but I’m with it.  I am a cool Republican.  Except that there are no “cool” Republicans.  Not in the minds of the media.  They only thought John McCain was cool when he was pissing on Bush.  The moment it became about him and Obama, John McCain became a troglodyte in the minds of the media.  After the dust settled, he became cool again, especially when pissing on other Republicans… especially when pissing on Trump.  But when he needed them, the media screwed John McCain.  So why even bother with them?

President Ronald Reagan understood the media (and they were a lot more condensed, more centralized, and a lot stronger back then).  That’s why he talked past them – to the people.  He didn’t give a damn about their approval.  He fed them the diet he wanted them to eat and even when they shit it out it contained the kernels of his message.  Reagan wasn’t afraid to be a Republican and to explain what that meant.  He had a message that he tested and honed by human contact – by speaking to people, engaging them, listening for the examples that would be used in his speeches, turning them on to his way of thinking, building a movement of ideas and about issues that mattered to people.

How many Republicans today, in New Jersey, can explain why they are Republicans or what Republicanism is?  At the big Republican show put on by the NJGOP last spring in Atlantic City, two professional Republican organizers up from Washington, DC, posed the same questions to attendees.  Not only was there no apparent theme or connectivity between the responses, even the organizers couldn’t adequately provide reasons or an explanation as to why they were there in the first place.  It was kind of sad.

What that confab did showcase, however, is the top-down meddling that has become the hallmark of the establishment in New Jersey, with a congressional candidate in a contested primary receiving top billing as the event’s featured speaker.  Yes, there was resource-draining meddling in districts 2, 5, and 11 – in an effort to promote candidates who would fit seamlessly with the statewide message being promoted by the campaign of Bob Hugin.

Instead of building a grassroots coalition of Republicans and reformers – of the kind Ralph Nader wrote about in his book, Unstoppable – the Hugin campaign  actually determined that their best chance lay in targeting “soft” Democrats and culturally “left-leaning” independents.  But these are the very same voters open to arguments from left-leaning media like CNN, MSNBC, NJ.com, and the Bergen Record.  So when the Hugin campaign pushed a relentlessly negative message about Menendez, those “independent arbiters” pushed back and were listened to. 

This allowed the Menendez campaign to focus on making the link between Hugin and Trump – which the media backed up.  The more the media pressed, the more Hugin denied Trump, the more he suppressed his own base.  Meanwhile, the Hugin campaign went right on churning out GOTV communications and efforts to turn out those “soft” Democrats and culturally “left-leaning” independents who had by now been convinced by the media that Hugin was a “bad” man who was lying about Menendez.  Gagged and gagged again.

In the days and weeks ahead we will be taking a proper, in depth, examination of the Republican operation in the Garden State.  It will be a necessary, warts and all, detailed review.  So stay tuned.

For now, we will leave you with this: 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  - Winston Churchill

The Democrats hit 100,000 doors this weekend. You don’t do that by ignoring your activist base.

It could be all smoke and mirrors, but it certainly doesn’t sound like it.

This was reported on InsiderNJ yesterday evening:

A thousand people showed up earlier today in Summit for a campaign canvas launch at the Essex Road home of former LD21 candidate Lacey Rzeszowski (who lost by Assemblyman Jon Bramnick last year by 2,567 votes), he said.

“So many people came it shut down the block that Bob Hugin lives on and somebody called the cops,” said the Democrat. “There were so many people and they came and directed traffic to help us out.”

The event did get the attention of the GOP. A source at the earlier Somerset Republican event fumed about the incident, irritated by the inconvenience caused those close to Hugin.

It was all but a punch line here amid blue throngs.

Campaign allies knocked on almost 100,000 doors today, Malinowski said.

Was that 100,000 doors just in District 7???

If so… holy dogshit!

These Democrats are kicking our collective ass.  Hats off to them that they have successfully motivated their base and have got average people involved in the political process. 

We could do that too you know.  It’s called the telephone.  Talk to people, organize them, stop being afraid of them.  Hey, we assure you, they haven’t eaten human flesh in years!  They won’t bite! 

200 Evangelical pastors were in Trenton just days ago.  There’s a clean-living alternative to the human trafficker and sexual exploiter at the top of the Democrat’s ticket.  That is a pretty easy sell to Evangelical clergy.  They were there… the salesmen never showed up.  Not even an apprentice! 

Could 200 clergy have each come up with 5 people from their congregations that average 500 each?  We think so.  And that 1,000 would have matched their 1,000.  

Oh well… maybe we’ll learn sometime.  Maybe. 

Was Lonegan’s defeat an inside job?

Well, at least Jay Webber won… and Seth Grossman.

Bob Hugin won’t totally have his way in wrapping the State’s Republican brand in a plain brown paper.  He’s going to have a Reagan conservative and an eccentric libertarian to provide some color to the package – not to mention the incumbents, starting with the staunchly Pro-Life Chris Smith. 

What Hugin won’t have is a genuine Trump-style populist bouncing around in the orchestra, stealing the stage of an election that he plainly believes he is paying for.  Like Grossman, Steve Lonegan is decidedly his own article, but enough in the Trump mold to easily wear the costume.

McCann you say?  The most baldly dishonest campaign in memory will now be set aside, and with it, all the Trumpian rhetoric.  No, John McCann was not endorsed by President Trump, even though his campaign communications led you to believe he was.  More on this later.

It is enough for now to compare the post-truth campaigning style of a certain southern political consultant to the rather insufficient counter-measures of the Lonegan team, whose messaging was done by a consultant shared with the Hugin team.  Although completely false, McCann’s consultant had the discipline to dominate his candidate, confine him to those tasks of which he was capable, and to run the kind of sharp, focused, MESSAGE-driven campaign that we don’t often see here in New Jersey. 

If McCann’s consultant survives the recent raid on his office by the FBI, the inquires by the United States Justice Department and such, he could become a formidable presence on the field in New Jersey.  It takes a certain toughness to come up with a message so at variance with a candidate, to bully the candidate into silence, and then to brazenly run with it to victory.

Unfortunately, now the candidate will think the victory his… he will start to talk again.  Like he did last week when, in an unguarded moment, he let slip his true feelings about abortion (he won’t vote for ANY Pro-Life legislation if elected to Congress) and guns (he opposes the NRA and supports universal background checks).  Did the New Jersey Family Policy Council know this when its (c)4 lobbying arm was induced into doing an openly political mailer that buttered the Pro-Choice candidate but trashed the Pro-Lifer?  Or did they know and did they not care?  More on this later.

Not to worry though.  John McCann has served his purpose.  The candidate with the money lost (and now that candidate is a wounded, angry animal, sitting on a million dollar war chest).  But John McCann is broke.  He has eaten his seed corn.  Don’t look for him to trouble Josh Gottheimer.  And there might even be a reward in it for him.  Another lucrative patronage job perhaps?  He might end up a judge.

So the money that would have been spent in the 5th fighting off the visceral attacks of a Lonegan candidacy will now be heading… where?  Which Democrat will be the beneficiary of yesterday… perhaps they will all share in a piece of it?

Among the other lessons learned…

The party potentates who opened the bottle  of a Tony Ghee candidacy did so before its time.  They gave the newcomer no time to breathe.  It’s a solid vintage that will hopefully be available again.

And speaking of which.  We learn from the former Wally Edge that Peter Murphy is about to assume the throne of the GOP in Passaic County – the place he occupied before a certain United States Attorney, named Chris Christie, sent him away.  It’s a bad business – especially for Bob Hugin, who has made political corruption his ONLY issue.  Lonegan’s polling showed Murphy’s support to be the strongest negative against McCann.  More than 80 percent of Republicans were less likely to vote for a candidate who had his support… that’s REPUBLICANS.  You would have hardly guessed it from Lonegan’s campaign communications, but there you have it.

Surprisingly enough, Lonegan did have coattails of a sort.  In Sussex County, Lonegan-backed challengers to two incumbent Freeholders annihilated the incumbents.  It is the first time in living memory that a ticket with two incumbents was defeated in Sussex County.

Dawn Fantasia is the principal at a charter school.  Josh Hertzberg is an administrator with the ILA union.  These are what Republican candidates look like in our populist era.  Fantasia supported Senator Steve Oroho’s negotiations over the refinancing of the Transportation Trust Fund.  She learned about it and patiently explained the details to others – and ended up cutting a radio spot to that end. People warned that it would hurt her politically, because the final deal raised the gas tax, while cutting or eliminating a host of taxes (including the estate tax) and providing property tax relief.  Another lesson learned?

John McCann injected himself into the Freeholder race, on behalf of the incumbents, who supported him.  He ran a radio spot that attacked Senator Oroho by name on the gas tax.  Former Congressman Scott Garrett came out in support of the incumbents and ran a robo-call on their behalf.  More lessons?

Lonegan won Sussex County, but by a much smaller margin – about 500 votes.  Why the difference?  Well, in Sussex, the Lonegan freeholder ticket had a strong message that they pursued relentlessly – and were quick and sharp with their counterattacks.  The Lonegan campaign itself lacked this, especially the quick counterpunches.  Fantasia and Hertzberg also had the full attentions of Kelly Hart, who had been “let go” by the Lonegan campaign in April.  She had been field director for Sussex County.

Curiously enough though, when the dust settles after the General Election, the only big changes to the line-up of elected officials in CD05 will be the election of Lonegan’s running mates in Sussex County.  Everyone else… McCann and all his running mates in Bergen and Passaic will have lost.

A few years ago, Ralph Nadar wrote a book called “Unstoppable” – in which he predicted the rise of populist movements on both the Left and the Right in response to the disconnect with the mainstream political parties.  He suggested that Left and Right reformers had much in common and therefore, the basis of a genuine “resistance” movement.

How will this translate with Dr. Murray Sabrin on the Libertarian Party ticket for U.S. Senate is anyone’s guess, but there are Libertarian candidates in Districts 5 and 11, and a Constitution party in District 3.  A Center-Left populist, Wendy Goetz, is also running in the 5th.

And finally, election night parties.  The people you meet at such things are not average Republican voters.  Many earn a living from politics – whether as a lobbyist or a vendor, a job holder or a consultant.  They are in the business of politics – even those that just secure from it a certain status, as a member of a local government perhaps, or a school board.

That is not the case with 99 percent of Republican voters.  All they get out of voting is the idea that they are checking the box for someone who thinks like they do.  Most have a general idea of what the Republican Party stands for and that they stand for that too.  That “general idea” is provided to them, largely, by the mainstream media.  And yes, it includes the points that Republicans are Pro-Life and pro-Second Amendment. 

New Jersey’s Republican political class needs to learn to live with this.  Bring to a close their 40 years war with Reagan and their contempt for our base.  Trying to pretend that you are something else or “a different kind of Republican” is not a message, it is a deflection.  For all his money spent on advertising, Bob Hugin was able to convince just 52 percent of Republicans in Sussex County to vote for him.  He will need to do a great deal better.

Let the political class make its money… but leave average GOP voters someone they can vote for.

Sadly, the party took a step back yesterday.  They took away someone who meant something to a great many average Republicans – and they did so by telling voters that McCann was just a newer Lonegan, only more conservative, and that Donald Trump endorsed him.  We all know that isn’t true. 

And on that note, we begin the General Election.

The hypocrisy of Assemblywoman Timberlake ignores vulnerable women, embraces criminality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... we've all heard your faux outrage at band banners (yeah, it was a band banner, not a Johnny Reb flag) and rap lyrics before.  Some people just hate music.  Is Assemblywoman Timberlake trying out for the Mrs. Al Gore awards?  Is Timberlake the anti-Lady Gaga?

Look, we appreciate how seriously Lady Timberlake takes unproven allegations from decades ago, but what about actual criminal indictments and convictions, how seriously do you take them?  We'd like to know what goes through your mind as you snuggle up in caucus to fellow Democrats like Raj Mukherji?

Remember him?  Raj was buddies with another politician who killed a homeless African-American veteran.  Just ran him over on the street like he was a dog and when the cops came he told them he had hit a deer.  Your kind of guy, right Lady Timberlake?  And how about your caucus mate Raj?  He's some guy...

Message to Lady Timberlake... stop deflecting and apologize to Bob Hugin and Assemblywoman DeCroce for your stupid comments.  Own up to the criminality of the scumbags in your own caucus.  Then do something about it.

Once you've cleaned up that stable of a mess the Democrats call a caucus, then you can play high and mighty.

Bob Hugin is right: Harboring illegal aliens is illegal

How can some people argue that more gun laws will make us safer, when the laws that we have aren't being obeyed?  It's like printing more money during a period of hyperinflation:  It turns legal tender into toilet paper. 

And that's what happens when state and local governments pick and choose which national laws they will obey and which they'll ignore.  They turn the whole concept of having laws into a joke and turn the statute book into a toilet roll.

If you are a radical libertarian, maybe that is a good thing.  Anarchy in the U.S.A.!

But for most of us -- those who depend on the law for clean water, unadulterated food, breathable air, automobiles that don't explode on the road, buildings to work in that don't fall down, streets that are free from the fear of assault, homes to sleep safely in at night -- for those who depend on rules that society lives by, a world without rules is a scary place, a new barbarism.

It takes humility to live in a democracy.

You make your arguments.  Sometimes you win.  Other times you lose.  There is always tomorrow. 

And then you have groups like Make the Road Action (what kind of name is that?) and people like Sara Cullinane.  They can't accept ever being on the losing side.  If they lose the debate and something becomes law that they don't like, they feel it is their right to ignore it.  It's kind of like those arguments offered by the Sovereign Citizen movement. 

The trouble is that when they win the argument and something becomes law that they do like, other people will follow what they did and ignore it.  And soon, there will be no laws that everyone agrees to follow and so, no law.

Sara Cullinane and her group issued an attack on U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin today for saying on the Rich Zeoli radio program that the "idea of sanctuary cities is just illegal."  Yes, the idea of state and local governments defying national law was kind of settled during the 1860's -- and later, during the 1960's.

Now "states' rights" groups like Make the Road Action and "states' rights" folks like Sara Cullinane can and should work to deconstruct the federal government's hegemony over many aspects of state and local jurisdiction.  But this must be done legally, through the painstaking process of democracy, not by simply picking and choosing the laws you will ignore and those you will obey.

Sara Cullinane made the mind-numbingly silly argument that local government cooperation with regards to people here illegally -- some who are victims of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and slavery -- was akin to making them "foot soldiers for ICE."  That is like saying that local government cooperation with regards to anti-terrorism -- "see-something, say-something" -- is akin to making them "foot soldiers for Homeland Security."

Sara, don't be stupid.  Cut the rhetoric, grow up, and get real.  A great many illegal immigrants are victims of coercion, exploitation, and trafficking.

Human Trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, second to drug dealing and tied with arms dealing.  Recently, the FBI announced that it had uncovered and arrested 42 child sex traffickers in New Jersey.  The Star-Ledger reported that the 42 were arrested on charges that included sex trafficking, child exploitation and prostitution.  A total of 84 children were rescued during the operation.  Human Trafficking is modern day slavery and it is happening while you write your next press release.

Child trafficking is a $32 billion-a-year industry and is on the rise in all 50 states, according to the U.S. government.  4.5 million of trafficked persons have been sexually exploited and nearly 300,000 Americans under 18 have been lured into the commercial sex trade.  The National Human Trafficking Hotline reported that in 2016, human trafficking in the United States increased by 35.7% -- in one year! 

If you really want to help people, get on the right side.  Stop shilling for the human traffickers and work with law enforcement.  And don't attack a guy like Bob Hugin for telling the very obvious truth.

Murphy endorsement of McCann endangers Hugin

FACT:  There is one thing that rigs an election more than gerrymandering.  It is called "the line". 

WHAT IS "THE LINE"?

A few county party organizations in New Jersey (both Democrat and Republican) have usurped the actual government-prepared ballot so that they can use it to advertise who their "official" candidates are.  That's right.  A few party bosses in a few counties are using the taxpayer-funded ballot to "instruct" the voters of their party on how to vote.

This doesn't happen anywhere else in America, and it happens in New Jersey only because the state's unelected courts have allowed it to happen.  Of course, these are the same courts that have given us Abbott Districts (where all the money for education goes to a few counties controlled by urban political machines). Because of Abbott we have the highest property taxes in America.

If you want to know why you pay so much, look no further than "the line" which keeps the same corrupt party machines in power, selecting the same insider politicians, who make the judges who inhabit the courts.  So if you are content with paying the highest property taxes in America, keep supporting the same party bosses and go on voting "the line."

Candidate John McCann has defended this misuse of the official ballot by political party bosses.  He has done so even when the party boss is someone like Passaic County's Peter Murphy, who was convicted of public corruption and sent to prison.

Passaic County Republican Chairman Is Indicted on U.S. Bribery and ...

www.nytimes.com/.../passaic-county-republican-chairman-is-indicted-on-us-bribery-a...

Dec 5, 2000 - The chairman of the Passaic County Republican Party was indicted today on federal bribery and mail fraud charges in a continuing investigation of the Republican-dominated county government that has already resulted in guilty pleas by two other officials. ... For most of that time ...

Once prosecuted by Christie, Passaic GOP power broker poised for ...

https://savejersey.com/2015/07/christie-passaic-murphy-rumana-traier/

Jul 16, 2015 - Former Passaic GOP chairman Peter Murphy of Totowa ultimately plead guilty to mail fraud back in 2003 after a lengthy prosecution and conviction (the ... involving dishonesty or moral turpitude or which constitutes a felony in either the State of New Jersey, Federal jurisdiction or equivalent of same in ...

Why would anyone in their right mind support someone like Peter Murphy?  Isn't politics corrupt enough already?

Not only is "the line" an aberration used nowhere in America outside a few political machine controlled counties in New Jersey, it wouldn't pass muster in a Third World election overseen by the United Nations.  "The line" -- the Murphy/ McCann endorsed vehicle for public corruption -- is arguably in violation of several United Nations General Assembly Resolutions, including A/RES/46/137 (1991), A/RES/55/96 (2001), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966).

So while we send American service men and women far from home to make the world "safe for democracy," a few county politicians in New Jersey are laughing at them by corrupted the process and are making a mockery of the sacrifice of those young lives.  They should be ashamed but corrupt party bosses like Passaic County's Peter Murphy are beyond shame.  And candidate John McCann is right there with them.

President Donald Trump was criticized recently for employing the term "shithole" to describe some Third World nations.  Well, as far as political processes go, there are quite a few "shithole" county party committees (both Democrat and Republican) who are making an effort to turn New Jersey into a political and economic "shithole."

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin is running on a platform with corruption as its centerpiece.  Can Hugin accept Peter Murphy's endorsement and run on Peter Murphy's slate, while making a serious argument against Senator Bob Menendez?  After all, Murphy was convicted and sent to prison, Menendez was not.

Bob Hugin shouldn't take our word for it, he should ask his friend and ally, former Governor Chris Christie, about Peter Murphy.  It was Christie who said of Murphy: "We are pleased with the end result here – that Mr. Murphy served a considerable amount of time in prison for crimes which he has finally acknowledged committing as Republican party chairman in Passaic County... For those crimes, Mr. Murphy has lost his prestige and power, nearly a year of freedom and now is a convicted felon."

Good luck playing this one down the middle, Mr. Hugin.

Bob Hugin's campaign staff enjoys the Saint Patrick's Day celebrations at convict Peter Murphy's bar.  (And these clowns want to piss on Bob Menendez?)

Why is BridgeGate's Wildstein pushing John McCann?

By Rubashov

David Wildstein, the mastermind behind the BridgeGate scandal that ended the presidential dreams of Governor Chris Christie, is back to blogging again.  Before joining the Christie administration as a political appointee, Wildstein was part of the "Christie Project" headed by Bill Palatucci.  Writing under the name "Wally Edge" it was Wildstein who helped eliminate potential Republican threats to what became eight years of Christie hegemony.

Palatucci is the most interesting and powerful behind-the-scenes GOP operator in New Jersey, and while not quite in the league of behind-the-scenes Democrat operator George Norcross, in this post-Christie environment he is increasingly making his presence known.  Close observers have never been entirely convinced that Palatucci served as a mere satellite of the former Governor.  Recall that it was Palatucci who picked up Christie after his first fall from grace, when he was ousted as a Morris County freeholder.

Yes, it was Palatucci who dusted off Christie and guided him on a new path.  It was Palatucci's contacts with the Bush dynasty that gave Christie a place on George W.'s campaign -- from which he gained a place in George W.'s administration, as the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Is Bob Hugin the next Palatucci invention?  Is this year's United States Senate race a first step on the road back to the Governor's office?  Do not underestimate a gifted operator like Bill Palatucci.  Like the best in his profession, he sees into the mist.  Someone should write a book about this fascinating man.

So are they putting the band back together?

Wally on blogs... Bob the front man... Bill setting the tune?

And if so, who will need eliminating?  Now sit back and observe who is being blocked and who is being promoted and all will become clear.

This is Rubashov.  Peace, brothers and sisters...