Pro-Murphy candidate runs as Republican in Sussex/Warren/Morris

By Sussex Watchdog

Dan Cruz was invited to discuss his views with conservatives in the state – leaders from the Second Amendment Society, the Pro-Life movement, Steve Lonegan, and groups concerned about illegal immigration. Cruz ignored them and instead asked a blog run by Democrats to publish a public relations profile of him. The owner of the blog was outed by no less than Wikileaks for his connections to Hillary Clinton’s fundraising operation in New Jersey.

So, it appears that the Democrats – after having been resoundingly crushed by Sussex County Republicans year after year – have simply given up on finding a candidate to run under their own party label against Sussex County’s top local Republican on the ballot this year. That’s right, the April 5th filing deadline came and went, but no Democrat filed against Sussex County’s Republican Senator, Steve Oroho (LD24) this year.

Instead, the Democrats are lavishing their attention on Dan Cruz – formerly a loyal Democrat primary voter – and are using their social media presence to push him on blogs like the one that did the public relations piece. In that piece, Cruz played loyal wingman to Democrat Governor Phil Murphy, defending his record on COVID just one day after Sussex County residents gathered for a prayer-vigil to remember the victims of Murphy’s Executive Order 103 – which hit Sussex County particularly hard and killed over 8,000 loved ones statewide.

Governor Murphy isn’t stupid. He knows that this election is about him – not Donald Trump. The last time he was on a ballot in Sussex County, in 2017, Phil Murphy received 36 percent of the vote, buoyed by an anti-Trump backlash. Bob Menendez got just 33 percent of the vote in Sussex County in 2018 – in midst of the Trump era. Murphy is also aware of just how low it can go if you can’t make it about Trump. In 2013, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono scraped together a mere 25 percent of the vote.

In 2019, at the last legislative election, Republican Assemblymen Parker Space and Hal Wirths got 69 percent of the vote. Republican Sheriff Mike Strada received 94 percent – and the Republican Freeholder candidates had the same 94 percent.

Governor Murphy knows Steve Oroho’s record as a candidate and knows that it’s formidable. As an outsider, Oroho defeated an incumbent Freeholder Director and an incumbent Legislator supported by the entire Trenton machine to get where he is. Against Democrats he has won with excess of 70 percent of the vote. At his last primary, in 2017, Oroho won re-election by 49 percentage points – 74 percent to 25 percent.

Before Steve Oroho became Sussex County’s Senator, county Democrats could console themselves with victories on the municipal and county levels. They could elect a Freeholder or a Mayor. But not under Steve Oroho. They haven’t held a single county seat while he’s been Senator – and the only mayors they can win hide their party registration and run as fiscal conservatives in non-partisan elections.

Murphy is concerned about Oroho’s ability to power turnout in Sussex County – hence, no Democrat opponent – but at the same time Murphy needs friendly “Republicans” to speak up for him and help cut the margin. This is where Cruz comes in.

George Will or Pee-wee Herman?

Results??? Cruz is running against the only Republican legislator to make the NJ media’s list of most effective legislators.  Senator Oroho's tax cuts were praised by conservative groups like Americans for Tax Reform and conservative publications like Forbes, which called his tax cuts “one of the 5 best state and local tax policy changes in 2016 nationwide.”  Of course, Cruz is still learning his lines in his new role as "conservative Republican".  We can’t expect him to know all this.   
 
Cruz’ connections to the Paterson Democrat machine and its allies is reinforced by yesterday’s public relations piece.  He is trying to present himself in ways that he imagines a conservative Republican would, but it comes off as a cross between George Will and Pee-wee Herman.  In preparation for his post-primary role as Murphy apologist, Cruz is adopting the kind of cringeworthy, defensive phrases that corporate Democrats find so acceptable in “Republicans” – like they did “The Lincoln Project”.
 
For example, the Democrats’ public relations piece about Cruz, notes that he wants “to ‘break the stigma’ associated with the Republican party before they lost their grasp.  He acknowledged that some of that came from President Donald Trump’s term in the White House… ‘We cannot just serve one side, we have to serve everyone and bring everyone together to make decisions on a collaborative effort.  Many people disliked the party because of President Trump’s message and what he stood for, but that doesn’t mean all of us are like that.’”
 
And this: “As far as Cruz is concerned, Republicans can do better by reaching out to areas that they traditionally have not campaigned in.  Republicans’ failure to try to appreciably make the big tent bigger is detrimental to their long term success.  Regarding the gubernatorial election, he said, ‘My impression is this.  Murphy has the leg.  Right now, he is ahead in the most populous cities—Paterson, Newark, Trenton—he is ahead there.  You don’t have a Republican who can go into these cities and say ‘Vote for me.’  They aren’t going into the inner cities, speaking to the people.’” 
 
“When asked what he thought of Governor Phil Murphy’s performance handling the pandemic, Cruz was candid.  ‘Regarding Governor Murphy there are some things that he could’ve done better, and there are obviously some things he has done that you can say he did OK.  I think with the COVID plan, he did what he thought was the best possible solution in his eyes and administration,’ a seemingly rare instance in the current climate where an opposition party acknowledges the perceived sincerity of another.”
 
Cruz completely avoided mentioned Executive Order 103 or the 8,000 people who died or the fact that the worst hit nursing homes were in the county and district he says he wants to represent.  And the vigil to remember those who died had just been held in the town in which he lives!  Now, that is shilling. 
 
Cruz went on to compare Murphy to Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.  Cruz said Murphy had done better… “Balancing governmental direction with laissez faire has been a perilous tightrope act for Governor Murphy since the start of the pandemic.  ‘When you read the news and listen to people,’ Cruz said, ‘I believe that New Jerseyans have been extremely responsible during this time.’”
 
But Dan Cruz’ utility for Murphy doesn’t end with protecting his flank with Republicans.  Cruz’ background as a teacher and education activist provides a perspective to launch attacks on attempts by more fiscally responsible Democrats to rein in some of Murphy’s more bewildering excesses.  And so, Cruz has bitterly attacked Senate President Steve Sweeney and the Path to Progress, which is the work of a bi-partisan coalition of Democrat and Republican legislators.
 
Cruz opposes the reduction in education administrators that the consolidation advocated in the Path to Progress would produce.  Fewer individual units delivering education equals a smaller education bureaucracy and fewer administrators.  By coincidence, it just so happens that Cruz’ wife is an education administrator making six-figures and all the benefits.  She works for the New York City school system at a high school with problems not unlike those in New Jersey that the Path to Progress is looking to address: Only 2 percent of students have taken an Advanced Placement Test, just 37 percent are proficient at mathematics, only 32 percent are proficient at reading, and the graduation rate is 29 percent. 
 
Is Steve Sweeney and the Path to Progress right?  Will consolidating bureaucracy help?  While admitting that it would save taxpayers’ money, Cruz doesn’t think so. He’s concerned that local school superintendents and the boards they control would lose too much power – and if that were to happen, what might become of taxpayer-funded positions like he enjoys, and all those perks and benefits that mere legislators can only dream of?
 
Maybe he’d have to fall back on his business – a sideline to top off two taxpayer-funded incomes (with perks and benefits) – called Opulent Creations Events, L.L.C.  The upside is that Cruz would have more time to attend to it and not have the problems he had with the NJ Department of Revenue which, according to them, suspended Cruz’ business (he is listed as COO) from January 16, 2016 to May 15, 2017.  A silver lining?  
 
 

“Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.”

Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa)

Wednesday's Top Suggested Reading

by: Murray Sabrin, Ph.D

Biden, The GOP And What’s In Store For The Future

Joe Biden’s vapid inaugural address sounded like it was written for an eighth grader by another eighth-grader. Many sentences had no more than a few words in it, there were no inspiring words or vision for America’s future and contained a list of grievances that sounded like we were living in a nation still clinging to Jim Crow laws. Given Biden’s cognitive challenges his speechwriters did not want him to try to articulate compound sentences for fear they would highlight his frailties.

The truth of the matter is America is one of the least “racist” societies in the world. We have the most sweeping antidiscrimination laws that have been on the books for more than five decades. The American people elected an African-American candidate for president not once but twice. Affirmative action policies have been in place for decades but have been criticized as a form of ”reverse racism,” because it takes people’s race and other characteristics into account in hiring and government contracts

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More on Covid and Vitamin B1

By Bill Sardi

No more tubes forced down the throat (intubation). No more liquid feeding tubes. No more damage to the lung from positive pressure ventilators. Patients able to communicate freely, drink through a straw and eat solid food with assistance (spoon feeding). I’ve said it many times, we ought to go back to the iron lung if we are going to end up with scarred lungs from positive pressure ventilators.

Once the autonomic nervous system fails and patients have to consciously breathe, they can’t go to sleep (unconscious) and still breathe at the same time. This breathlessness is what results in death that is mistakenly attributed to COVID-19. This EXOVENT device times the breathing for the patient.

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A setback for the liberty movement.

by Robert Wenzell

Well, it is over.

Four long years of turmoil and absurdity have passed. As Donald Trump flys to Mar-a-Lago, he leaves the country a mess. The radical left treated the buffoon as a perfect foil. And he was.

The socialists used each of the 1,461 days of the Reign of Trump as an ultimate recruiting period. Lenin never had it so easy.

The Left thrived during the Trump presidency. Cancel culture, identity politics and calls for equity stink up the country. The kids are all socialists now, thinking Trump represents capitalism.

Georgia Run-Off Vote Harvest & Jan 5 Election Can End America As We Know It.

by Seth Grossman

For years, Jews and Christians alike were ridiculed, attacked, persecuted, tortured and killed for openly preaching and teaching truth in the ancient Roman Empire.   We are very close to that happening again here in the United States and throughout the world.

There is a special, run-off election for two U.S. Senators in Georgia.   “Election Day” is Tuesday, January 5.  However, Georgia has early voting, and the five week “Vote Harvest” begins next week.  Hundreds of thousands of applications for mail-in ballots were already received.

There are 100 U.S. Senators.  Republicans have 50 seats.  Democrats have 48.   If Democrats win both Georgia seats they will have 50,  If Biden wins, Democrat Vice-President Kamala Harris will cast the tie-breaking vote to give Democrats an absolute majority.

Christians persecution

Democrats control the House of Representatives.  Although they lost seats, Democrats so far won 222 seats, while Republicans won 206 seats.  A majority is 218 votes.  Seven seats are still undecided.

In 2008, Barack Obama, then the Democrat candidate for President, promised “a fundamental change” of America if he and a Democratic controlled Congress were elected.  He succeeded in causing much change.  Obama Democrats gave us Obamacare, massive legal and illegal immigration from hate-America and hate-Christian countries, a war on local police, and the routine use of the IRS, FBI, and National Security to illegally spy on, harass, and persecute political opponents.

However, Obama Democrats did not do nearly as much as they wanted to do for two reasons.  At first, it was because they were not in a hurry.  When they crushed the George Bush Republicans by winning a majority in Congress in 2006, and the White House in 2008, they falsely assumed they had permanent control of the Federal government.  They thought they had plenty of time to completely “fundamentally transform America”.

However, Democrats were surprised when the “Tea Party” came from nowhere, and put Republicans back in control of Congress in 2010.  They were even more surprised and angry when President Trump won in 2016.

Today, Democrats are determined not to make the same mistakes they made in 2009 and 2010.  They are angry, and very much in a hurry. Democrats have already promised to fundamentally change America if they control all three branches of the Federal government.  have an absolute majority.

Vladimir Lenin, the evil genius who masterminded the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917 was once asked to explain the difference between Communism and Socialism. His response was “Communism is Socialism in a hurry”.

If Democrats win the Georgia elections and have full control of the federal government on January 5, 2021, we can expect this within the first 100 days:

1. Immediate amnesty to make roughly 30 million illegal immigrants eligible for voting, welfare, free health care, and social security.

1. Legislation to admit or create at least five new Democrat majority states with ten new Senators and many more electoral votes to give Democrats permanent majority in both houses of Congress and for every future Presidential election. Puerto Rico, Guam, and Washington, DC will become states. California will be broken into at least three new states.

1. US Supreme Court will be expanded to 15 seats, and packed with radical leftists.

1. The First Amendment will be amended or interpreted to allow citizens to be arrested, jailed or fined for “hate speech”. “Hate speech” will be defined as saying, writing, or posting anything that criticizes, ridicules, or opposes Democrats or any of their agenda in any way.

1. The Second Amended will be amended or interpreted to outlaw private ownership of guns.

1. The FBI, IRS, and National Security agencies will investigate, prosecute, imprison, bankrupt, or otherwise destroy any millionaire or billionaire like Donald Trump who dares to oppose Democrats in any way. This is what Vladimir Putin did to the billionaire oligarchs of Russia who thought they were rich and powerful enough to oppose him.

Governor Murphy caught in an act of cultural appropriation?

The Left calls it “cultural appropriation”. It’s what they complain about when a member of the so-called “dominant” culture appropriates elements of another culture – especially a disadvantaged “minority” culture. Well, Phil Murphy is certainly a mega-wealthy one-percenter, so having a can of PBR would probably count as cultural appropriation. But in this case, he dressed up…

This photograph was posted by the Governor’s own communications guy, a “proud alum” (as he puts it) of Hillary Clinton, Bill DeBlasio, and Barack Obama. So he should know all about the rights and wrongs of political correctness. Or is it only incorrect when someone you don’t like does it? Of course, that could be anyone from Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

Was this a case of cultural appropriation or just an attempt at pandering? Will the Governor wear a kilt on St. Andrew's Day? A sombrero on Cinco de Mayo? Will he do a dance too… maybe end up on a remake of Coldplay’s Dancing Politicians (Violet Hill)?

Governor Murphy is always up to something. One day he is issuing directives on providing Sanctuary and millions in aid to illegals – while slashing education funding to the children of taxpayers. The next he is instructing local law enforcement on how to incarcerate the sexes together – can’t wait for the lawsuits that will result from this brainstorm. But somehow he can’t seem to address the highest property taxes in America, or the worst foreclosure rate in America, or the lousiest business climate in America.

Phil Murphy runs away from the big stuff. He likes to meddle in the lives of “lesser beings” (average folks like us) and he like photo ops. And he likes to feel morally superior to everyone else (we suppose it goes along with being economically superior). What you see here is what you are going to get. This is what he is good at.

NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt: 20 reasons to Vote Republican on Tuesday

Over on the New Jersey Globe website, editor David Wildstein assures us that New Jersey is still a two-party state, with the caveat that the GOP might not be one of those two parties. Wildstein’s words must be taken seriously, for whatever his faults, he has a laudable record as a campaign manager and operative. He even managed to get elected himself.

Under Governor Chris Christie, the New Jersey Republican Party functioned as a kind of cult of personality. If you were around for earlier GOP administrations, you would have recognized the difference. So far as legislative seats are concerned, this didn’t work all that well even while Christie was Governor.

Post-Christie, New Jersey Republicans have suffered from a crisis of identity. This has been exacerbated by two things. The first, of course, is Donald Trump – the face of the national Republican Party. Many New Jersey Republicans don’t know how to explain him or fit even the positive aspects of his hegemony into a local narrative. They got out of the habit of having big vision ideas or policies – so that they can’t even effectively change the subject.

This brings us to the second… the rise of South Jersey Democrats as a kind of opposition party to the Democrats of Governor Phil Murphy. As they did with the so-called “Clean Elections” gambit, they pose as “reformers” who are “pro-business” and “pro-taxpayer” – with watchwords like “efficiency”. In reality, they are an old-world political machine, fueled by crony capitalism and soft corruption (at the very least). Their model is the one-party state, with a relationship between political power and business that resembles something out of Red China… or National Socialist Germany.

But at least they have ideas and policies, many of which are attractive to business, so they occupy an alternative ground to the Murphy Democrats’ collectivist and confiscatory impulses. On social issues they are equally disreputable. Their refusal to post the Human Trafficking & Child Exploitation Prevention Act for a vote shows that they monetize anything to please a supplicant corporate interest. Just keep the money flowing… and suffer the children.

Which brings us to a post over the weekend on Matt Rooney’s Save Jersey website. In it, NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt provides an outline of why voters should choose Republican candidates over Democrats this coming Tuesday.

It really is a good list, and Matt did a great service publishing it. With due acknowledgement to Matt and to Chairman Steinhardt, we are re-publishing it below:

State Republican Chairman Doug Steinhardt

#20: New Jersey Has The Worst Foreclosure Rate In The U.S.
Phil Murphy and Democrats have had full control of the state house for 2 years now. Their liberal agenda has produced the highest foreclosure rate in the country. New Jersey is too expensive, and Phil Murphy, who said “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state,” is too aloof, for hard working families to afford their homes. This is the danger of one-party rule in Trenton.

#19: Governor Murphy Tried To Steal Money From Firefighter Burial Fund
The NJGOP is proud to fight alongside New Jersey’s first responders, especially after their Governor tried to pay for his laundry list of liberal handouts by stealing $33 million from the Firemen’s Association burial fund. And even though his screwball scheme failed, Phil Murphy’s last second retreat can’t erase his blatant disregard for the hard working men and women who risk their lives to protect our lives. New Jersey voters should be shocked and appalled, but then, hey, this is the same Governor who, last week, said, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.” You shouldn’t be our Governor either, and your Party’s policies are killing our State.

#18: New Jersey Has The Lowest Mainland US GDP Growth
Governor Murphy’s job-killing regulations and ever-expanding tax burden is leaving New Jersey’s economy hobbled and lagging behind the rest of mainland America. While the US economy is booming, New Jersey is failing. Trenton needs business-minded conservatives to bring a common sense check to Governor Murphy’s unbalanced budget.

#17: Phil Murphy Blew The Amazon Bid
Just weeks after New Jersey Democrats passed Phil Murphy’s billion plus dollar tax hikes, Amazon passed on New Jersey and put its HQ2 in New York and Virginia. Governor Murphy’s liberal lunacy cost thousands of well-paying jobs and a chance to revitalize our state’s biggest city. But this is the same Governor who maintains, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.”

#16: Phil Murphy’s Online Sales Tax
Phil Murphy calls New Jersey a high tax for high value state, but Democrats are squeezing out what little value is left. If it walks, talks, ships, shoots, rides, drives, eats or roots, New Jersey’s daft Democrats devise a devilish way to tax it. Under the Murphy Administration, New Jersey residents now pay an internet sales tax. But, this is the same Governor who says, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.”

#15: NJ Transit Fail
If a good executive keeps the trains running on time, Phil Murphy isn’t – good. New Jersey Transit is rated among the least reliable nationally. And even though Governor Murphy has the power to change it, he can’t. That’s because he’s more interested in liberal headlines than commuter wait times. People spend more time commuting than they do with their families. The system is so bad that even Democrats are investigating Murphy’s abject failure.

#14: Hiring Corrupt Officials
We should be throwing corruption out of government, not welcoming it back in. When Governor Murphy hired into his administration a former public official convicted of taking bribes, he called it the new normal. Never! The bar should never be so low. At a time when we should be building the public’s trust in government, Phil Murphy is tearing it down.

#13: Sky Blue Soccer Scandal
Governor Murphy preaches public equality, but fails miserably to practice it privately. As the owner of a women’s soccer team, Phil Murphy oversaw a team that was so badly treated that the Star Ledger equated the player’s conditions to a sweatshop. These professional women were housed in impoverished conditions, played without simple resources, like locker-room showers, and refused payment on their medical bills. That’s not stronger and fairer, that’s weaker and poorer.

#12: Legal Aid For Illegal Immigrants
The NJGOP will not ignore Governor Murphy while he scoffs at federal immigration laws for the sake of his personal political agenda. He has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into state sponsored legal aid for illegal immigrants while hardworking, middle-class New Jersey residents miss another opportunity for tax relief. But this is the same Governor who says, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.

#11: So-Called Free College
Phil Murphy’s promise of free college tuition is the classic political bait and switch. He dangles the feels-good carrot of “free education”, then beats New Jersey’s already battered taxpayers with his tax hike stick. Two years of free tuition for a lifetime of tax increases isn’t a bargain. It’s another bad deal that New Jersey can’t afford. Then again, all this is from a Governor who said, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your State.” That’s not leadership Governor. It’s what millionaires say to the middle class.

#10: Sanctuary State
Phil Murphy can’t pay for his progressive platitudes with the health, safety and welfare of New Jersey families. The Governor and the Attorney General should encourage cooperation between law enforcement agencies at all levels. Instead, they weaponize the Attorney General’s office and are taking aim at our County Sheriffs. Millions of innocent New Jerseyans depend on law enforcement to keep them safe from predators, drug dealers and violent criminals, but Phil Murphy will ignore them for a progressive headline.

#9: Worst Employment Rate In The Region
America’s economy is booming and our neighboring states are thriving, but New Jersey lags behind. Evidence continues to mount that New Jersey is teetering on the edge of an economic meltdown, but Governor Phil Murphy is stuck in a tax and spend trance. He is oblivious to, or simply ignores, the State’s affordability crisis and the crippling effect it’s having on New Jersey families. That was on full display at Rowan College in October, when the Governor let slip, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your State.” If you want more blind, political indifference, elect more Democrats this November, but if you want honest answers to the State’s real problems, vote Republican.

#8: Largest out migration of retirees, businesses and residents
Governor Murphy’s radical, liberal policies aren’t just emptying wallets, they’re emptying nests. More jobs and people are leaving New Jersey than any other State in America. Millionaire Phil Murphy is so disconnected from New Jersey’s working and middle classes that he let slip that, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your State.” Trenton’s Democrats share Phil Murphy’s callous indifference, so if you want honest answers to the State’s real problems, elect Republicans.

#7: Highest property and income tax rates in the US
Phil Murphy inherited a state with high taxes, but he campaigned on a promise for a stronger and fairer New Jersey. In reality, his radical tax hikes and progressive platitudes make us weaker and poorer. His solution is to tell working and middle class families, who can’t afford his high tax agenda, to move. But why move when we can vote? We need leaders in Trenton who will have the courage to reduce the size of state government and create real tax relief. On November 5, vote Republican.

#6: Ride Share Tax
Ride sharing has revolutionized urban and suburban transportation. Innovative new companies like Uber and Lyft provide safe rides home, affordable transportation for people who don’t own a car, and help stop drunk driving. So, how does Governor Murphy reward successful new businesses providing valuable services? He taxes them! That’s Phil Murphy’s New Jersey. If you don’t like it or can’t afford it, he says you’re welcome to leave. Don’t like the choices? Vote Republican instead. We can do better.

#5: Second Amendment Attacks
Governor Murphy’s political obsession with appeasing the radical, anti-gun lobby can’t come at the expense, or from the pockets, of New Jersey’s law abiding citizens for simply exercising their Second Amendment right to own a firearm. In his haste to punish legal gun owners, he’s proven unwilling and unable to deal with the scourge of gun crime, opting instead to criminalize lawful gun ownership. Taxes, fees and laws must have a rational nexus to a legitimate government purpose, and not just be a back channel to pay for feel-good, liberal giveaways. No Governor is empowered to choose which constitutional rights matter and which don’t and where Phil Murphy will trample long standing rights in his quest to replace them, the NJGOP will fight alongside grassroots Republicans to defend those rights.

#4: Shore Rental Tax
This year, among Governor Phil Murphy’s multitude of new taxes, he signed a tax on Jersey Shore vacation rentals. The NJGOP called on the Governor to refund to the moms and pops who were forced to pay it, the money he was so quick to take. In response, he ignored us, and them. It seems this was just another Democrat money grab that hit hardest in communities still recovering from Superstorm Sandy.

#3: Second Most Miserable State
The most miserable state in the Union is California. Governor Murphy has said he wants New Jersey to be the California of the east. So, it’s no surprise we’re number two. Under Phil Murphy, New Jersey is the second most miserable state in America. People in New Jersey are struggling with affordability. We have the highest foreclosure rate, and one in four families goes hungry. So, when our Governor says that, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state,” it hurts. New Jerseyans need hope for a better tomorrow, but they won’t find it in our state’s Democrat Party. This year, vote for the party that still has New Jersey pride and honest answers to our state’s real problems. Vote Republican.

#2: Corporate Business Tax
New Jersey has the worst business climate in America. We lead the nation, not just in the outmigration of residents, but in the outmigration of jobs. We’ve suffered the exodus of leading corporations, like Honeywell and Gerber, who uproot and run for low cost states like North Carolina and Virginia. We even lost the bid for Amazon’s HQ2. When Governor Murphy hikes the corporate business tax by over $1 billion it signals to business owners that they can’t count on New Jersey for stability, predictability or affordability. But then this is the Governor who said, “If tax rate is your issue … whether you’re a business or an individual … we’re probably not your state.

#1: Rain Tax
A rainy day fund used to be what responsible government collected for emergencies. Not anymore. Not in New Jersey. And not under Governor Murphy. Today, it’s just another Democratic property tax and Trenton money grab. Instead of feeding your families, Phil Murphy’s rain tax scheme drains money from your pockets and pours it into Trenton’s coffers, to feed Murphy’s liberal agenda. None of that should come as a surprise, since the Governor let slip that, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.”

Please visit the Save Jersey website here: https://savejersey.com/2019/11/vote-republican-new-jersey-assembly-election-results-november-5th-doug-steinhardt/

What happens after Tuesday will determine whether this is a first step on the road to an actual party platform… or if it was a one-off, albeit a very strong and persuasive one. Stay tuned…

Democrats put virtue-signaling before public safety

Over the weekend, Sussex County’s volunteer firefighters held their annual parade in Franklin. At the event, one of the contingents of volunteers proudly displayed a Trump banner. The reaction was predictable.

Instead of thanking the brave volunteers who daily keep their families safe from harm and death, local Democrats began calling town halls trying to have the firefighters “removed” or “suspended” as volunteers. Evidently, their loathing of Donald Trump is more dear to them than the safety of their own children.

Who would replace these volunteers next time a house caught fire was not a consideration by the Democrats, all that mattered was that they supported Trump so they had to go. It was reminiscent of a story that circulated early in World War Two, during the Battle of France. A wounded German officer was brought into an Allied dressing station. He needed a blood transfusion, but upon hearing that it was “French” blood, he refused it. The German bled to death.

The Democrats are like that German. They would rather burn to death than tolerate volunteer firefighters who support Trump. Yes, they are crazy. They are stone cold f*cknuts.

Volunteer firefighters willingly risk their lives for their community. But apparently putting your body on the line for your neighbors isn't good enough. The Democrats want your mind too. They want to control and regulate how you think and express yourself.

If the Democrats succeed in their action against the volunteer firefighters, they will also succeed in raising property taxes. If volunteers are driven out of voluntary firefighting companies, that would pave the way for paid fire departments. That would undoubtedly require a hefty property tax hike to fund it. So the Democrats are, once again, acting true-to-form – virtue-signaling and raising property taxes!

We owe a debt of gratitude to volunteer firefighters like Assemblymen Parker Space and Tony Bucco, and former Freeholder Phil Crabb. They come from families who have for generations volunteered to risk their lives in service to their communities.

Democrats target another college trustee over Free Speech

Rob Jennings of the Newark Star-Ledger is reporting how some far-Left Democrats are, once again, attempting to muzzle free speech and shut down the expression of any differing opinion. This time their victim is a trustee at Raritan Valley Community College. Her name is Dr. Felecia Nace.

Her crime? Speaking at an event in Boston, where she criticized the Legislature’s recent implementation of an unfunded mandate – the newly imposed “LGBTQ” curriculum requirement. Dr. Nace posed the question: “Where is the overwhelming need to teach lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual history that supersedes basic academic success.”

The Legislature imposed the new requirement without any additional funding – while it slashed education funding in most of New Jersey’s school districts.

Dr. Felecia Nace

Dr. Nace argues that the emphasis on LGBTQ education distracts from academic achievement and could even distort history. Citing examples from a similar curriculum used in California, she noted that it questioned the sexuality of President James Buchanan, the only unmarried U.S. president, and 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson.

“This reckless questioning sets children on a slippery slope. We have honored these individuals for their contributions to society, and what a slap in the face to their memories to now question their sexuality," Dr. Nace said.

"For most children, their gender is a fundamental part of who they are. The vast majority of children are not confused about their sex, and it’s something that they were never, ever preoccupied with until today.”

Dr. Nace taught language arts in the Montclair public school district, was an adjunct professor of English at Mercer County Community College, and worked as an education specialist with the state education department.

The community college issued a statement on Dr. Nace, who has been a trustee since 2017, pointing out that Dr. Nace was “present as a private citizen” and made her views accordingly. Of course, that wasn’t enough for the anti-speech, far-Left Democrats, who called for Dr. Nace’s resignation.

One such authoritarian politician – a certain Melonie Marano – put out a statement in opposition to intellectual diversity: “At a time when our county is becoming more diverse, and our young college students are becoming more understanding about LGBTQ+ issues, we cannot have board members who actively try to exclude gay studies from education.”

Marano’s statement reeks of religious conversion rather than democratic debate. Of course, true Democrats (those worthy of the name) understand that ALL unfunded mandates thrust upon the property taxpayers by the Legislature are open to question and debate. That is the very idea of democracy – a concept Marano apparently hates.

Marano is a long-time politician and candidate for Freeholder in Somerset County. She is affiliated with the far-Left group Indivisible and is endorsed by the Somerset County Democrats. In August, the Somerset Democrats went on social media to encourage those who “hate our country” to run for office. The media reported:

Somerset County Democrats disavowed a since-deleted Facebook post encouraging those who “hate our country” to run for public office, donate to political campaigns or otherwise engage in politics that drew fire from the county’s Republicans.

The leadership of the Somerset County Democrats did not take responsibility for what was posted on its social media and instead blamed a “volunteer” who they claimed was angry with… you guessed it… Donald Trump. The Democrats refused to name the volunteer.

Apparently, HATING AMERICA is now a qualification for office with some Democrats, so it should come as no surprise when we read statements from Melonie Marano in opposition to the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

Why is a journalist on a sexual-identity “power” list?

Some people still subscribe to newspapers in the hope of providing themselves with basic information on the current events of the day.  And once upon a time, newspapers did just that.  Older journalists worked very hard to keep their personal opinions, emotions, feelings, and biases away from their job of reporting the news. 

Not anymore.  Now newspaper reporters publicly celebrate their biases – flaunt them – and, as a result, journalism as a career is on life support. 

Readers today expect reportage to be grossly untrue and biased and they are guided accordingly.  More and more, newspapers bore voters.  Most voters can tell you today how the newspapers will report on each and every debate next year between Donald Trump and whoever the Democrat candidate is.  You could place a bet on it if anyone would take a bet on it but nobody will because everybody knows.  So very predictable.

What happened to intellectual curiosity?  Back during the day before yesterday, a reporter approached a story with an open, interested mind – excited by the prospects of where the story might take it.  Not today.  Now it is “time to make the donuts” – the work of drudgery – a fine cabinetmaker reduced to nailing together crates.  Reporters have everything arranged in advance.  The story is written before they write it.  There are those with the white hats and them with the black – with 95 percent of the story slanted against the designated “baddies” and praising the “goodies” – and 5 percent reserved for a “response” from the “baddies” (which, in the course of a conversation with the reporter, is often turned into the worst bit).  Journalism today is like writing while sleepwalking.  A fiction produced through automatic writing.   

Many reporters – the Star-Ledger’s Jonathan Salant comes to mind – cannot get their brains out of their comfortable suburban surroundings, the cozy press club, the shared prejudices and opinions.  Never meeting another soul who is unlike them, they cannot imagine any way but their own.  A machine stuck at one speed, one function, doing the same thing, grinding on until it burns out. 

Then there are the activists.  These are the so-called journalists who think it cool to show that they are compromised from the start, their minds made up.  The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran laid in out last year when he wrote:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”  Sounds more like the “core mission” of a political operation than of journalism.

Of course, there still are some genuine journalists out there.  A month before Moran wrote that stunning admission, the Atlantic City Press published an editorial which included these reassuring lines:  “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  Newsgathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  

People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

Which brings us to Matt Arco of… you guessed it, the Star-Ledger.  Why is Matt Arco number 34 on a list of 100 “LGBT Power” brokers?  Why is that kind of self-defining celebrity necessary for a journalist?  We thought he was covering the news, and here he is a power broker making the news.  What is a journalist doing cheek-by-jowl on a list of politicians, lobbyists, and political operatives?  

And why is he described as a “voice” when he should be a conduit of information, which is the heart and soul of journalism.  Is anyone really looking for another celebrity “voice” shouting to be heard, telling us their feelings, thoughts, opinions – or do we want to be informed about what’s really going on?  The title “political reporter” shouldn’t be meant literally. 

How can a journalist who allows himself to be placed on a celebrity “power” list be taken seriously?  As one of the top named members of a political identity group, how can we expect Matt Arco to fairly and honestly cover stories concerning religious groups with theological traditions that don’t line up with the policy agenda of his political identity group?  Groups such as Biblical Christians, Torah Jews, and adherent Muslims. 

How can Matt Arco be expected to fairly and honestly cover a candidate or  political organization whose positions or platform is not in agreement with the positions and platform of his political identity group – of which he is the 34th most powerful operative in the state?  Having Matt Arco cover the Republican Party is like sending Ann Coulter to cover the Democrats.  It’s not fair or honest.

State Democrats huddle over Sanctuary… decide to attack Christian clergy

An old trial lawyer once asked, “What is the single most important thing in a trial?  Answer: A sympathetic victim.” 

Whatever you think about the “re-tweets” concerning Congresswoman Omar or Tliab or A.O.C. or even about Sharia Law… there is a real dearth of sympathetic “victims” to this saga.  That, coupled with two facts, suggests what is happening has nothing to do with the pretense of outrage by some Democrats.    

First, the Democrats neglected to even file candidates for Sussex County Freeholder this year.  Yes, the Republicans are running unopposed.

Second, Donald Trump has actually said and tweeted (original content) far worse than anything Jerry Scanlan has been accused of “re-tweeting” and… wait for it… does anyone, in their wildest imaginings, believe that Donald Trump will not carry Sussex County by 60 percent or more?  So… the point of this exercise is…??? 

Yes, it becomes obvious that the intensive efforts by state Democrats in Sussex County are about something else.  That something else is Governor Phil Murphy’s illegal Sanctuary scheme. 

Over the weekend, top Democrats from around the state huddled in an effort to try to get their Sanctuary State scheme back on track.  As we begin to count the first victims of Murphy’s scheme (literally, the body count has begun) and he gets push back from the media, from individual towns and counties, even from elected Democrats – the Murphy team is getting worried.  And it’s not just their failing Sanctuary scheme they need to be worried about.  Murphy and the Democrats are suppressing victims in a rape case – no, not “tweets” or “re-tweets” but violent, sexual assault, which (unless you are a Murphy Democrat), is one hell of a lot more egregious than a “re-tweet” or even… a “tweet”.  Rape trumps Tweet.  Always.

Then there is the Democrats’ attack on a Disabled American Veteran, their embrace of a group designed a “terrorist organization” by one of America’s best Islamic allies in the middle east, the Rain Tax, the cuts in funding for kids’ education, their economic failures… jobs, spending, infrastructure, debt… Murphy and his merry crew are a pack of fools. 

And now it is going to get worse.  What they discussed and decided to do (all of them, the group of them, for which they should be held to account individually and collectively) is to put the New Jersey Democratic Party on record as opposed to the Christian faith because it is “not LGBTQ… enough”.  No kidding.

That was the outcome of all that huddling.  Desperate to change the focus from their illegal Sanctuary debacle, they came up with this.  Maybe the heat got to them? 

Just wait until State Democratic Chairman John Currie starts fielding questions from outraged clergymen in his community.  We would love to be in on those calls… and we just might be.

The summer keeps getting better and better!

Republican Assembly Leader takes on cop-killers

The “new” Democrats have gone nuts… they’re sounding more and more like those crazy, Soviet-era, New Age socialists from the 1970’s.  Forget pragmatic “centrists” like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrat millennials have embraced their grandparents’ politics… it’s like Jim Jones all over again. 

Remember Rev. Jim Jones?  He was the woke, hip, socialist, New Age, Pro-Green, Pro-Ass, spiritual/political leader so near and dear to the Democrat Party of the 1970’s.  Jones even campaigned with First Lady Rosalynn Carter and was appointed to high office by the liberal Democrat Mayor of San Francisco…

Of course, Jones and his “People’s Temple” ended very badly.  But make no mistake about it, Jim Jones was the original Social Justice Warrior…

We’ve been thinking a lot about this, in light of the so-called “People’s Summit”, a gathering in Washington, DC, that opened with remarks from an officer of the NAACP who led the crowd in a chant that honored a convicted cop-killer.  Now once-upon-a-time, the NAACP was a respected, mainstream civil rights organization, but apparently they’ve gone off the deep end too… or at least one of their officers has.  Here’s the story as it was reported:

As the event began on Monday, there were a series of opening remarks from participants and organizations, and Jamal Watkins of the NAACP led the crowd in a chant.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

These possibly familiar words are from convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard). In this famous quote, Shakur is herself referencing Karl Marx, who famously wrote “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

The event’s organizers and sponsors include Planned Parenthood, the SEIU, the Sierra Club, and CPD Action, part of the Center for Popular Democracy, the community organizing group that effectively replace ACORN.

Former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member Shakur was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. She escaped and fled to Cuba where she was granted asylum. In 2013, the FBI under President Barack Obama named Shakur to the Most Wanted Terrorists list, the first woman to ever make the list.

Shakur’s words are often recited at protests, including Black Lives Matter marches and the 2018 “March for Our Lives.”

The Women’s March under the leadership of Linda Sarsour faced controversy in 2017 for celebrating Shakur’s birthday in a tweet.

Eventually the organization was forced to make a statement, saying in a series of tweets that the “Women’s March is a nonviolent movement. We have never and will never use violence to achieve our goals” and that Shakur’s “resistance tactics were different from ours. That does not mean that we do not respect her anti-sexism work.”

Shakur “took a militant approach,” the organization tweeted. “We do not. That does not mean we don’t respect and appreciate her anti-racism work.”

As reported on Matt Rooney’s Save Jersey website, New Jersey State Police Colonel Patrick Callahan stepped up in defense of his murdered compatriot:

“It is an affront to every man and woman who wears the badge that someone would choose to evoke the words of a convicted cop killer and fugitive from justice at a political conference,” said Callahan. “The men and women of the New Jersey State Police will never forget the sacrifice made by Trooper Werner Foerster on May 2, 1973 nor will we forget that the person convicted of his murder remains a fugitive for nearly 40 years. We will remain steadfast, both in the pursuit of Joanne Chesimard and in the preservation of the memory of Trooper Werner Foerster, Badge #2608.”

And Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick launched his own broadside at Democrats who want to make a hero out of a cop-killer:

This year there are a bunch of woke Democrats – all long on emotional rhetoric, with solutions that reek of socialist banality.  All A.O.C. wannabees running for Assembly… like Darcy Draeger and Lisa Bhimani in LD25, Deana Lykins in LD24, Stacey Gunderman and Lisa Mandelblatt in LD21, and Laura Fortgang in LD26.   

Assembly Republicans – led by Jon Bramnick – are standing against their tragic emotional appeals that have failed so horribly in the past.  It is imperative for conservatives to stand with the Republican Leader in this effort.  Jon Bramnick, whose very platform is “reason” – whose watchwords are probity and human decency – must defeat this emotional onslaught from a terrible past. 

Think the People’s Temple can’t happen again?

Think the emotions expressed at the People’s Summit were a fluke? 

The emotion-driven contagion of socialism stalks our nation again.  Rational Americans of all political parties must join together to drive it back into the past, where is should remain as a nightmare remembered. 

Crazy “new” Democrats honor cop-killer at summit

The post-2016 “new” Democrats who got involved in politics after Donald Trump was elected President keep surprising us with just how nuts they really are.  And there is a fey, lack-of-recognition in their own craziness – like a guest who shows up at dinner with a bag of their own excrement… and thinks nothing wrong in doing so. 

On Monday, eight Democrat candidates who are running for President of the United States of America – and countless other Democrat candidates at all levels of government – showed up for a summit in Washington, DC, that opened with remarks from an officer in the NAACP who led them in a chant that honored a convicted cop-killer.  Now once-upon-a-time, the NAACP was a respected, mainstream civil rights organization, but apparently they’ve gone off the deep end too… or at least one of their officers has.  Here’s the story as it was reported:

Top 2020 Democrat candidates are taking the stage this week at the 2019 ‘We The People Summit’ in Washington, DC. As the event began on Monday, there were a series of opening remarks from participants and organizations, and Jamal Watkins of the NAACP led the crowd in a chant. 

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.” 

These possibly familiar words are from convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard). In this famous quote, Shakur is herself referencing Karl Marx, who famously wrote “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

The event’s organizers and sponsors include Planned Parenthood, the SEIU, the Sierra Club, and CPD Action, part of the Center for Popular Democracy, the community organizing group that effectively replace ACORN.

Former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member Shakur was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. She escaped and fled to Cuba where she was granted asylum. In 2013, the FBI under President Barack Obama named Shakur to the Most Wanted Terrorists list, the first woman to ever make the list.

Shakur’s words are often recited at protests, including Black Lives Matter marches and the 2018 “March for Our Lives.”

The Women’s March under the leadership of Linda Sarsour faced controversy in 2017 for celebrating Shakur’s birthday in a tweet.

Eventually the organization was forced to make a statement, saying in a series of tweets that the “Women’s March is a nonviolent movement. We have never and will never use violence to achieve our goals” and that Shakur’s “resistance tactics were different from ours. That does not mean that we do not respect her anti-sexism work.”

Shakur “took a militant approach,” the organization tweeted. “We do not. That does not mean we don’t respect and appreciate her anti-racism work.”

The #Resistance continues to quote Shakur’s words, and did so today on the stage at the event where most of the declared 2020 Democrat candidates are speaking, including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey (where the State Trooper was murdered), former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA), and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).

Will any of them offer a similar disclaimer?

As reported yesterday on Matt Rooney’s Save Jersey website, New Jersey State Police Colonel Patrick Callahan stepped up in defense of his murdered compatriot:

“It is an affront to every man and woman who wears the badge that someone would chose to evoke the words of a convicted cop killer and fugitive from justice at a political conference,” said Callahan. “The men and women of the New Jersey State Police will never forget the sacrifice made by Trooper Werner Foerster on May 2, 1973 nor will we forget that the person convicted of his murder remains a fugitive for nearly 40 years. We will remain steadfast, both in the pursuit of Joanne Chesimard and in the preservation of the memory of Trooper Werner Foerster, Badge #2608.”

Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick launched his own broadside at the “new” Democrats:

On Saturday, Governor Phil Murphy was up in Sussex County to promote the candidacy of two Democrats who are running for the Assembly, Deana Lykins and Dan S. Smith.  Lykins, is an insurance industry lobbyist, and Smith, the city attorney of Orange (Essex County), was also an officer in the NAACP – just like the “new” Democrat who led the Marxist cop-killer’s chant on Monday. 

We wonder if Mr. Smith has anything to say about this sorry incident???

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.

Blue what? The only NJ Dem legislator elected to Congress was endorsed by the NRA!

There’s a lot to be said for not having a record. 

For a start, you can lie about who you are and what you will do when you get elected.  You can even target your lies to different audiences – like pretending you have a war record and appealing to suburban voters with your anti-tax broadcast advertising, while using your grassroots to find and target liberals with a message especially for them.  That’s how the Democrats did it. 

Republicans… they did it ass backwards.  They invested millions to tell their grassroots to go to hell and then broadcast an explicitly liberal message to those cultural leftists who hate the word “Republican” the most.  And they did it in the midst of the most divisive national election since 2010 – on par with 1994.  They invested even more millions in turning out the very people who loath them – all the while doing their utmost to convince their base that they think of them the same way they think of dog excrement.  See, in this way you lose everybody! 

New Jersey Republicans desperately needed a unified message to take to war in 2018.  After Donald Trump and the GOP leadership in Congress screwed them by passing a tax package that arguably raised property taxes in the state with the worst property tax problem in the nation – somebody should have got everyone in a room to figure out a message.  Hey, it’s a small state so if you don’t want to come off like a cacophony, you’d better all be singing the same tune.

Instead, half argued that screwing with the state’s property tax deduction was a net positive, half said it was a net negative – and the Democrats, they just loved it!  For once, they got to be the party defending the beleaguered property taxpayers of New Jersey.  What passes for the media in New Jersey backed them up on it.  And more importantly, so did the instincts of the average property taxpayer.  Donald Trump or no Donald Trump, when it comes to trusting the promises politicians make about property taxes, they don’t.  Period.  Somebody should have remembered that.

After handing the property tax issue to the Democrats – the issue that has consistently tested as the top concern of New Jersey voters for at least the last decade – it is amazing the NJGOP did as well as it did on November 6th.  A large part of the electorate already hated Donald Trump (and therefore, the Republican brand) and wanted to show it – but by miscalculation, the remainder were granted permission to hate the GOP too… over property taxes!  Gagged and gagged again.

But it wouldn’t have worked so well if the Democrats hadn’t been such clean slates.  Just think of it.  All those Democrats in the Legislature with all those perfect liberal voting records… and the only guy who is acceptable to the electorate to move up and go to Congress is the state’s most conservative Democrat legislator… the one who is endorsed by the NRA.  The one who voted against same-sex marriage.  Heck, Jeff Van Drew is more Pro-Life than many Republicans and has opposed both RGGI and increasing the minimum wage!  But he moved up, and all the rest stayed behind. 

Meanwhile, DC residents Andy Kim and Tom Malinowski simply move into the state, take out six month leases on rental properties, run and win.  And the silly fools who spent years as Democrat committee members, in local governments, running for Freeholder and then for Assembly… they just suck ass.  You can’t get elected because your liberal records won’t let you.

Where did Mikie Sherrill come from?  The “Navy pilot – Prosecutor – Mom” fell out of the sky and landed in Congress.  In the new politics of congressional elections, she’s one of the Houyhnhnm.  Back in the trenches, the time-serving yahoos can only snort and envy her advancement. 

Yesterday, Rutgers put out a new poll showing that – once again – taxes top the state’s issues grid (with a sizeable number volunteering “property” taxes as their big concern).  The Eagleton poll noted that people are generally happy with the state’s economy and, as it is part of a generally buoyant national economy, that shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it does appear Democrat Governor Murphy is taking more credit than the state Republican leaders.  One “research professor” drew attention to “a new phenomenon” of voters not having quite formed an opinion of Phil Murphy, after nearly a year in office.  It’s like they don’t know him and it’s taking some time. (Maybe they will now… after yesterday’s snow job?)

A phenomenon is it?  Why is anyone surprised, given the state of political news coverage in New Jersey?  Just ask anyone on press row… oh, that’s right, it’s not there anymore.  If it’s a national election like we just had, the coverage will be driven by national outlets.  If not… good luck.  And that is something our campaign gurus are going to need to consider when planning what used to be called “earned media” campaigns. 

Meanwhile, back at madness central, a couple of juvenile delinquent Democrat Assemblywomen invited “pro-death penalty for American military members” activist Jane Fonda to place a feather in her patouee and lead a conga line from the Speaker’s office to the Governor’s den.  Not a word yet from Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill about the appropriateness of Fonda’s appearance – or from Andy Kim or Tom Malinowski, for that matter.  But hey Assemblywomen, keep it up.  If that’s the fashion, keep it up and you’ll soon find yourself in… Congress?  NOT!

The GOP is the natural party of suburban New Jersey.

Matt Rooney is right.  The Democrats’ “unwillingness to end the redistribution of funds from the suburbs to failing urban schools remains the single biggest driver of our state’s nightmarish, neighborhood-killing property taxes.”

The Democrats could – and should – be challenged on their cruel insistence that economically distressed families in suburban and rural New Jersey be made to subsidize rich corporations and wealthy professionals in places like Jersey City and Hoboken.  The tax breaks with which urban Democrat bosses favor contributors to political campaigns are paid for with subsidies from struggling communities throughout New Jersey. 

There is more than enough corporate and professional money in urban New Jersey to cover the education of the children who live there.  If those interested parties were made responsible for the children of their communities the educational systems there would be subject to a greater degree of local oversight and on-the-spot scrutiny by those stakeholders.  Absent that, under the current system of subsidy from afar, those subsidized stakeholders are more than content to allow political corruption to flourish, just so long as they keep getting their discount. 

It is shameful for One Percenters like Phil Murphy, Steve Fulop, Lacey Rzeszowski, and Saily Avelenda to don their pussy hats and try to argue that their tax breaks are about “helping poor children”.  Not when their “philanthropy” is paid for by over-taxed, working class families trying to stay out of foreclosure. There is nothing LIBERAL about screwing over working class families to pay for propping-up corrupt urban political machines. 

As far back as the administration of Governor Jim McGreevey, the Democrats knew that half of the state’s economically disadvantaged children lived outside the over-funded urban Abbott school districts.  More than a decade has passed since the state Supreme Court issued its report on this – and NOTHING has been done to overturn the fundamental unfairness of the state’s system of funding education. 

Since the economic crash of 2008, suburban and rural poverty has grown in New Jersey and throughout the United States.  That’s what the liberal to centrist Brookings Institute has argued in their published studies.  Brookings’ experts also note that, since the 1960’s, most of the nation’s anti-poverty programs have been aimed at the cities.   

Rural and suburban New Jersey lack even the basic infrastructure to help get people back on their feet – on top of which local municipalities are robbed of the property taxes that could help with this.  Everything is taken from them – in the name of the urban poor – but for the use of the One Percent and the corporations they control. 

Corrupt urban political machines, corrupt vendors, rich corporations, and wealthy professionals all make out under the Abbott regime.  The genuinely poor remain trapped in schools that, for all the money spent per pupil, fail to educate their students or prepare them for the working world.  The kids are used as pawns, as an excuse, for the corruption and those getting rich from it.

More than a decade ago a prescient writer by the name of Paul Mulshine argued that the life of every child mattered and that the state needed to provide a uniform baseline of funding.  Instead, the Democrats have ensured that the money continues to miss those poor children living outside the Abbotts, while failing to help those living within the Abbotts. 

The question is, will those currently charged with leading New Jersey Republicans into their next battle recognize these stark facts starring them in the face?  Will they make use of them?  If not for their own political ambitions and those of their party – Republican leaders should be urged to do so on behalf of over-taxed working people, their children, and for the child pawns being used but not served.

New Jersey Republicans face extinction.  Their fighting prowess is minimal.  It has reached the point where any plausible Democrat candidate with a modicum of funding can expect to simply march in and take most of their remaining legislative seats.  Not in Northwest New Jersey mind you, where every Democrat on the ballot was just ruthlessly slaughtered and where the Democrat who challenged Senator Steve Oroho in 2017 lost her school board seat.  This is where the pussy hats run into a phalanx of flannel shirts (and those are the women!).  

In his column (https://savejersey.com/2018/11/n-j-republicans-are-letting-sweeney-appropriate-their-strongest-argument-rooney/), Matt Rooney raises the question of whether Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick is up to the task of fighting the Democrats next year.  Whether he is a “wartime consiglieri” or not.  We hope that he is, but at the present, he appears to be more concerned about how he is perceived within the “bubbles” of Trenton and Westfield (whose median income is double that of Sussex County). 

Assembly Leader Bramnick would do well to break out of this bubble.  “Bubble land” doesn’t understand America.  It is too rich, too privileged, too unconcerned with the basics of shelter and debt to worry about those who are.  Bubble land never understood the rise of Donald Trump.  Never got the levels of pain and disappointment that the eight gray years of Barack Obama brought to those working class people who voted for him in 2008.  They put it down to “racism” when it was really about the threat of foreclosure – of losing… everything.

We urge Jon Bramnick and the other leaders of the NJGOP to embark on an experiment in listening and learning.  Not the usual photo-op in Newark… go to where the new poverty is.  Visit a food pantry in what everyone thinks is a middle class town.  Watch the people who once had a good job, with benefits and a pension, but who now work three without.  Notice the high priced automobiles, now over a decade old.  Drive around and take note of the “for sale” signs.  Visit an encampment of working people who have lost their homes.

This isn’t a time for rallying around a corrupt Establishment that – uses poor people as an excuse to rape working people to make rich people richer.  No matter how you personally feel about the Democrats responsible, these are bad policies and they must be challenged.  The choice must be one of clear-blue-water between the parties.  Again, if not for your own political ambitions and those of your party, do it for the over-taxed working people, for their children, and for the child pawns being used but not served.

Matt Rooney makes the point very clearly:  “Taxpayers want an advocate… not a mediator.”  Amen.

2019: There are millions in conservative money in NJ

When it comes to picking through the detritus and finding the gems nobody does it better than David Wildstein.  Yep, before he was Wally Edge he was a political consultant, campaign manager, opposition researcher, and successful candidate for public office.  You can’t take that away from him.  He’s been in battles up close and personal.  He’s had to punch and claw.  And that’s what makes him different from a guy like Max Pizarro.  David Wildstein remembers what it was like to be in the muck of the trenches.  Max Pizarro has only known clean sheets and maid service.

Given the excruciatingly poor results Republicans have had raising the necessary levels of funding for legislative races in New Jersey, a recent post by Wildstein on his latest venture – NewJerseyGlobe.com – noted that the very conservative United States Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has raised more money in New Jersey than his very woke, very hip, wildly popular with the Left opponent – Congressman Beto O’Rourke.  Cruz has raised $139,783 in New Jersey to fund his re-election effort in Texas.  Media darling Beto managed just $52,349.  

But here’s the clincher.  Wildstein notes that in his failed 2016 run for President, the plain-as-day, no-doubt-about-it, right-winger raised $903,417 in New Jersey. 

How is that possible?  We are endlessly told that there aren’t any conservatives in New Jersey – let alone nearly a million bucks worth (and that’s not counting what the other wingers raised in New Jersey, like Rand Paul, and Donald Trump himself!).  A million bucks would be a BIG part of the budget of a committee like ARV, wouldn’t it be?

Reminder to those concerned:  In preparation for next year, get a message that doesn’t ignore the acres of diamonds out there.

Did someone dump in Alan Steinberg’s brain and neglect to flush it?

Over the past year or so, we have been watching Alan Steinberg’s irretrievable slide into the dark waters of a wannabe fellow-traveler.   With today’s column – the one attacking Republican Bob Hugin and praising the Democrats’ nomination of a 1960’s era socialist as that party’s face in Florida – Steinberg has finally hit crush depth.

We are genuinely concerned for Alan, a one-time devotee of Her Bluebloodedness Christie Todd Whitman, and recall how slavishly Steinberg attempted to defend her disastrous policies – fiscally ruinous – for which every taxpayer in New Jersey continues to suffer.  In recognition of such devotion, the Whitmanites kept Steinberg in patronage heaven.

But with the advent of Donald Trump, something went terribly wrong with Alan.  He’s in touch with too much of the old crowd, most of whom switched party in the Year of Our Lord 2008, when Heaven sent down the anointed one to dwell amongst and lead us.  We hate to remind Alan that when the folks who voted for He Who Must Be Obeyed got through all the smoke and bullshit only to realize that they were still living in their mother’s basement, without a job (but in plenty of debt) – these same folks voted for a newer, coarser savior… The Donald. 

The Bluebloods, who Steinberg seems so intent on virtue-signaling to, never got over their rejection by the vast working and middle classes who make up most of America’s voters.  They are not concerned by people like Andrew Gillum, who they long ago sponsored, co-opted, and turned into salon pets.  Corporate America has been pouring money into the Left for generations, with the understanding that when the Left does get power, it leaves them alone and is focused instead on the average American taxpayer.

That’s the great culpability of the 1960’s era New Left – bourgeois academics who found that it was easier to take the rich man’s money and make war on the working class… to compound a philosophy of “identity” that would split the mighty working class into white and black, male and female, gay and straight, urban and rural… to allow it to endlessly battle itself.  And in the time since, economic inequality has grown to the point where, if you believe the Washington Post, the richest 1 percent own more wealth than at any time in the last 50 years.  If you believe the New York Times, the richest one percent hold more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.  That’s what the New Left’s identity bullshit and the fracturing of the working class has got us… vast economic inequality.

As for the race between Republican Bob Hugin and the incumbent Democrat, Senator Bob Menendez, is Steinberg serious?

Yes, we do remember that Menendez was once the pet of Governor Tom Kean and that a great many of the most vulgarly rich, formerly Republican, Bluebloods still carry a torch for “that nice young man” from Hudson County.  The trouble is, that “nice young man” grew up to be a corpulent bowl of putrid corruption – and he’s not from Hudson County anymore, he’s from Washington, DC. 

Hey, maybe it’s not all his fault, that place will do it to you, but after the shit he’s pulled, he owns it.  You can’t help your rich buddy import women into the United States and still expect to be called a civilized human being.  It’s a crime against nature.  And that’s before we examine the policies pursued by Bob Menendez… like wanting to waste money on a border wall with Canada (yep, like in South Park) or never meeting a war that he didn’t want to send some blue-collar kids to fight.  Hey, did this guy ever serve himself?  Does that make him a chicken hawk?

So piss on Alan Steinberg’s prognosticating… it’s all just aid and comfort for a very bad guy who has a lot of old-fashioned, formerly Republican, majorly blueblood friends.  And Alan, get hold of yourself, you don’t need those bluebloods’ approval to feel relevant.  Screw them.  Resist.

Liberals were once skeptical of the security services… how did they come to worship J. Edgar Hoover?

What passes for “liberals” today are busy tweeting and blogging and posting about how “patriotic” they are for supporting the unelected security services (CIA, FBI, NSA, TSA, et al) and how the elected President of the United States must be “resisted” because he is a “traitor” who “colluded” with “Russia” – a country they apparently liked a whole lot better when it went by the name “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. 

Where “reds under the bed” and “the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming”, were once said to be the province of the “looney right”, today they are on the lips of that increasingly histrionic class of liberals who once did the mocking.  Things have been turned on their head since 2008, when the “second coming” arrived on promises of a new day and a fresh look but who, once in office, ruthlessly consolidated executive power to the point of prosecuting whistleblowers under the Espionage Act – as spies and “enemies of the state”.

But things didn’t get really nuts until the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who the Left seems ready to do a deal with Communist China to get rid of.  Talk about taking the concept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” too far… these people think a bullet through the brain is a recommended cure for toothache.  

Not long ago, liberals had a more graded view of the world, the American government, and the security services.  Their art showed it.  Take this scene from Oliver Stone’s film “Nixon” – one that couldn’t or wouldn’t be made today…

Malinowski and Kim embrace the dangerous Left

There’s a group called BlueWave.  It comes out of one of the most radical places in America… Amherst, Massachusetts… a far-left academic enclave where they fly the flag of the United Nations over their town hall.  Yep, they are “citizens of the world” not the United States of America.

In New Jersey, BlueWave is organized out of Montclair in Essex County.  That’s right, Montclair – a town that gave Barack Obama 83 percent of its votes.  Where Hillary Clinton got 18,000 votes to Donald Trump’s 2,300.  Does this sound like your town?

The deal with BlueWave is that they send people from places like Montclair – into communities like yours.  They go door-to-door and raise money to bring their vision of how the world should be to you… and you better accept it!

Now BlueWave is raising money for Tom Malinowski and Andy Kim – two career bureaucrats who were so imbued with leftist “government-knows-best” ideology that rather than give the newly elected President the benefit-of-the-doubt, they quit government to join Leftist groups to undermine his administration.  Wow, refusing to accept the outcome of a democratic election, and then working to undermine the government you work for, is kind of like…

Well, tonight BlueWave is hosting an event for Malinowski and Kim – two bureaucrats whose tenure in government so screwed the American people that they reacted by electing Donald Trump.  And to place an exclamation point on just how dangerously far-Left they are, they’ve invited in Senator Elizabeth Warren… who represents Amherst, Massachusetts. 

Senator Warren is an academic and the sponsor or supporter of a number of far-Left initiatives that obviously Tom Malinowski and Andy Kim stand for as well.  These include…

1.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands for the abolition of ICE;

2.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands for higher taxes;

3.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands for government, run single-payer healthcare;

4.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands for extreme partisanship;

5.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands for increased job-killing regulations;

6.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands against Israel;

7.     Warren, Malinowski, and Kim stands against free trade.

Ralph Nader’s speech to conservatives re. crony capitalism

The American Conservative (TAC) is the publication that predicted the fall of the Bush dynasty and the rise of Donald Trump.  They wrote about the populist shift in GOP politics when most Washington-based journalists were confidently predicting that Paul Ryan was the next big thing.

The American Conservative recently held its 2nd annual conference on crony capitalism, "Cronyism in Action: Government's Cozy Ties to Big Tech & Big War." Ralph Nader gave a special address on the Military Industrial Complex entitled, "Eisenhower's Warning: Prophetic and Presently Understated."  You can watch it here:

The conference began with opening remarks by the Hon. C. Boyden Gray, former ambassador to the European Union, and a board member of The American Conservative.  The first panel, on the military-industrial-congressional complex, featured journalist and TAC contributing editor Mark Perry as moderator, POLITICO reporter and defense editor Bryan Bender, investigative journalist and TAC contributor Gareth Porter, Mandy Smithburger, director of the Project on Government Oversight, and Caroline Dorminey, a defense policy analyst at the Cato Institute. You can watch a video of the first panel here:

The second panel debated the role of cronyism in the technology industry and featured TAC executive editor Lewis McCrary as moderator, writer and Open Markets Institute fellow Matt Stoller, Washington Examiner commentary editor

Tim Carney, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance Stacy Mitchell, and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation founder and president Robert D. Atkinson. You can watch a video of the second panel here:

For more information or to subscribe to The American Conservative, please contact John Burtka, at… jburtka@theamericanconservative.com. 

New Jersey GOP: Don’t be afraid to be Republicans.

By Rubashov

A weekend before the NJGOP held its Leadership Summit in Atlantic City, New Jersey, two contributors to this website attended a gathering of conservative academics and writers and journalists, hosted by an organization founded by the late William F. Buckley Jr.  The 500 present where in Philadelphia to enjoy a nice dinner and listen to a lecture by a writer named Rod Dreher.

Rod Dreher is the senior editor of the national magazine and website, The American Conservative.  This is the publication that predicted the fall of the Bush dynasty and the rise of Donald Trump.  They wrote about the populist shift in GOP politics when most Washington-based journalists were confidently predicting that Paul Ryan was the next big thing.

Dreher wrote a book last year that set the academic world talking.  It was debated in all those places that thoughtful Republicans go to figure out what the world is, and how they – and what they believe – fit into it.  Conservative journalists and think tanks debated the vision Dreher presented – and the book was a popular success, a “New York Times Bestseller”, in fact.

The book is called The Benedict Option (A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation).  It calls for Christian conservatives to reassess their relationships with the outside world – with institutions like the Republican Party and corporate America. 

Once upon a time, conservatives gave their votes to “pro-business” corporatists and in exchange received their “protection” on policies impacting traditional values.  The battle over same-sex marriage ended all that, exposing the business community as cheerleaders for the materialistic “sex and shopping” culture that sustains their short-term profits.  

In response to this and other betrayals, Dreher suggests that believers prepare themselves for a hard time, for a period not unlike that suffered by eastern Christianity during the Communist occupation of their nations and cultures.  The idea is to hold oneself apart, become stronger in belief and in practice, and build new institutions outside the hubbub and the madness.

David Brooks of the New York Times wrote that The Benedict Option was the most important and discussed book in a decade.  Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Convention, called the book prophetic and something every Christian should read.  Many have.  And they are starting to look at things differently, and beginning to reassess.

It's not only conservative Christians who are recoiling from a betrayal by the Establishment of which they once thought themselves a part.  Working class Americans of all ethnicities, creeds, and genders have given up on a Democratic Party obsessed with global capitalism and a Labor movement that threw them over for an immigration agenda that bloats the gray economy and threatens their jobs.  In his book, The Unwinding, An Inner History of the New America (2013), George Packer extended this loss of connection and idea of betrayal to the broader American middle class.  Meanwhile, libertarians are aghast at the growing regulatory police state and endless “war” economy.  While the election of Donald Trump has left many old-time, business-centric Republicans wondering who is who and what is what. 

Since Rod Dreher's lecture, there have been two regional meetings to discuss the practical implications of The Benedict Option on a state by state, party by party basis.  In each case, an individual reassessment is being made.  One political party organization that appears disconnected to its natural electorate is the Republican Party in New Jersey.  Indeed, it is such to the point of it being said not to possess an electorate at all, but rather a collection of voters who still notionally respond to the word “Republican”.

In arriving at this assessment, the discussion focused on what is a political party and how does it devolve the further it gets from its center.  In other words, everyone knows what it means to be a Republican and this reflects the generalizations held about the party nationally or globally.  But the further away you get from the center the greater the opportunity is for that message or "brand" to be corrupted, and its meaning lost. 

So what is the Republican Party – once we get down to the state level or county level – in a place like New Jersey?

(1) Is it the sum of the beliefs and aspirations of its members, as expressed every four years in a party platform?

(2) Or is it the network of profitable business interests of those who occupy leadership positions within the party?

This isn't a gibe at the leadership of the New Jersey GOP but rather a basic philosophical question.  Those engaged in this discussion are strongly influenced by Edmund Burke, who wrote:  "The principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged."

Burke considered politics to be a branch of ethics.  This separated him from Machiavelli and the modern political tradition which holds that "power" is supreme.

In light of this, the question above is posed.

So, will the NJGOP be guided by morality and ethics – and a written set of principles – or will it merely be a vehicle for men seeking power and the financial opportunities that flow from it?

Once upon a time, a certain Assemblyman – as Chairman of the NJGOP – came in for some very rough criticism because he would not formally endorse (or allow the Republican State Committee to endorse) the platform of the Republican National Committee, which had been debated and democratically approved in the summer of 2008.  

He was criticized for the part he played in leaving the New Jersey Republican Party without a set of written principles, but after he was removed as State Chairman by Governor Chris Christie, there was a new platform, adopted in the summer of 2012, debated and democratically approved as was the one before.  Sure enough, the NJGOP didn't adopt it either.  A new chairman, installed by Governor Christie, ignored the new set of party principles as had been the old.

And now there's been another platform, debated and voted on in the summer of 2016, by delegates from all across America.  And it too, has suffered the same fate as the others.  It has not been endorsed by the NJGOP – leaving the Republican Party in New Jersey without a set principles, a road map by which to judge its success or failure. 

Why?  Any poll will show you that most registered Republicans in New Jersey uniformly support the platform of the Republican Party.  So what makes it so difficult for the members of the New Jersey Republican State Committee to simply say, yes, we are Republicans and we support the democratically approved principles of our party as set down in the Republican Party Platform of 2016?

Well, in most cases, those state committee members are selected by Republican County chairmen in counties that have what is called a "party line".  This is s thumb on the scale at elections that enables a county machine to note who the "official" candidates of the party are. 

It is a system not unlike that practiced in less democratic nations and is thoroughly disreputable.  If New Jersey was a third world country organizing its first elections and it proposed such a thing, the United Nations would be bound to declare those elections rigged and undemocratic.  But New Jersey is part of the West and was established before the founding of the U.N.  So the political parties here are fortunate in that they do not fall under the scrutiny of international law. 

Most New Jersey Republicans are unaware that their state and local party organizations do not operate under a set of principles – or indeed any moral or ethical guide at all.  99 percent have no idea that the national Republican Party platform isn't used as a guide when recruiting potential Republican nominees for public office.

You see, most registered Republicans in New Jersey assume that there is one long chain of command leading from the White House of Donald Trump all the way down to the county committee level.  Republican voters believe that when the county party says that so and so is the "official" party candidate, they are hearing the word of the Republican National Committee.

Of course, this is not true.  That’s why there is so much confusion when state and local Republican leaders in New Jersey fail to match the rhetoric coming out of Washington, DC.  There is no direct line from the White House to the office of the local party boss.  And without a set of principles – a written standard by which to judge good from bad, success from failure – local party organizations are left with nothing but the will and wishes of a controlling party boss or cadre.

The employment and economic interests of many state and local Republican leaders tends to complicate things further.  Many county chairmen function as lobbyists or hold business connections and loyalties that are very much at variance with those principles of the Republican Party and the aspirations of ordinary Republicans.  This leads some party organizations to operate as for-profit mutual benefit societies or in some cases, sole proprietorships.  While some operate as entrepreneurs, others are more like placemen – granted patronage jobs or vendors contracts or some gift of status with which to do business. 

This is a surprise to many ordinary Republican voters in New Jersey, who still believe that their local party stands for the Republican platform.  In reality, when they vote Republican, they are not voting for who they think they are, but rather they are voting for the candidates put forward by what could be described as  independent operators, with agendas often at odds with the Republican Party platform. 

A review of the candidacies put forward by New Jersey Republicans in the last decade clearly shows that the Republican Party platform plays no role in the selection process.  What that means for average Republican voters is that instead of being a members of a party of ideas, of values, of right and wrong -- they are merely facilitators of what are often independent operators, who at times conduct themselves in ways that are more along the lines of an entrepreneur than an ideologue. 

A person’s vote is a very valuable thing.  Voters generally don’t treat it so, but it is.

Recently, Princeton University concluded a study that confirmed what many already feared – America is not a democracy.  How can we be?  Our precious votes are artificially funneled into two silos: Democratic or Republican.  If you want to look past those two, the media, academic, legal, and political powers of the Establishment won’t provide you with much.  “Pick one,” they tell us. 

We pledge our collective votes to one of two political parties with the understanding that we are going to get something in return.  That even if they try and fail, at the very least, they are going to stay somewhat true to what they say they are.  After all, we are voting for a national “brand” and we expect the candidates we vote for to reflect that.  We do not want to buy a new Ford only to learn that in New Jersey, a “Ford” is an aging Datsun.

If average voters think they are voting for a national Ford but instead get a local Datsun, then there really isn’t anything in it for the average Republican voter.  All they are doing is giving away their collective votes so that some local boss can harvest them to use to make money.  They think they are voting for people who believe in the platform of the Republican Party – of that thing they read about every four years and that largely reflects their values.  But it turns out to be just an illusion.  Someone has captured the Republican "brand" and monetized it. 

So voters turn-off, tune-out, and fail to turn-out to vote.

Voters are told how important it is to vote… by the guys who get jobs and contracts and status by monetizing other people’s collective votes. As for the average voter… maybe he or she loses a day’s wages by getting hauled up for jury duty (a delightful by-product of registering to vote).

And if you question how a new Ford is really an old Datsun… well then they call you names.  The true-believer is told he or she is some kind of freak for believing in the party platform.  What is wrong with you for thinking it was on-the-level?  Why would you ever believe that we actually believed in what we said we believed in?  Are you some kind of arsehole?

At the NJGOP Leadership Summit in Atlantic City, it was evident that very few could articulate what the Republican Party stood for.  The talk was all about the new technology available to communicate a message, rather than what that message is.  People who get paid to win campaigns in New Jersey were there to explain tactics and polling but not how to define and sell what we are burdened with… that word “Republican.”

The leadership of the NJGOP is now faced with the task of reconnecting a party with its voters.  To convince the one percent who profit from politics – and who control the levers of power – to allow a space for the 99 percent who simply want to vote for people they believe represent the values and principles of the Republican Party.

This will require patience and understanding – and will be made more difficult by the attitudes of some who use polling to determine political positions, rather than as a means to test arguments with which to convince.  The Democrats are in a position of hegemony because they invited in their true believers, gave them a seat at the table, and reaped financial benefits and grassroots activism by doing so.  They refused to follow public opinion. Choosing instead to make it. 

The career of Garden State Equality’s Steven Goldstein should be studied by every aspiring Republican activist.  At the start of his long march, when confronted with disheartening and frankly abysmal polling data, he did not jettison his principles, he shifted the conversation.  He used polling – not as a revelation to tell him what to believe – but as a tool for convincing others.

Remember that no more than 1 percent of those who vote are there to make money off the system.  99 percent show up to vote because they believe Republican means Republican principles and ideas and policies and the platform.  They are not in on the deal.  They get no cut.  So let's build institutions that these people can trust and that – more importantly – earn their trust.

So... which will it be?  A party based on ethics and morality – with a set of principles by which to judge its success or failure?  Or every man for himself, the pursuit of power, the worship of greed?  It is a time for choosing. 

The Republican Party in New Jersey can choose to open itself up to ideas and nail its colors to the mast and say "this is who we are and this is what we stand for!"  Ideas have brought the national Republican Party far – so why are they resisted in New Jersey?  Instead of avoiding issues, embrace them, use them, figure out ways in which to explain them and do so artfully to win the debate. 

For New Jersey Republicans, it is time to remember who you are.