Lonegan: GOPers who push "moderation" while cutting deals with Dems are an existential threat to our party.

An important and timely message from the father of New Jersey's conservative movement:

Fellow Republicans,

You all know me.

No matter what you think of me, you all know where I stand on the issues. Some of you might accuse me of being too unwavering, unwilling to compromise, but nobody has ever doubted where I'm coming from.

As we watch the Christie era in the rear-view mirror, we need to decide on what kind of party we intend to be. We need to chart a course for the road ahead.

That's very easy for someone like me. The course is free market conservatism, defending freedom at home, and our interests abroad. It is the message of our Republican Party Platform. Simple enough. If you call yourself a Republican, you should value Republican principles.

Unfortunately, that is not who is leading the Republican Party in Bergen County these days. There are too many who look to cut deals with the Democrats -- and not for idealistic policy aims -- but for their personal benefit. Their vision of the Republican Party is a defeatist one, where they seek to benefit from the crumbs swept from the Democrat table. The policies they advocate consist of slavishly mimicking a watered down version of the Democrats' own post-Western, post-Christian, anti-Freedom agenda.

You've probably heard it around the county, and around the state, that a conservative cannot win -- anything. The fact is that the only Republican to win statewide office in over twenty years was both Pro-Life and Pro-Second Amendment. The fact is that those Republicans who get the most votes in New Jersey are consistently the most conservative. The liberal wannabe Republicans can't turnout their base and those they want to convince have someone better to vote for -- a Democrat.

This "moderate" nonsense is like a religion with some of our so-called "leaders" -- those who practice the Janus-faced religion of being all things to all voters. Even though every study and every poll shows that they will not convince a Democrat to vote Republican in this starkly divisive climate, they hold true to the faith that turning-off a dozen conservatives is worth every liberal vote they pick-up.

The way forward is clear for 2018: Maximum Republican and conservative turnout. A full effort.

Of course, there are some within our party who are working against this. Some who are personally enmeshed with the Democrats. It's happening in other parts of the state as well. Democrats are playing in our primary. In every congressional battleground in the state, there is a former Democrat running as a Republican or a liberal Republican with Democrat-ties claiming to be a conservative. Every one.

They are there for one reason: To make us spend money so we won't have it to hit the Democrats in the General Election. Here in Bergen County, I am facing an opponent who was described by the Bergen Record as the "right hand man" to Democrat Sheriff Michael Saudino. Let's not forget that it was Saudino's feud with the Republican County Executive that lost us control of our county. Saudino, followed that up by joining Hillary Clinton and Josh Gottheimer on a ticket that crushed the BCRO. Through it all, my opponent remained employed by Sheriff Saudino, as his trusted consigliore, and actually started his campaign while still on the Democrat's payroll.

Now we all know where Sheriff Saudino stands on this election. He's backing fellow Democrat Josh Gottheimer for re-election this year. So are Mayors Harry Shortway of Vernon and Harry Shortway of Midland Park. They held an event for my opponent at their family bar in Passaic County. Did you follow that? They are endorsing Democrat Josh Gottheimer in the General Election but held an event to help my opponent in the Republican primary. Meanwhile, in a neighboring district, the insider-backed "Republican" candidate wouldn't tell a room full of Republicans how he voted for President in 2008 (Obama vs. McCain), 2012 (Obama vs. Romney), or 2016 (Clinton vs. Trump). And like my opponent, this fellow seems to be allergic to voting in a Republican primary.

Our party faces an existential threat from those who cut deals with Democrats and then preach the religion of "moderation" while pushing fake Republican candidates on us. We must resist them, whether they are well-meaning and stupid or slick and treacherous. It is time to use the Republican Party Platform and our conservative principles as the measure by which we judge our candidates. If some of our so-called "leaders" don't like that platform or our principles, they are free to leave the party and start their own. I, for one, am sick and tired of being dictated to by a small group of professional political "leaders" who are totally out of touch with the thoughts and views of most Republicans. It is time for them to go.

A party that knows what it is about, is a party that can convince people to get involved, contribute, and win. This holds true up and down our ticket. The message of lower taxes, less government, and individual freedom is a winning one. The Democrats' warmed-over socialism, leavened with coarse identity politics has, in the end, always lost.

Thank you for your time and I hope I will have your support to secure our primary in June and defeat the Democrats in November. If you have any insights you would like to share with me, please feel free to send me an email at steve@lonegan.com.

Thank you,
Steve Lonegan

Kim Guadagno to address crowds in Northwest NJ

The Mountain Folk look forward to their hero!

Phoebus: Democrats "celebrate" death

Whether it is an act of love or lust or a combination of both, when a woman has sexual congress with a man and the outcome is pregnancy, what is growing within her is a part of life. Some say it is an unborn child, others call it a fetus.  Whatever it is, when you abort it, you end a story.  You end the she or he who might have been.  That much is certain.

We all know women who have faced this crossroads.  Who had to choose.  It is not a light decision.  It is not a happy time. 

Now come the Democrats.  Senator Loretta "Mother Roach" Weinberg and Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, who should know better.  They proposed a resolution "celebrating" this unhappy time. 

We get it.  There are some who are so proud that they cannot admit to an unhappiness -- it might bring with it doubt.  And so they tell themselves that "this is a good thing" and that they are glad for it.  They place what they've done on an alter and worship it.  For them it becomes "the sacrament of abortion."  For them, doubt must be shouted away and dissenters heckled down.

The Democrats' resolution used the opportunity presented by the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade to "recognize and celebrate the importance of continued access to reproductive health care for women."  Ah, those euphemisms!  It reminds us of the time a groups of lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians gathered on the outskirts of a capital to work out another "euphemism."  Can you guess which one?

Let's cut the euphemisms, Roe v. Wade isn't about "reproductive health care" -- as everyone knows, it is about abortion.  Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.

Addressing her colleagues, Assemblywoman Gail Phoebus (R-Sussex, Warren, Morris) nailed it:

“Let’s be real. Roe v. Wade isn’t about women’s health care issues. To sit here and have the Legislature celebrate 58 million abortions since 1973 is abhorrent. Apparently gone are the days of claiming that ‘no one is pro-abortion,’ but only pro-choice. If we looked, I think we would find far more women who regret having abortions and have a more difficult task finding women who regret choosing life.

The reality is the decision legalized the aborting of unborn children.  Roe v. Wade redefined what a person is in the same vein as another low-point for our Supreme Court and our nation, the Dred Scott Decision.

“Our nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is clear:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“By serving in this legislative body, we are representatives of the people and we govern with their consent.  I take my duty seriously to protect the rights of all – born and unborn.”

Of course, the Democrats would rather ignore these words.  Too old-fashioned.  They have a new operating principle.  Or is it?  In many ways, what they are striving for, are a set of old 1930's sci-fi imaginings.  The total control, erotic nanny state as imagined by Aldous Huxley in 1931 is a very different totalitarian vision than the one conjured by George Orwell more than a decade later.  But both picked up the direction in which we -- with the help of Mother Roach and her sidekick, Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle -- are continuing down the path today.  So for your edification, we present this film adaptation of the novel, "Brave New World." 

Enjoy and remember, whether you are a Republican from Westfield or a Bergen County Democrat, you too can "be allowed to go back to your erotic training class and play 'hunt the zipper'."  Don't ask what it means, watch the movie.