Last weekend’s NJGOP Summit was a lost opportunity.
/By Rubashov
For many establishment Democrats, their party is their religion. They have this in common with ordinary folk who identify with the term “Democrat” and place it at the center of their lives. Political identity has taken the place of religion. The unquestioned certainty that these Democrats once reserved for, say, the virgin birth, they now give to the idea that a man can become a woman merely by thinking it so.
These Democrats recite their positions on issues like abortion and guns with the rote certainty of 1950s era children reciting their catechism. But there it ends. The line is drawn at the woke religious “social issues” embraced by party elites and repeated by everyone else. Practical issues, like health care and a livable wage, are not treated like holy writ but rather as points of opinion. For example, the idea of illegal immigration is holy writ. What it does to suppress wages and lard profits is always a matter of opinion.
Like the Church of old, Democrats ask adherents to forego thoughts of earthly needs like eating and keeping warm, and instead keep focused on the great “progress” made. As the high priests of the Democrat Party daily remind us: Who needs a job when you have ass?
Establishment Republicans, on the other hand, are almost always heretics. Always in denial of their ideological roots, always disputing the need for a platform at all, always regretting that it exists. Seeing the virtue of belief, of ideals, as an incumbrance. Far from being “true” believers, the GOP establishment are not really believers at all. They demand a “big tent” of hot air in which to diffuse and disperse the tenets of Republican principle.
When you have expanded in consideration of so much, what is left bears no resemblance to what you started with. Whether this is the goal of the “big tent” preachers, who replace political leadership for profitable followership, it is always the outcome. They want success because success is profitable and leads to power. To have power they need to sell a candidate who will be a mirror to all who look upon him. Unfortunately, this means that the candidate, when he arrives and assumes power, having sacrificed all principles, will use it only to satisfy the will for more power. And a candidate who believes in nothing other than his own will to power is fast on his way to becoming a sociopath.
The “big tent” preachers were much in evidence at the weekend’s 2022 NJGOP Leadership Summit. Instead of figuring out what language to use to successfully argue Republican principles and achieve victories that move the cause forward, they argue that the cause be abandoned wholesale and embrace what some algorithm tells us is the fashion of the day. The promise of hollow victories by hollow men.
The “big tent” preachers seem to forget that the only two statewide Republican victories in this century were achieved by Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment Republican Chris Christie who defeated a filthy-rich incumbent Democrat Governor in 2009 and went on to be re-elected with more than 60 (yes, SIXTY – 6-0) percent of the vote in a General Election. That’s a lot of meat on that win.
We have been here before. This was the old lie put about by the Christine Todd Whitman wing of the Republican Party. The mantra that “no social conservative” could ever win in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie blew that argument all to hell… twice!
And again, we heard the bizarre claim that last November’s gubernatorial defeat “was the best election day in 30 years for New Jersey Republicans.” 30 years?
Some of us were around for those election nights. For us who were, there are a lot of them we’d take over November 2, 2021.
Comparing similar years, let’s look at the gubernatorial election years that have occurred since 1991 (30 years ago):
28 years ago… November 1993.
New Jersey Republicans defeat an incumbent Democrat Governor and win both chambers of the Legislature with large majorities. Republicans not only control counties like Burlington and Somerset – but Bergen and Passaic too. Heck, there was a Republican County Executive running Mercer County and, a year later, a Republican County Executive in Essex County too. Oh, and just for good measure, Republican Bret Schundler was elected to a full-term as Mayor of Jersey City.
Yeah, think most sane GOP folk would take that over November 2, 2021.
24 years ago… November 1997.
New Jersey Republicans re-elect an incumbent Governor and win both chambers of the Legislature. Republicans not only control counties like Burlington and Somerset – but Bergen and Passaic too.
20 years ago… November 2001.
New Jersey Republicans win 20 seats in the Senate – to share control of the State Senate and 36 seats in the Assembly. Currently, Republicans hold 16 seats in the Senate and 34 seats in the Assembly.
16 years ago… November 2005.
Republicans have 18 Senators and 31 Assembly members.
12 years ago… November 2009.
New Jersey Republicans defeat an incumbent Democrat Governor. They have 17 Senators and 33 Assembly members. Republicans control counties like Burlington and Somerset.
8 years ago… November 2013.
New Jersey re-elects a Republican Governor with more than 60 percent of the vote. Republicans have 16 Senators and 32 Assembly members. Republicans control counties like Burlington and Somerset.
4 years ago… November 2017.
Republicans are defeated in the gubernatorial race and elect 15 to the Senate and 26 to the Assembly. Burlington County falls to the Democrats in 2018 and Somerset County follows in 2019. In 2018, we lost every Republican member of Congress – except one – in New Jersey.
November 2, 2021.
Republicans are defeated in the gubernatorial race and elect 16 to the Senate and 34 to the Assembly.
Clearly, last November’s election represents a strong improvement over the result four years earlier, building on an uptick that began in 2019 and continued into 2020, but it is certainly not better than actually winning the Governor’s office. And while the organizers of the NGOP Summit presumably recognize this, they went out of their way not to invite the architect of last year's outstanding upset victory in District 3, where an underfunded Republican named Ed Durr defeated the massively funded incumbent Senate President.
While we recognize that such events are sales-marketing tools for vendors and political consultants, the NJGOP shouldn’t play favorites and feature the same insider consultants while gagging the one consultant who we all could have learned something from. A tragic lost opportunity for those in attendance.
The NJGOP Summit won't be featuring NJ Globe's "Consultant of the Year".
A tragic lost opportunity.
