Why did Nick DeGregorio refuse to take questions from conservative leaders?

By Rubashov

Some people seem to have been talked into thinking they’re entitled. That they don’t need to answer questions because they have the inside track.

Enter Nick DeGregorio. Nick is a young man in a hurry to make his mark in the world. There’s nothing wrong with this. Personal ambition is a necessary feature to political office.

But personal ambition is a poor reason for holding office. Simply “getting ahead” or “moving up the ladder” is an empty motion. A candidate needs to ask himself – and needs to be asked – to define his intentions. Why do you want to hold office and what will you do with it if you get there?

Nick got involved in politics as an acolyte of fellow Marine, Bob Hugin. Nick’s campaign is using the same punchline Hugin used in his failed 2018 bid for the United States Senate: Vote for me, I’m a Marine. It’s easy to see why, they both hired the same political insider to guide them.

Asking for someone’s vote based on your military service isn’t a bad approach, just a shallow one. Hey, running for Congress isn’t the same as running for Post Commander of the local VFW. There’s a bit more to it than your method of service. And using this approach, shouldn’t we all be voting for Mikie Sherrill?

Nick has every right to run, but as we learned from Bob Hugin’s 2018 campaign, being a Marine doesn’t make you a conservative. Hugin launched his campaign by trashing much of what traditional conservatives hold dear (before reminding them that he was, indeed, a Marine).

In contrast, Nick is taking the silent approach. On his campaign website, we are treated to many paragraphs about what he did in the military, but there’s nothing there about what he’d do in Congress. No issues page. No policies.

In fairness, Nick does notice some of the problems facing voters today. His website devotes a single paragraph to those details:

“Taxes are out of control. Businesses and jobs are fleeing, taking our neighbors with them. Our classrooms—once safe places for our children to learn to think for themselves—are now devolving into testing grounds for radical political ideology. And behind it all are the career politicians and insiders, who are too busy serving themselves in Washington to care about the mess they have created for the rest of us here at home.”

No ideas or solutions. No platform or policy page on his campaign website.

Nick sounds the way he does because behind Nick are those career political “insiders” that his website claims “are too busy serving themselves… to care about the mess they have created for the rest of us.” Nick’s campaign has identified the problem… and the problem is Nick’s campaign.

But Nick shouldn’t be singled out. His campaign is not unique. Most political campaigns today begin by hiring a “career insider” to fashion prose about how other “career insiders” represent a threat to the way of life of average voters. And we’re not arguing they don’t, we’re just pointing out the hypocrisy of the exercise.

There are some “career insiders” who appreciate policy and some who don’t. Those who don’t generally push the “I’m just here to win” mantra. That’s because policy is hard work. Specifically, taking a policy and turning it into a winning message is hard work. Much easier to maintain a policy-free-zone and tell voters what they want to hear, spinning and zipping until you cross the finish line. But that is no way to build a party. A party is constructed of planks and platforms – which is just another way of saying issues and policies.

And so, it was notable when Nick DeGregorio turned down an invitation to share his views with a panel of statewide conservative leaders that included Mayor Steve Lonegan; Marie Tasy (New Jersey Right to Life); Alex Roubian (2nd Amendment Society); Rev. Greg Quinlan (Center for Garden State Families); John Robert Carman (NJ Constitutional Republicans); and Josh Aikens (AriseNJ). Every other candidate for the GOP nomination in the 5th District participated, as did every candidate in the neighboring 7th District – including elected officials like Senator Tom Kean Jr. and Assemblyman Erik Peterson. Perhaps Nick hasn’t fully formed views on issues like taxation and abortion and the Second Amendment? More likely, it’s because the “career insider” running Nick’s campaign wants to get though the primary using little more than the word “Marine” so that he can define Nick in a way that will appeal to some mythological entity known as the “soft Democrat”.

Of course, this is an act of deception. It is the opposite of leadership.

It takes personal courage to serve in wartime. It takes moral courage to adopt policy positions and believe in them enough to want to sell them. And just as personal courage moves the ball forward in war, moral courage moves us forward as a nation.

Ronald Reagan is mentioned on Nick’s campaign website: “Together, we can – and will – win the battle of ideas and ensure, as President Reagan said, that America remains a shining city upon a hill for generations to come.” How can one not mention ideas when discussing Ronald Reagan? Even on a website without ideas.

Ronald Reagan was no Marine. But Ronald Reagan had ideas and convictions that he fought for. He had the moral courage it took to move America forward. No “career insider” ever got him to hide his light under a basket. And forget wimpy appeals to “soft” Democrats – Reagan converted a generation of Reagan Democrats to his way of thinking. He won and moved the policy ball forward. We need more candidates with Reagan's kind of courage.

President Reagan on how to deliver a message.

Will Robert Hugin meet conservatives half way?

It's "the-past-as-future" for the neo-Whitmanites who want to make the New Jersey Republican Party their private, personal playground.  Yep, just like the good-old-days of "pass the cigars" and "let the interns beware."  And that was just what the ladies got up to! 

The current mantra coming from some GOP establishment types in New Jersey is that only a "moderate" can win statewide.  This is, of course, simply an opinion and an opinion that ignores the fact that the only Republican who has won statewide in the last twenty years has been Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and opposed to Same-Sex Marriage.  

Besides, in these very partisan times, merely having an "R" next to your name -- leave out supporting Donald Trump or Chris Christie -- is enough to preclude any significant support from voters who self-identify as Pro-Choice on Abortion, Pro-Gun Control, and Pro-LGBT.  If these are your first tier issues, what floats your boat, you are not voting Republican.  Period.

Despite this, there is a full court press to mint Republican candidates at all levels who intentionally suppress key parts of the GOP base.  And the trend has got worse, with the suppression of actual conservative candidates by key players in the neo-Whitman, "My-Party-Too" crowd.  Like true greedy crony capitalists, it's not in them to share.  But in elections that increasingly depend on identifying and turning out anyone who will even consider voting Republican, this is a disastrous trend. 

Of course, squishy candidates are real popular with the dregs of the GOP's Whitman-era glitterati --  cocktail-party liberals and crony capitalists who still want to show that they run the NJGOP -- and who are increasingly uncomfortable in the knowledge that they make up just a thimbleful of actual Republican voters.  Unfortunately for them, most voters are not looking to transfer more wealth and power to the one-percent, while infantilizing various "groups" deemed worthy of protection. 

Working class Republican voters and working class Democrat voters are really not that different.  They care about being able to have the means to life.  They want jobs, the opportunity to start a small business; to be free from the worry of foreclosure; an education system that balances costs with results; a safety net that hasn't all been spent before they need it, and a justice system that looks on them a free citizens and that keeps safe the places where they live, work, and shop. 

The  needs of working people are pretty straight forward.  If it were an ice cream shop it would be plain vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.  Of course, the oligarchs of the Democrat Party can't provide that -- so they advertise a dozen flavors other than vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry -- while the "My-Party-Too" Whitman Republicans have placed out a sign that says, "Closed for business, we've run out of ideas."

Why this is so was the subject of a study conducted by Princeton University.  Take the time to listen to this video.  This is an issue that unites both Left and Right:

Which brings us to Mr. Robert Hugin of the Celgene corporation.  He is the promising candidate for the United States Senate that has the whole GOP establishment buzzing.  They say this erstwhile Marine is the man to beat Bob Menendez.  And a big reason they are so excited about Hugin is his ability to fund his own campaign.

Hugin earns over $20 million a year -- making him one of the best paid bosses in the pharmaceutical industry.  Before joining Celgene, he worked for Wall Street's J.P. Morgan & Company.  Hugin is a longtime member of Chris Christie's fundraising inner-circle, whose allegiance was transferred to Donald Trump after Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential contest.  Hugin even served as a Trump delegate.  This biography strongly defines the man, making it hard to see how the average Bernie or Hillary voter could ever mark a ballot for him. 

But sure enough, it has emerged that Hugin is conveying to people the idea that he is "a different kind of Republican" and not one of "them" -- as in Pro-Life, et al.

Hey, you donated six figures to Chris Christie and served as a Trump delegate... so do you think you're going to fool a committed Democrat with that Pro-Choice on Abortion line?  You will only drive away thousands upon thousands of voters who want to vote for you, but for whom you will make it so that they can't, in good conscience.

Could Hugin run as the kind of populist who doesn't need cultural conservatives?  Sure, as a Democrat.  Those chocolate and vanilla "kitchen table" issues are grafted onto a cultural worldview that makes you a Trump populist or a Bernie populist.  Neither could have attracted so many voters had they adopted the other's cultural positions. 

In trying to have it all their own way, the "My-Party-Too" crowd might end up destroying the Republican Party in New Jersey.  Ideas matter to most voters and it is ideas that draw people to identify with a political party in the first place.  But in New Jersey, ideas are merely advertising gimmicks for the lobbyists, vendors, and consultants who increasingly run the GOP.  It is something almost unknown to most Republican voters... but too, too easy to demonstrate.  So few don't have Democrat money in their DNA. 

Many GOP leaders make money off Democrats -- or with Democrats.  Lots of money.  While most Republicans just get taxed by Democrats.  That's the great divide.  So where do you stand?  And would you like to know?

Already, conservative libertarian Dr. Murray Sabrin is thinking about another third party run -- like the one in which he almost sunk Christie Whitman.  Perhaps an even stronger candidate will emerge.  Surrendering cultural issues conservative voters to these candidates would not be a good strategy for Mr. Hugin. 

If cultural conservatives, reform conservatives, good-government conservatives, non-insider/crony capitalist conservatives, were to figure out that the fix was in, and that no matter how hard they worked with the GOP establishment they would never get a break, then who knows  -- in these troubled times of Trumpian rebellion and Bernite reaction -- how this could flower?  Would we see its fruit in the low, low turnout 2019 elections?  Would a third-party, seeking that elusive 10 percent, find its way?

Instead of trying to stand-out and apart from the "usual" Republican through the tired and ultimately unconvincing trope of "a different kind of Republican" when it comes to issues like abortion and LGBT rights, Robert Hugin could act boldly to unify Republicans -- the establishment thimbleful and the conservative majority -- by finding a way to meet both half way. 

Yesterday, Senate Democrats blocked an effort to bring the United States into line with most of the nations on earth in preventing abortions after 20 -weeks, the point at which science has shown that an unborn child is sensitive to the pain of being... killed.  Every other country on earth recognizes this fact except North Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands.  Isn't it time we bring our laws into line with science and the rest of the civilized world?

The Senate's vote was on whether to stop the Democrats’ filibuster of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.  This legislation highlights how unborn children feel intense pain when they are killed in abortions. Fifty-one senators (forty-eight Republicans and three Democrats) voted to take the bill up for debate, but 60 votes were required.  Because Republicans don’t have 60 votes in the chamber to overcome the filibuster, Democrats successfully stopped the bill, which came after President Donald Trump indicated he would sign the bill into law.

Hey, you can still support Roe v. Wade and acknowledge the scientific fact that after 20-weeks, a child should not suffer the kind of death that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't apply to serial killers, mass-murder terrorists, and rapists who murder children in the commission of a sexual assault.  That, the Court would argue, is "cruel and unusual" for the worse criminals... but for unborn children... are we supposed to look the other way?

So be "Pro-Choice" on abortion.  But support the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act too.  Give conservatives something.

GOP screws up trying to appeal to the blue-collar Right

Look at that crazy shit they pulled in Burlington County.  Those over-the-top attacks on a Sikh, trying to make him out to be a Muslim.  Nuts! 

But that's how it goes when GOP establishment types try to fashion a message they think will appeal to conservatives.  They don't try to communicate to Bill Buckley -- it's more George Wallace they have in mind (except, he was a Democrat).  GOP moderates think poorly of their conservative brethren, and it shows by the way they try to motivate us to vote their way.  They do more than talk down to us... they use grunts.

Case in point:  The Burlington County freeholder election that resulted in victory for two Democrats and accusations of over-the-top campaigning against one of the Democrats, a Sikh.  Now calling a Sikh as Muslim is just plain ignorant.  The Sikhs are like the Scots and are the backbone of the military class in India, a decidedly non-Muslim nation (although Muslims are free to worship there).  You could not ask for a more loyal comrade to fight beside than a Sikh.

According to some of the media coverage, GOP radio ads mocked the candidate's last name, Singh, which means "sovereign prince" and is common to male Sikhs.  This is as silly as mocking the "Mc" or "Mac" that means "son of" in Gaelic names or the "ski" (also "sky" and "ska", female) that means "from or of" that ends many Slavic names. 

This fellow was running on a ticket with "sanctuary state" Phil Murphy and is part of a party that has embraced the Women's March co-chaired by a genuine radical named Linda Sarsour.  It was Sarsour who called for "jihad" against the elected government of the United States of America and the Women's March that honored terrorist cop-killer Joanne Chesimard.  There are plenty of real things to call out the Democrats on without getting silly about it.

Here's the problem.  The GOP establishment actually believes that its base -- that unwashed mass of voters who are either working class or grew up working class --are a bunch of racists who think in terms of skin color.  In fact, they are not.

But they do think in terms of jobs and opportunity.  They know that the same party that says it's helping them with the minimum wage is screwing them by flooding the market with cheap labor and then failing to give a damn as the gray economy expands and the on-the-books economy contracts. 

Standing in opposition to Phil Murphy and the Democrats' plan to make New Jersey a sanctuary state is not about the color of anyone's skin -- or their religion, or their shoe size.  It is about milk on the table and a roof over your head.  It is about losing your job to a non-minimum wage robot and having to cobble together three jobs in the gray economy -- while competing against the whole world.  Because globalists like Phil Murphy have advocated the economics of outsourcing your jobs while advocating the economics of cheap illegal labor.

Ever ask yourself why the globalist lobby dominated United States government makes it so easy to come and work here illegally but such a bureaucratic pain-in-the-ass to apply for legal residency and citizenship?  The answer is easy:  They want it this way.

Politicians like Phil Murphy appreciate the functionality of illegal immigrants because for them they represent the modern equivalent of slave labor.  They eat poorer, live in poorer housing, and cannot complain about it -- either as voters or members of a labor union.  And they block the ability of legal workers to collectively stand up to crony capitalism.  That is pretty good if you are a global crony capitalist like Phil Murphy.

Here is a primer on how Murphy and the Democrats intend to screw the working people of New Jersey:

A "sanctuary state" will mean a huge influx of people who need the social services safety net more than average.  The Democrats have promised to impose a so-called 'millionaire's tax' that will chase away those who currently fund the state's social safety net.  Those who are left... the middle class who can't leave because of a job, or because they can't sell their home for what they paid for it, or because their child wants to finish school -- they will have to make up for the shortfall in higher taxes.

That won't be easy, because at 26.1% of income, the cost of living in New Jersey is, according to Bloomberg, by far the most expensive in the nation.  Meanwhile, state household income is nearly seven percent lower than it was in 2008 and has only grown by a little more than one percent since then. 

Those coming to the new Sanctuary State of New Jersey will enter the workforce of the gray economy, where the minimum wage doesn't apply.  But for everyone else it does -- which will leave trade union workers, manufacturing, medical care and health workers, service industry workers, and mothers with part-time jobs all at a disadvantage when competing for a job.  It will be bad news for people trying to pay their mortgage, their property taxes, those hoping to avoid foreclosure. 

And just where will all these newcomers to the Sanctuary State of New Jersey reside?  Why in subsidized sanctuary housing -- courtesy of COAH and its plan to build tens of thousands of new subsidized no-questions-asked units throughout New Jersey. 

This will require massive infrastructure investment by taxpayers -- and an increase in property tax collections.  To pay for it, the Democrats intend to scrap the 2-percent cap on local government spending.  Under the Democrats property taxes rose an average of 6.1 percent a year -- triple the rate of inflation.  Since the cap, property taxes have gone up an average of just 2.1 percent a year.

On top of this, there is the question of what happens to the flow of illegal narcotics, human trafficking, crime, and terrorism when you set out to obstruct law enforcement:  Do those ills go up... or down?

In short, what is wrong with candidate Balvir Singh is that he is Democrat.  As a Democrat, he is part of a party whose platform calls for higher taxes for everyone and the destruction of the social safety net; less job creation and greater economic uncertainty; and using property taxes to subsidize a flood of opportunity-killing cheap labor.  That is anti-worker while refusing to confront modern day slavery and it will make working people poorer,  more susceptible to foreclosure and poverty, and more vulnerable to violent crime and terrorism.

Unless Balvir Singh stands up to his party and openly fights it (or becomes a Republican) he will be one of the bad guys and worthy of defeat.

Even NJ 101.5 now praising the TTF deal

Even NJ 101.5 have had to acknowledge the good coming from the tax cuts that are part of TTF deal passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Chris Christie.  In a news story today, reporter Michael Symons wrote:

Three-quarters of certified public accountants in New Jersey have advised clients to leave the state because of the estate and inheritance taxes, according to the head of the New Jersey Society of CPAs.

That tax is ending – and so is the advice, even before the law is off the books, said Ralph Albert Thomas, the CPA group’s chief executive officer and executive director.

“Not only our members, but I know estate attorneys have been sending out correspondence about, look, they need to reconvene with their clients to relook at what they proposed,” Thomas said. 

The survey found 83 percent of respondents felt estate and inheritance taxes had prompted clients to leave New Jersey. A follow-up survey is planned for the spring, to see how much the advice has changed.

The estate tax is paid on approximately 3,500 estates annually, around 5 percent of the approximately 70,000 deaths in the state each year.

Currently, New Jersey’s estate tax threshold is $675,000. The full value of any estates worth more than that is taxed. That will be changed to a $2 million exclusion at the start of 2017 – meaning, for instance, that an estate worth $2.5 million would be taxed on the $500,000 over the excluded amount. 

The tax is then eliminated entirely at the start of 2018.

...Sen. Steve Oroho, R-Sussex, said the change will help the state by improving its economy and retaining residents. He said annual state revenues would be around $3 billion higher if the state’s economy was growing at the national average.

“We need to have a major, major tax restructuring in New Jersey,” Oroho said.

Business groups are already focusing on the next potential tax cut. Thomas said help for small business is likely to be his organization’s focus.

“If you think about it, just thinking off the cuff, 300,000 small businesses – if only 10 percent of them hired one other person, that would be 30,000 new jobs,” Thomas said.

Over the last year, New Jersey’s economy has added, 53,4000 jobs, but only 11,100 of those have been added over the last nine months.

Of Rat Finks and Know-Nothings

In Sunday's Bergen Record, columnist Charles Stile wrote touchingly about how the patricians of an earlier incarnation of the GOP used to put down internal dissent.  Yes indeed, that class of folks well described in Tad Friend's memoir, Friendly Money, who in politics are epitomized by former Governor Christie Todd Whitman, certainly did dominate the Republican Party before the likes of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich came along.  They also lost pretty consistently and were responsible for that long dry spell without power in Congress. 

The decline of the GOP's dominance by its patrician class tracks what Friend, a staff writer at the New Yorker, calls "the last days of WASP splendor."  And while we can understand how Stile may long for those days of certainty -- for there is a kind of comfort in knowing who is who and where you stand in relation  -- we think that such a class system, one where the leadership is based on inherited status and wealth, ultimately fails.  In fact, one of the great concerns about this presidential cycle is that the role of unlimited money has led to a new order based on such a system -- where family name (Bush, Clinton) is half the battle.

It's an old debate here in America:  Should a Republic have an aristocracy and, if so, what is the selection process?

Writing in the Spring edition of the Hedgehog Review, the University of Virginia's quarterly on culture, Johann Neem makes a few points about presidential candidate Donald Trump, the voters he has energized, and the 19th century political party they are sometimes compared with.  Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture of the University of Virginia. 

In contrast to Stile, Neem makes the case for some serious soul-searching to understand how the GOP -- and the country -- got to where the Trump candidacy "dismissed initially as a joke" became the phenomenon it is.  Neem makes some points worth considering:

"To many Americans facing a changing world and fearing that globalization is depriving them of a fair shot at the good life, not to mention basic security, Trump's promise to do something makes him stand apart from a political establishment, right and left, that seems clueless and adrift."

"The (anti-immigration) Know-Nothings displaced the Whigs as the Democrats' primary opposition in parts of the nation, and elected seventy-five representatives to Congress."

"As the historian Tyler Anbinder makes clear in his book, Nativisim and Slavery (1992), many supporters of the upstart party voted out of frustration and disgust with the political system.  As Trump would do 175 years later, the Know-Nothings promised to do something.  They appealed in particular to antislavery voters who felt that neither the Whigs or Democrats were willing to address what they considered America's most pressing problem."

"But if Know-Nothings focused on immigrants as the main cause of America's ills, they gained a broad following because they tackled problems and concerns that went well beyond the immigrant question.  In Massachusetts, Know-Nothing legislators who sought to encourage unity among Americans mandated racial integration in the same schools in which they had imposed Protestant Bibles.  They passed laws to protect people from creditors and, in Massachusetts, abolished imprisonment for debt and passed child labor legislation.  In Connecticut, they passed a law stating that ten hours was the de facto workday."

"Know-Nothings also pushed for greater regulation of banks, railroads, and other corporations.  Whether successfully or not,  Know-Nothings brought working people's concerns to the legislative floor.  They also sought to render government more accountable to voters by making more offices elective, increasing punishment for corruption, and promising to curb patronage."

"Know-Nothing legislators came through with their promise to back U.S. Senators who opposed slavery's expansion. . . In Massachusetts, Know-Nothing legislators passed resolutions calling for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise (to prevent slavery's expansion) and repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act."

In the presidential election of 1856, "most Know-Nothings sided with the new Republican party's candidate John C. Fremont because they considered the issue of slavery more pressing" than the issue of immigration.  Essentially, the Know-Nothings helped destroy the old Whig Party, so that a new Republican Party could emerge.

Neem ends with this salutary warning:

"To the extent that Trump's supporters represent a new Know-Nothing movement, the lesson is clear.  Globalization has resulted in significant cultural and economic changes that many Americans feel have been hurtful not only to themselves but also to the nation as a whole.  Those same voters feel betrayed by a political elite that seems, in their view, more committed to cosmopolitanism and the international order than to national self-interest. "

"The loss of jobs and even of whole industries, drug use, violent crime, the spread of terrorism, and the challenges of an increasingly diverse society -- all of these can be connected with some of the disruptive and dislocating effects of globalization.   Trump's brand of nativism shifts all the blame for these and other problems to people and nations beyond our borders.  But it would be wrong to see his supporters' attraction to such nativism as simple xenophobia, though of course it can easily become that.  Above all, Trump's supporters want someone who will do something, almost anything, about problems they think are growing worse."