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

By Steve Lonegan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is worth watching.

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

George Orwell

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

AFP supports Planned Parenthood

How does ANY organization worthy of the name CONSERVATIVE give someone an "A+" who voted to pass a formal state commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the abortionist Planned Parenthood?  Well, the New Jersey chapter of American for Prosperity did.  Whether this was because of AFP State Chair Frayda Levy's personal position on abortion or the time AFP Executive Director Erica Jedynak (nee Klemens) spent with W.A.N.D. (Women's Action for New Directions) we cannot tell. 

Jersey Conservative is unique among political blogs in New Jersey in that we never pick fights.  That cannot be said about other blogs.  And that goes for groups like Americans for Prosperity (AFP) too.  You know the way they operate.  Some innocent conservative is just minding his or her own business when one of these wind-bags just has to start slinging crap.  They start the crap because they want to be noticed (basic primate behavior) or because someone somewhere has some grand stupid plan to take us back to 1991 or something or other (advanced primate behavior). 

So now the innocent conservative is under attack -- the victim of a drive-by -- and so off we go, to place things in perspective, provide some balance, and set the record straight.  Of course, this is perceived as an attack by the handjob who started it in the first place, because handjobs firmly believe that they and only they should be permitted to talk crap about other people.  And under no circumstances should anyone be permitted to talk crap about them.  See, this is the lack of balance that we seek to correct.

A lot of smiling goes on in Trenton.  Smile, smile, smile. . . but don't let those smiles fool you.  There are lots of smiling Jacks and Jills who when you're not looking are eyeing up the back seat of your trousers.  They go around with these barbed-wire enemas and they'd like nothing more than to stick them where the sun doesn't shine.  So back away if someone is smiling too earnestly at you. 

AFP has long been purveyors of the barbed-wire enema.  But back when its guiding mind was Steve Lonegan, an economic and social conservative, its annual scorecard was a means of rewarding conservative friends while dissing members of the GOP establishment.  All that has changed now.

Whereas an event under Lonegan's tenure would have featured a renegade like New York's Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey or someone like Michelle Malkin, now AFP rallies around that enduring figure of traditional values and conservative principles. . . Senator Tom Kean Jr.???   Really?  Back when AFP meant something in New Jersey, back when Steve Lonegan was running it, they knew who was and who wasn't a "movement" conservative and there were just three "movement" conservative legislators in all New Jersey. 

No, not Jay Webber.  He had the chance but ended up taking a dump on Ronald Reagan's platform. 

Under Lonegan, AFP used its scorecard to shepherd legislative efforts -- like repealing the RGGI energy tax -- and to help legislators articulate conservative principles.  Yes, it was built around those "movement" legislators who were so often shit on by the establishment -- and it often employed vote "searches" in order to find ways to reward a legislator who was "trying" to be a conservative. 

These are certainly corruptions of a kind, but under Steve Lonegan, AFP never turned its rating system over to the GOP establishment -- to bestow a "seal of approval" on their moderate economic mush and social issues assbanditry.   And Lonegan never participated in the mass screwing of Republicans that the two "handmaidens of the establishment" now running AFP just allowed to happen.

So when does a pig get to call itself a sheep?  When it grows a wooly covering.  When do liberal Republicans get to call themselves "conservatives"?  When they get AFP to grossly corrupt its process to provide that covering.

So this is where we come in.  A corruption has occurred.  There are victims of this corruption.  Republicans have been injured (and injured by other Republicans, on purpose, mind you).  We are the corrective.  We seek to bring things back into balance.

We would like to have seen AFP take responsibility for their craven sell-out, for the flip-flop on the "success" story they put out just a few weeks ago.  But these rich social liberals are so used to getting their way that we feel it would take too long to educate them that we are not the typical American working people that they are used to screwing.

So here is what we propose.  AFP assigned high grades to certain people.  We will make sure that they earn them -- every voting session.  We will report on EVERY bad vote, every voting session, every week, by every phony.  We will report on your bad votes in committee.  Every committee, every week, every phony.

You will be exposed for who you really are, week upon week, or you will become good conservatives -- at least on paper.  You may have found it easy to corrupt AFP and engineer a phony grade, but you will find that it is a much more difficult thing to live up to.

Stay tuned. . .