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.

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