The Rogers-Murphy alliance. Is Rogers off his rocker?

Maybe he really believes his own bullshit?  Maybe he thinks he really is the Steve Rogers?  The Captain America of the comic books!

Rogers reminds us a lot of Dick LaRossa.  They both ran non-campaign campaigns for statewide office.  LaRossa got 25,608 in the 1996 GOP primary for U.S. Senate and came in last place.  Rogers got 14,187 in last year's GOP primary for Governor and came in last place.

Otherwise, Rogers is a candidate from central casting.  He looks like a Governor.  He's an attractive man.  Something tells us that he knows it. 

But he came in last, and like every attractive person who is rebuffed and who cannot understand why, Steve Rogers now carries around with him the burden of having been offended by the world-at-large.  And so you get pronouncements like the one today:

"During the 2016 presidential election many of us worked very hard to elect Donald Trump to the presidency. Sadly, there were too many Trenton politicians who didn’t stand with us when they could have. I won’t be endorsing any of them,” said Rogers, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2017. “I am, however, willing to endorse candidates who will support President Trump’s efforts to Make America Great Again. To that end, I’m pleased to endorse Tony Ghee, a fellow military officer, an outsider from the swamp, and a man who will energize our party in 2018 and beyond. The GOP must begin to embrace and engage people from all walks of life. In my view, Tony Ghee is the face of a new dynamic GOP that will welcome the Republicans long forgotten by the establishment. I support Tony because I have full faith in him. He will help Make American and New Jersey Great Again."

Come again? 

You are endorsing someone who wouldn't tell a group of Republican Trump supporters who he voted for in the 2016 Presidential election, which means one of three things:  (1) He voted for Hillary Clinton, (2) he voted for Donald Trump but is ashamed of saying so, or (3) he skipped over that office or voted for a third party candidate.  In any case, Rogers should cut the Trump shit.

Hey, we LOVE Tony Ghee and think he will make a great candidate... one day.  But you can't get much "swampier" than being hand-picked by a corrupt convict of a party boss.  That doesn't make you an "outsider" -- it makes you a ward heeler.

Now Tony is young and new and idealistic, and isn't used to traveling in the low-life circles he now inhabits.  He's a good family man and an upstanding member of the community.  How is he to know what lurks behind the grin of that cherubic, whiskey drinking, boss?

Peter Murphy, the GOP party boss of Passaic County and the man who recruited young Tony Ghee, is the kind of guy who will cut the throat of his own candidate if there is a deal to be had.  He's done it before and he'll do it again.  Tony will learn.

As for the rest of Rogers' blather, may we remind him that the NJGOP is still in the process of getting over an eight-year cult of personality.  Let's not make our party about cult personalities or demographic groups.  We are a party of ideas.

Ronald Reagan wasn't a cult figure.  We didn't elect him and then learn what he was about.  Reagan was the culmination of a decades-long process of discussing and testing ideas.  The ideas carried Reagan.

Ideas matter -- and it is on his ideas that we should judge Tony Ghee.  Now he's new, and hasn't had time to consider much of what a candidate needs to consider, but he needs to start.  Because Tony, you are not running to be a celebrity, you are running for Congress -- to go there and vote on ideas that will have a profound impact on our economy and culture.

So don't let a convict do your thinking for you.  No good will come of that.