Is Nancy Munoz the first victim of the authoritarian vs freedom divide?

By Rubashov

Earlier this year, an event of great importance happened in New Jersey’s Republican Party: At the June primary election, the establishment candidate – the candidate with all the county party lines and all the public financing – received less than half the vote. Two underfunded, lesser-known candidates – one who began his political career just a year earlier (at a restaurant in New Hope, Pennsylvania) – together captured 160,000 Republican votes.

The winner of that election, Jack Ciattarelli, got 167,000 votes. 11,000 went to a fourth candidate. The primary saw the state’s conservative movement divided between “pragmatists” and “purists” – with the purists further divided between two candidates. The emerging consensus: Never allow the movement to become divided again.

That primary result has been trumped by an even more remarkable event – the intervention of the grassroots into the contest over who will lead the Republican minority in the Assembly. In the late afternoon of Friday, October 15th, New Jersey Globe’s David Wildstein broke the news that Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz (R-21) had the votes to become the next GOP Assembly Leader. Wildstein reported:

Nancy Muñoz appears set to become the next minority leader of the New Jersey State Assembly after forging a coalition with John DiMaio, the New Jersey Globe has learned.

DiMaio (R-Hackettstown) will drop his bid for the post and become the Minority Conference Leader, the number two slot in the Assembly GOP leadership. The new minority whip will be Antwan McClellan, a freshman lawmaker from Cape May County.

Assemblyman Ned Thomson (R-Wall), who had also been campaigning for the post, will also exit the race and back Muñoz, sources have confirmed.

The New Jersey Globe tally gives Muñoz, a six-term assemblywoman from Summit, enough to clinch a majority of the GOP caucus in the lower house after the November 2 election. Those numbers led to Thomson’s exit. He will be offered the post of Assistant Minority Leader.

In reaction to this, the grassroots erupted and Assemblyman Brian Bergen (R-25) offered himself as an alternative. Over the next week, traditional conservative grassroots activists from the Second Amendment and Pro-Life communities began an effort to block Assemblywoman Munoz. Critically however, it was the muscle of a newer grassroots effort – those resisting government medical mandates – that shocked sitting GOP legislators with wave upon wave of lobbying contact.

This group is not part of the traditional “conservative” world of guns, babies, and taxes or the post-Trump “populist conservative” guns, babies, illegal immigration, and taxes. This is new, post-COVID, and was predicted by Ralph Nader in his 2014 book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left–Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

Former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate for president last year, has written and discussed this extensively. Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson described the old partisan Democrat vs. Republican divide as meaningless in understanding the politics of today and termed the new divide this way:

“The people in charge are intent on replacing our free democratic system with an authoritarian system, where they don’t convince you of anything, they simply make you do things. And they benefit from that.”

Here is a video with the entire segment…

“The people in charge are intent on replacing our free democratic system with an authoritarian system, where they don’t convince you of anything, they simply make you do things. And they benefit from that.”

That last sentence is very important: “And they benefit from that.”

The people who brought us the opioid epidemic certainly benefit. Americans pay the highest prices for pharmaceuticals in the world to companies that use our tax dollars for research and development. Goldman Sachs is benefitting from Green Energy mandates to the tune of billions every year. Even Garden State Equality is getting fat off contracts related to the new LGBTQplus curriculum mandates. With every mandate there are those who trouser the cash and those who turn over the cash by way of taxes.

Did Assemblywoman Munoz reckon on this new group? It is looking like she didn’t. Like Jack Ciattarelli and running mate Diane Allen, Nancy Munoz was prepared to smooth the edges around her positions on the Second Amendment and abortion – but it seems she didn’t take the growing free democratic system vs. an authoritarian system divide into her calculations.

If Tucker Carlson and the others are right, going forward, politicians of all political persuasions will need to take this new divide into account. That is, unless you are a committed authoritarian, like Phil Murphy and his charming Lady Macbeth.

"What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?"
Lady Macbeth
(from The Tragedy of Macbeth, by Wm. Shakespeare)