Will we get fooled again?

One of our regular community contributors, Tony Corvo is a retired U.S. Air Force officer, holds a Ph.D. in physics, is a longtime Ohio and Greene County resident and author of ‘All Politics is Loco.’

All political parties have endorsement meetings where committee members vote on which issues and candidates to endorse. On Jan. 14, the Greene County Republican Central Committee held their endorsement meeting. On that night, an event occurred that in political circles would be considered of Biblical proportions.

Except in the case of an internal party position, members rejected party favorites and voted to endorse a slate of new blood for the upcoming March primary.

Although this may sound like inside politics, party endorsements translate to election night victories far more than the average person realizes. That’s why candidates fight for those endorsements.

The voting was close but the message was clear. Yet, I heard one unhappy member say it was Trump’s fault.

He has it backwards. The vote was not a result of Trump or his disjointed platform. Rather, Trump, other party outsiders, and the results discussed above exist because the GOP has failed its base. That’s why Greene County was not alone.

When the county-by-county state-wide results were reported to Columbus, the outcome didn’t sit well with the party’s state leadership. However, concern would exist only if there was disconnect between the party establishment and its base. After all, in a primary, aren’t all the candidates of the same party?

The GOP base believes its leadership has ignored the party’s platform and has not aggressively countered failed progressive economic policies. Basically, if someone proposes X, and you say you don’t believe in X, but then agree to all or parts of X, or fail to even counter with an alternative, that’s not bipartisanship, that’s capitulation. Exactly what part of that message do GOP leaders not get?

Applying Jefferson’s advice from the Declaration of Independence, when party leaders fail their base, the only option left is for the base to take action. This includes forcing term limits on entranced politicians because they won’t do it themselves.

I’m not naive. I don’t believe that all of the new candidates will necessarily be any better than the last. But paraphrasing William F. Buckley, “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” For the discussion here, the faculty represents party insiders.

I’ve seen Democrat posts on social media that say something like, “Vote Blue, No Matter Who.” A somewhat silly call to arms, made to look like the Democrat Party is in complete harmony. But if my Democrat friends are giddy over what seems like a GOP in disarray, they shouldn’t be. This is not a weakness.

Organizations and groups are weakened only when they are monolithic and dissent and change are not allowed. Self-critique is the mother’s milk of self-improvement. It’s just political dynamics have all the beauty of making sausage. I’m excited for the GOP.

Democrat Party members should also consider cleaning out their house. And if we both find out, as the rock group The Who suggested in their song “We Won’t Get Fooled Again,” that the new bosses are the same as the old bosses, then let’s throw the new bosses out, too. We should always be Americans first, party members second.

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