It's business as usual in the GOP
The Friday Letter / No. 526 / Feb. 3, 2023
Updated with an additional comment at 11:28 a.m. ETTo our readers: To see the latest version of this week's Friday Letter, updated and corrected as needed, and to read or post comments, click “open in app” or “online” which appear to the right and just above the headline. This will take you to my Substack website.
Establishment Republicans keep control of the national party with RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel's re-election. This comes less than three months after Democrats and about 18 Uniparty Republicans sealed their veto-proof majority in the Senate, a coalition that includes such turncoats as former conservative Tom Cotton of Arkansas. The Democrat-Uniparty alliance managed to escape a massacre in the House and is posed to retake control if Democrats win the presidency in 2024. Things aren't looking so good.
My fellow Substack columnist Josiah Lippincott is even more pessimistic than I. “The most likely outcome of the 2024 election is that Democrats retake the House, keep the Senate, and retain the presidency, regardless of who they run or what the economy looks like,” he wrote last week at American Greatness. “Joe Biden and Jon Fetterman proved in 2020 and 2022, respectively, (that) Democrats don’t need to actually campaign in order to win political office. Nor do they need to be able to string together a coherent sentence.”
In her three terms Ronna has presided over three election cycle losses: the House in 2018, the presidency in 2020, and the Senate in 2022. In a normal organization a failed CEO would be fired, regardless of his charm and personal likability. Harmeet Dhillon, in her principled but unsuccessful challenge to McDaniel, ran her election on issues, not on personal attack. Thankfully, we've not see the last of Harmeet.
A Trafalgar Group poll found that 73.5% of Republican voters want new leadership in the RNC, with only 5.6% favoring McDaniel's re-election. Yet RNC electors gave her 66.5% of the votes. This disparity between the party's leadership and its populist rank-and-file voters is irreconcilable.
Ordinary middle- and working-class Republican voters have no say about who runs the national party. Few would support McConnell, the most unpopular politician in America, as minority leader if given the chance. McConnell used your contributions to the Senate campaign fund to prop up cronies like Lisa Murkowski, starving her conservative challenger in Alaska and like-minded candidates in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Georgia. As we have noted before, McConnell is much happier as leader of the minority caucus he can control than a majority he cannot control.
Herschel Walker, Blake Masters, Adam Laxalt, Kelly Tshibaka, and Don Bolduc had the chance to win, but they were starved for cash by a corrupt, petty, self-serving, back room political hack. By petty, we mean this: On Wednesday McConnell threw Sen. Rick Scott, the Senate's most experienced and successful businessman, off the Commerce Committee, because Scott dared challenge him for minority leader.
Populist Republicans must do their own research and find candidates they can support in 2024. We must contribute directly to the campaigns of those conducting wise stewardship. It's vital that we not contribute a single dollar to the RNC, the Senate campaign fund, or any – and I mean any – political action committee (PAC).
And what is stewardship? I would argue not endless, cash-bleeding television commercials that only annoy people and further enrich the mostly ineffective political consultants. Rather, conservatives must learn how to fight at the street level, turning out hordes of volunteers to knock on doors and sign up new voters. While early and wide-open, no-excuse absentee voting is a vile, fraud-laden practice, Republicans must play by Democrat rules until they can get their legislatures to change them.
And we must encourage worthy candidates like Walker, Laxalt, Masters and others who came up short to stay in the fray, to keep coming back at these anti-constitutional Marxists until they eventually beat them.
Election fraud update
The Election Integrity Caucus published a report of state election law changes enacted before the 2022 midterms. As expected, meaningful reform occurred mostly in red states. New York, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, and California passed state versions of the 1960s-era Voting Rights Act, called the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, even though only Virginia and California had been subjected to the federal law. The laws are touted as protections for black people.
There was some positive reform, even in deep blue New York, where voters rejected ballot proposals to allow same-day registration and no-questions-asked absentee voting. Click on the link above to see the full report.
Joe's continuing war on America
Biden nominated another leftist to the federal judiciary, this time to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. She is Nancy Abudu, the daughter of Ghanan immigrants and deputy legal director of the Marxist Southern Poverty Law Center.
As a black female, she meets Biden's standard for the bench. She has no judicial experience or notable legal accomplishments. She has never so much as judged the legality of a parking ticket.
The SPLC funds itself by shaking down corporations known to support Christian and Jewish organizations on the SPLC's self-named “hate list.” One of its targets is the Family Research Council, a non-profit that supports family values and religious freedom. In 2012 a Law Center acolyte entered FRC headquarters with the intent of killing everyone inside. He shot and wounded a guard. Although the SPLC condemned the attack, the Family Research Council remains on its hate list.
Although Abudu has no judicial experience, she does have a judicial philosophy. She urged Congress to pass HR4, so-named the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would nationalize election law by repealing – without constitutional amendment as required – state legislatures' Article 1 control of their own election laws and procedures.
At the SPLC, her main duties are to support voting rights for felons and expanded privileges for homosexuals. She is supported by anti-American Jew-hating George Soros.
“She is entirely unfit to serve the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals,” Senate Judiciary Committee member Ted Cruz told The Daily Signal. “Again, the Biden administration has nominated a partisan activist to a post rather than a sound-minded jurist. Nancy Abudu’s extremist views permeate every facet of her career as she and the SPLC actively work to denounce and demean conservatives, religious organizations, and even sitting members of the Judiciary Committee.”
Silence of the Dems
A black city councilwoman in Sayreville, N.J., was shot and killed in her car. Eunice Dwumfour was 30. Except for a statement from Gov. Phil Murphy, Democrat activists were largely silent on the matter and elected not to riot and burn down cities. Did we mention that Eunice was a Republican?
Short takes on the news
Cal Matters
California, a self-named sanctuary state for illegal aliens and run entirely by Democrats, has issued more than 1 million driver's licenses to illegals since 2015 when the legislature repealed residence requirements. In its story, Cal Matters writes favorably about illegal aliens with claims that they contribute to the state's economy. The Department of Motor Vehicles says 68,426 illegal aliens applied for the AB 60 special licenses in FY 2022.
NBC-5 Chicago
Another gun control success story. With perfect aim, an 80-year-old man shot and wounded one of two home invaders who were beating him in his home near O'Hare International Airport. The victim was taken to an area hospital in critical condition. The intruders, a man and woman, both sought medical care at Resurrection Hospital and were quickly nabbed by police.
Just the News
Democrats continue to move aggressively to make criminals of their political enemies. In Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes referred Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor who lost in a disputed election involving voter fraud in Maricopa County, for criminal prosecution because she published evidence of forged signatures.
Quotes for today
The left “now controls the very institutions of America that it once mocked and attacked – corporate boardrooms, Wall Street, state and local prosecuting attorneys, most big-city governments, the media, the Pentagon, network and most of cable news, professional sports, Hollywood, music, television, K-12 education, and academia.” – Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness
“Anyone who does not share and support the Friday Letter is a communist and should be forced to wear an “I'm a Democrat” button” – The Friday Letter's own Jake Phake, purveyor of Phake News
Headline of the week
Babylon Bee: “U.S. Tanks in Ukraine Already Destroyed After Being Easily Recognized by Their Rainbow Camouflage”