They’ll claim to be standing on principle, but their real priority is their own self-serving agenda.
October 08, 2020
ITEM #1: There is an especially grating breed of Republican — the kind who claims to be a principled, conservative Republican, but is somehow always working to undermine the causes and ideals he supposedly supports.
We’re already hearing from plenty of these Republicans this election year. They’re the ones who are hard at work chastising those within the party who raise concerns that universal mail-in voting might lead to fraud and error.
And now, mark our words: We’re about to see a whole slew of them come out in support of Democrat nominee Joe Biden for President.
They’ll likely claim that electing Biden is a necessity if we are ever to end the division and bitterness that plagues our politics today. They’ll lay the blame for the coarsening of today’s political discourse fully at the feet of President Trump.
Never mind that this takes a willful blindness to the fact that it is today’s increasingly radical, left-wing Democrat Party that is primarily responsible for the vitriol, violence and vendetta-style politics that’s become all too commonplace.
When they come out and back the Biden-Harris ticket, they will be standing with a party that supports, in increasing lockstep: the decriminalization of illegal border crossings; sanctuary cities; the elimination of private health care; the implementation of an unaffordable “Medicare for all” scheme; the $93 trillion Green New Deal; a ban on fracking; mandatory gun buy-backs; and a massive tax hike on hardworking Americans.
They will also be intentionally abetting a party that can hardly bring itself to criticize rampant violence in our streets, threatens to pack the Supreme Court when it obtains the power to do so, and thinks it’s a fine idea to “defund the police.”
These are the people that these supposed “Republicans” would entrust with political power.
They are the news media’s favorite type of Republican. Because they are always slamming members of their own party, especially those who adhere to conservative ideals, they allow the left-wing press to frame opposition to those Republicans and conservatives as “bi-partisan.”
They allow the press to say, “See, this guy’s so bad that even his fellow REPUBLICANS don’t support him. All decent and open-minded Americans must follow suit.”
And this type of Republican simply loves the feeling that comes with receiving approval from the establishment political class. It’s a mutually self-serving arrangement, and it’s thoroughly disingenuous and irritating.
These Republicans are entitled to back whomever they want for President, and for whatever reasons. But they should drop the ruse that they’re doing so from any sort of position or perspective as principled but concerned Republicans — rather than to further their own personal agendas.
ITEM #2: The evidence continues to build that Governor Steve Sisolak’s coronavirus response has been an unmitigated disaster.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Colton Lochhead reports:
“The health districts overseeing the state’s two largest counties complained in a letter to Gov. Steve Sisolak that they’ve been shut out of his decision-making process about coronavirus restrictions.
“In a scathing joint letter from the Southern Nevada Health District and Washoe County Health District sent to Sisolak’s office Friday, health officials said that not including them in the state’s policy discussions or development of COVID-19 directives has complicated the local response to the virus by forcing them to shift their plans and resources in order to respond to the governor’s changes with little to no notice.
“‘Since we are not consulted and engaged, we receive little or no advance notice of what these policy changes may be, and we are forced to react after decisions have been made and announcements are occurring,’ the letter said.”
Somehow it never occurred to the Governor that those running our health districts — in the two counties with the largest populations in the entire state! — might need to be included in the conversation about what his plans are for dealing with this crisis.
He’s had seven months to get this right. Yet bumbling, stumbling along he goes.
ITEM #3: Here’s an item for anyone who still thinks that those who are concerned about voter fraud are just a bunch of brain-dead partisans…
Writing for the Daily Signal, Hans von Spakovsky passes along this sobering bit of news:
“One of the constant refrains from those who oppose election reforms designed to protect the security and integrity of the voting process is that serious vote fraud is a myth.
“But as a shocking new report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows, those naysayers could not be more wrong.
“The foundation’s report, ‘Critical Condition,’ highlights the severity of the problem: inaccurate voter rolls, duplicate registrations, dead voters, and incomplete registrations — all of which allow fraud by those willing to exploit vulnerabilities in the system.
“The foundation discovered more than 140,000 instances of potential election fraud in the 2016 and 2018 elections, ranging from individuals illegally voting in multiple states to someone voting in the name of a deceased person.”
As we at Morning in Nevada PAC continue to point out, universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting — ideas recently legalized into practice by Silver State Democrats — are especially dangerous to election security and integrity.
While we’re on the subject, you have to check out this video revealing registered voters in Nevada who are improperly registered to vote at commercial addresses.
The video shows that these people clearly don’t live at those addresses, and in many cases … don’t even exist.
Where is our head-in-sand “news” media on this?
ITEM #4: It’s election season, which means we’re going to hear lots of debating from candidates over whether and by how much to increase spending on public education.
But as the editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal correctly point out, “How it’s spent matters at least as much as how much money is spent when it comes to the public schools.”
They note:
“Five years ago, Nevada passed the largest tax increase in state history to boost education spending. Last school year, Nevada was budgeted to spend more than $10,000 per student, not including school construction.”
Yet still, today, we hear incessant cries that Nevada’s education system is failing — an implicit admission that past spending increases have not led to the promised improvements, it should be noted — and that the solution is somehow yet MORE funding.
This mindset is deeply flawed, and as the Review-Journal’s editors argue, the better approach is to increase parental choice:
“Nevada could give parents $6,000 to spend on education for each child. When parents have more options, aspects of the system must improve or face the consequences. If a private school isn’t doing a good job, families leave and go to a higher-performing school. Poorly performing schools either make changes or shut down. That’s how a market works — and it’s how school choice has increased student achievement throughout the country.”
The full editorial is well worth a read, and is available here.
ITEM #5: Americans follow sports for lots of different reasons, but one of them is no doubt the escape that the sporting world provides from the rest of the world. People of various backgrounds, beliefs and political stripes can put their differences aside and join in the comradery that rooting together for the home team allows.
Lately, of course, that’s all changed, as our major sports leagues have increasingly been converted into platforms for promoting left-wing political causes in the name of “social justice.” On that score, the NBA has been particularly insufferable.
And according to Forbes’ Kurt Badenhausen, the fans aren’t impressed:
“Some basketball fans are souring on the NBA’s support of teams and players bringing politics onto the court, tossing an assist to President Donald Trump in his attacks on the league.
“‘People are tired of watching the highly political @NBA. Basketball ratings are WAY down, and they won’t be coming back. I hope football and baseball are watching and learning because the same thing will be happening to them. Stand tall for our Country and our Flag!!!’ Trump tweeted to his 86 million followers yesterday.
“A new Harris Poll backs Trump’s critique of the NBA, with 39% of sports fans saying they are watching fewer games. And the chief reason why? Politics. The longtime polling agency surveyed nearly 2,000 people over the weekend and gave those who identified as sports fans — two-thirds of the total — ten options to choose from on why they are watching less basketball.
“‘The league has become too political’ was the clear choice, with 38% of respondents who identified themselves as sports fans.”
The NBA and other major sports leagues would be wise to drop the politics. If they don’t, they’re only likely to bleed even more fans — and money. Which is exactly what they’ll deserve.
ITEM #6: Ready for the latest on the resoundingly discredited “1619 Project,” the dishonest, error-riddled, anti-American essay collection published by the New York Times?
Well, here it is, courtesy of Stanley Kurtz:
“An open letter released today and signed by 21 scholars and public writers calls on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in 'The 1619 Project.' ...
“The letter revisits the sorry tale of the 1619 Project’s errors and distortions and invokes these in calling for the revocation of the prize. The recent revelations that The New York Times stealthily edited out the signature claim of the project — that the advent of slavery in the year 1619 constitutes our country’s 'true founding' — were, however, the immediate occasion for this letter. As Phillip Magness ... has shown, Nikole Hannah-Jones has several times denied ever claiming that 1619 was our true founding, although in fact she has made this latter claim repeatedly.”
We’ll keep bringing you the latest in this saga — one that continues to grow into an encouraging story of honest Americans successfully exposing a dangerous lie from the left.
In the meantime, you can read more details from Kurtz here, and the letter here.
ITEM #7: And finally, David Harsanyi is calling out Associated Press on its attempt to play games with language — in service to its painfully transparent political agenda, of course.
As Harsanyi reports at National Review, AP’s “newest surrender to newspeak has it instructing newspapers to ignore the meaning of ‘riot.’” He notes that a new AP guideline reads: “A riot is a wild or violent disturbance of the peace involving a group of people. The term riot suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium.”
But as Harsanyi counters:
“Not so. The word suggests — nay, it means — ‘a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.’ By any definition, the rampaging leftist crowds — well, only around 10 percent or so — went looting and burning this summer qualify as ‘rioters.’”
The AP guideline instructs us further that, “Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.”
Translation: Using the word “riot” to describe what’s going on in America’s cities today is highly inconvenient to AP’s and the left’s preferred political narrative. So you better stop using that word. And if you don’t, we’ll call you a racist.
NOTABLE QUOTES
“Democrats in major cities rapidly turned the radical slogan of ‘defund the police’ into actual policy and are surprised by the backlash of people who just want safety in their communities. Less police means more crime. It’s that simple.” ― U.S. Congressman Dan Crenshaw
“One of the scariest things about our times is how easy it is to scare people and start a political stampede. There are people who could be upset if they were told that half of all Americans earn less than the median income — though of course that is the way median income is defined.” ― Thomas Sowell