2021 January Editorials
A Note from Dave Ramsey
Middle America Takes A Stand
With a Heavy Heart
A Message from Talk Show Host Dave Ramsey on January 6, 2021
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“This morning, I realized that everything is about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, lives are never going to be the same.
I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think that I may well have entered the Twilight Zone.
You can't justify this insanity. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind.
We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us.
Somehow it’s un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.
People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.
Universities that advocate equality, discriminate against Asian-Americans in favor of African-Americans.
Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.
Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it's a violation of THEIR rights.
People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.
After legislating gender, if a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.
It was cool for Joe Biden to "blackmail" the President of Ukraine, but it’s an impeachable offense if Donald Trump inquiries about it.
People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.
Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.
Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang-bangers who jump the southern fence are welcomed.
$5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.
If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.
And, pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us "racists"!
Nothing makes sense anymore, no values, no morals, no civility and people are dying of a Chinese virus, but it is racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China.
We are clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent babies is right.
Wake up America. The great unsinkable ship Titanic America has hit an iceberg, is taking on water and sinking fast.
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Middle America Takes a Stand
By Bill Richbourg
Before I proceed, let me be clear that the thoughts and opinions herein are mine and mine alone, and do not represent the opinions of any member(s) of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee.
First, the events at the U.S. Capitol were predictable. There is only so much that human beings can take before they reach a breaking point. My guess is that a pandemic, the gut-wrenching endless lockdowns, economic catastrophes and openly rigged elections would challenge the most stable of individuals. Our leaders, who were insulated from all this, issued lockdown orders and then closed their eyes and ears to what was happening around them.
Of course, now they blame the president and act as if they are shocked that a few Americans did not have a limitless capacity to be lied to, laughed at, have their livelihoods taken from them, and finally, destroy their confidence that their votes meant anything when a “clean” voting system is literally at the heart and soul of a democratic republic.
Lets review. First, 2020 saw the COVID-19 outbreak that reached global pandemic proportions by March. Chinese officials misled the world about the origins of the disease without apologies. The only pushback came from President Trump. What did we hear from our political parties and the Congress …crickets!
U.S. authorities were contradictory. First, they assured us that lockdowns were temporary and merely in place to “slow the spread.” Then, they stood by, as weeks turned into months, that wearing masks was bad, then good, then optional and then, absolutely mandatory. They drove the economy into an abrupt recession that created economic wreckage among blue-collar workers and small business owners and employees.
Of course, members of Congress, federal and state employees, including public school teachers who by the way, have not spent a day in class in over 200 days, never lost a penny of salary throughout the pandemic lockdowns and were able to stay at home with their children.
Then we saw initially peaceful protests over the death of George Floyd turn violent with nightly rioting, looting and arson as Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs hijacked the nation’s outrage over the Floyd death. And yet, the largely Democrat leadership of all the major cities refused to stop the riots, ask for federal assistance, or punish the rioters. In many cases we witnessed the insanity of leftist district attorneys, who immediately released rioters back into the community, which ensured that they could be back the very next night, smashing and burning and having a “good old time.”
Next, we have the 2020 presidential election that proved to be as revolutionary and contentious, if not more so, than the COVID lockdowns and restrictions. The radical transition to unprecedented levels of mail-in balloting tested the ability of state registrars to authenticate and count ballots. They failed! Democrats in a number of “battleground” states used the COVID restrictions as the perfect cover to execute unconstitutional and/or blatantly illegal maneuvers, allowing them to flood the polls with bogus mail-in ballots from voters, including non-residents, underage, dead, felons or illegals. If that wasn’t enough, they also flooded the systems with counterfeit ballots.
What is peculiar is that while every American is intricately familiar with the COVID pandemic and the effect it has had on our lives, this is not the case for voter fraud, despite the fact that the evidence was overwhelming. Making it worse is the fact that our politicians, the judiciary and the mainstream media refused to even acknowledge the existence of evidence, much less pledge to the American people to investigate.
This has to appear to average American citizens that the mountains of illegal activities to deny President Trump’s reelection are perfectly acceptable to our political leadership. A perfect example of this situation is the reaction to the recent disclosure that some 432,000 votes in Pennsylvania were removed from President Trump. Senator Mitch McConnell stated in front of the entire Congress that there were not enough “irregularities” to affect the outcome in any of the battleground states. Clearly, this had to further antagonize and frustrate American patriots, who are convinced that the election was stolen.
This explains, but certainly does not justify, the actions of a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands who came out to protest the stealing of the election. There is however, blame to go around. Speculation has it that if members of Congress or their representatives had simply come out onto the Capitol steps and spoken to the protesters, sympathized with the protesters, and indicated that they were investigating and carrying out their Constitutional duties, this would likely have calmed the crowds.
But it was not to be, and today the conservative heart of our country – the hard-working middle class men and women, are in a terrible position politically. Instead of Americans taking a stand against wantonly disregarded laws and fraudulent election results, the Trump administration will be forever stained by the misdeeds of a few violent insurgents.
I close with a couple of Thomas Paine quotes:
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
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...With a Heavy Heart
By Matthew Johnson
I write to all of you, my fellow Republicans and members of the Party of Lincoln, with a heavy heart and deep frustration as to the current state of our party.
In light of the attack on the Capitol, I feel as though it is my solemn obligation to share with you, my fellow patriots, what unfortunately appears to be an unpopular opinion. President Trump violated his oath of office by inciting an insurrection designed to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. His failure to immediately call in the National Guard as rioters ransacked our temple of democracy and tried to overturn a legitimate election is in violation of his oath to support and defend the Constitution.
I had supported President Trump since he became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party back in 2016, but I can no longer do so in good faith. He was never my first choice, but as for many conservatives, he was a means to an end, a conduit for conservative policies. I applauded him for his Supreme Court nominations, criminal justice reform, tax cuts, and foreign policy initiatives. And while I supported many of his policies, I never considered him a principled conservative. I knew for him, the Republican Party was simply the vehicle through which he secured the keys to the White House, but I never thought his desire for power would endanger the foundation of our democracy. I was mistaken.
We witnessed last Wednesday the first splintering crack in that foundation when supporters of the President, emboldened by his claims of a rigged election, stormed the Capitol and disrupted the lawful certification of election results. These thugs smashed windows, damaged federal property, occupied the halls of the Capitol, and sought to prevent Congress from certifying a free and fair election. This was a traitorous coup, an insurrection, designed to overthrow the will of the people. And while we all condemn the actions of those domestic terrorists and insurrectionists, we must not forget how we ended up here.
The events that unfolded on Wednesday didn’t just happen in a vacuum; this wasn’t some organic, spontaneous insurrection. Wednesday’s events are a direct manifestation of the President’s false claims of a rigged election. Had he not spent two months lying to the public about voter fraud, no one in that mob would have felt as though the election was stolen. Had he accepted the legitimate results of this free and fair election, Congress would not have fled the Capitol and been forced to postpone certifying a peaceful transfer of power.
At a certain point, we must be honest with ourselves. We have to acknowledge that the President’s words have consequences, that the bully pulpit he holds influences millions. For months, he lied about wide-spread voter fraud, and yet many believed him. When that mob gathered in D.C., just hours before besieging the Capitol, he continued riling them up with these lies. And as these thugs stormed the Capitol, our temple of democracy, and disrupted constitutionally-mandated procedures, he watched, refusing to immediately call in the National Guard. He no longer deserves to occupy the highest office in the land, and if we have any integrity as a party, we will call for his resignation.
To those who say the President bears no responsibility, I ask you, “Where do you draw the line? At what point, will you place country above party?”
To those who say the President responded appropriately, I remind them that it took hours for national law enforcement to be deployed and even then, reports claim the Vice President, not President Trump, called in the National Guard.
To those who would like to derail this much needed national conversation with questions about Democrats being responsible for BLM riots, I ask you to please stop playing politics. We cannot excuse the President’s actions and inactions by always diverting attention to our political opponents.
I am frankly disappointed to see how some in our party refuse to place even a modicum of responsibility for last Wednesday’s events with the President.
As a young person in politics, I gravitated toward the Republican Party because of its values, principles, and most of all integrity. I found solace in a party that placed the rule of law above any one individual, that valued limited government, that cherished our founding documents, and that revered our democratic institutions. I admired its consistent adherence to these principles and its honorable history as the party that freed the slaves and saved the Union. But in the midst of these recent events, I believe our party is changing and not for the better. I worry we are watching our party, a party of decency, rationality, and most of all integrity, become one solely committed to appeasing Donald Trump.
We all know in our heart of hearts that we would be appalled if any Democrat did just half of what Donald Trump has done for the past two months. Had Hillary Clinton waged a two-month-long campaign alleging wide-spread voter fraud without any substantial evidence, we would be furious. And if thugs, riled up by her rhetoric, invaded the Capitol, preventing President Trump from being certified, we would be calling for her resignation. But, because of our party’s unfettered devotion to this man, some are either incapable or too afraid to stand up to this president when he has crossed a line. And for this, we risk losing the integrity that drew me and many others to the party.
While I pray for our party and will do everything in my power to steer it back toward those principles that attracted me, I still have hope. I have faith, not in Trump, but in the honorable Republicans and secretaries of state who are defending the sanctity of our vote. I have faith in the countless number of Trump-appointed judges who found no validity to these claims of voter fraud. I have faith in the poll workers who despite a global pandemic rushed to the frontlines to administer our elections. I have faith in former Trump administration officials like Bill Barr and Chris Krebs who have publicly refuted claims of wide-spread voter fraud. I have faith in the men and women of law enforcement who restored law and order to Capitol Hill after thugs tried to undermine one of our country’s most cherished traditions: a peaceful transfer of power. We are a party of these patriots, not of Trump.
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Matthew Johnson is a member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee