Don’t look now, but this long-term Republican isn’t waiting around for advice from state party officials on what to think.
How I feel about Liz Cheney isn’t influenced by how many county Republican party groups censure her, fail to recognize her walking down the street, or take back her secret GOP decoder ring. What they do has nothing to do with how this former supporter feels about Liz (it’s not good) other than amazement that those groups think they have influence over guys like me.
Guys who haven’t been in a physical altercation since grade school. Guys who think twice before hitting “send” on an insulting email.
Guys who want less spending and more common sense in government. Guys who believe in the right to bear arms, but probably don’t make a show of wearing a gun to a meeting.
Is some common sense too much to ask?
Don’t agree? Remember the county GOP chairman who thought it was a good idea to punch another county chairman at a 2020 gathering in Gillette? Only he picked the wrong guy to punch, and ended up with a broken ankle and a neck injury when the guy he punched took him to to ground and subdued him.
When was the last time you went to a meeting and someone got punched? Like, never.
(Quick, call Merrick Garland and have him move the FBI agents from school board meetings to state party conventions. That’s where the action is.)
Some of these party officials are probably like the student council members in high school who got a thrill out of knowing Roberts Rules of Order, who knew what “cloture” meant, and who got the excitations passing platforms nobody in their right mind read, much less lived by.
Another telling episode was that precinct committeeman from Park County who sent an email to a state senator in Laramie County, urging her to kill herself, and signing off with some words you wouldn’t want your mother to hear. I don’t care what the issue is, a guy who tells people to commit suicide, and who uses language like that isn’t about to lead me to the Conservative Promised Land.
They’re fighting these days about who the true believers are, and who the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) are, and for the sake of clarity, that’s probably a good thing. Some years back we were visited by a Republican candidate who said he agreed with us in opposing Medicaid expansion, but quickly added that you can’t say that and get elected in Laramie County.
Can you spell RINO?
He didn’t get our votes.
Most recently there was the open mic episode when we learned what one leading party official thought in his heart of hearts about another Republican. It wasn’t pretty, and he had to apologize for the salty language.
This is the “leadership” politicians like to talk about? Pack it in, guys.
It comes at a time when Democrats are determined to brand all Republicans – including old Republican guys like me, grandpas, heading to coffee groups in our high-mileage pickups, not prone to fist fights or foul language – as the greatest threat to our country. I wouldn’t know an Oath Keeper from a Proud Boy if you held a gun to my head. And guys like me would never THINK of breaking a window in the magnificent U.S. Capitol, much less rushing in and acting like goofs. We’re not face-paint, bison-horn guys. And we hate the damage a bunch of idiots did to our conservative cause.
That’s not us, and I resent being lumped in with them by crazy spendthrift Democrats determined to not let a crisis go to waste.
I didn’t understand what the term “gas lighting” truly meant until now, when liberals keep pounding away at how dangerous and unhinged Republicans have supposedly become, as they spend us into oblivion, demand vaccine after vaccine, and pray at the altar of Dr. Fauci.
Maybe the pendulum swings back in this year’s midterm election. I hope so. (President Biden seems, unwittingly, to be doing his best to make that happen.)
