Published Saturday, October 20, 2018

 

Today was a fascinating day for me.

 

I had to really sit down and reflect.

 

This is the manifestation of my #WalkAway moment and there was more than a little cognitive dissonance as I found myself cavorting around Capitol Hill with a big pile of “sorry we missed you!” flyers for Republican candidate Michael Bekesha, of Ward 6, who is running for DC council.

 

https://twitter.com/Sarah__Reynolds/status/1053688695591788544

 

You see, while I’ve never been a democrat, per se, I have almost always voted for dems, including Congresswoman Betty McCollum, Senator Al Franken, among others, and a guy you may have heard of, Barack Obama — twice!

 

Six years ago — literally six years ago to the day (a beautiful fall day in zip code 55105), I was canvassing for President Obama to be re-elected for his second term, going door to door in St Paul, MN. I was terrified — and despairing — that Romney could win and the Affordable Care Act would be repealed. I didn’t LIKE Obamacare, I liked one of its provisions, that any state could set up its own single payer option (and like every failed attempt at something decent and beneficial of Obama’s legacy, that too became an impossible dream that even Vermont (Vermont!!) couldn’t realize); additionally, I was worried that abortion would instantly become illegal, overnight. I believed that Romney as a devout Mormon would make sure of that.

 

I had neither of these fears with Trump. Not for a second, not for a millisecond.

 

You know why? Because by 2016, I’d given up on the absurd ridiculous bureaucratic nightmare that ACA devolved into, one that doubled my own insurance premiums so I couldn’t afford health insurance (to say nothing of the deductible I’d have to pay if I DID need to see an ACTUAL doctor) and forced me to pay HUNDREDS of dollars against my tax refund due to the individual mandate since I opted to go uninsured rather than pay for something I couldn’t afford anyway. And frankly, I don’t think Trump would ever touch the abortion issue with an executive order. He talks a pro-life talk to get the religious demographic to vote for him, but he’s no Pence.

 

There is only one person I wouldn’t vote for in a race against Pence and that is Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, I would vote against Pence.

 

I don’t sound very republican, do I? Well, it’s because I’m not. I hate labels, and have long eschewed them. There’s a reason I call myself a progressive patriot. I’m pro-legal abortion (I wouldn’t object to a 120-days-pregnant cut off), I’m for gay marriage (what do you think men who can’t marry other men because society shames them for being gay do? Sometimes they marry women. Some might perpetrate fraud against women and pretend they’re straight). At the same time, I want very secure borders, an America First domestic and foreign policy, where we fix NAFTA (Trump is working on it with the new USMCA) and pull out of the TPP (Trump did that on day one) and bring back manufacturing jobs. That’s all happening plus that garbage individual mandate from Obamacare has already been repealed, thank God. And I have hope Trump will finally get us out of Afghanistan as well and work with Rand Paul to offer a better health care solution, while protecting anyone with pre-existing conditions (the other good component of the ACA).

 

To me, Trump is the one who doesn’t sound very republican. (In fact in his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” he holds up the Canadian single payer health care system as an example of a plan that we could implement in the US; albeit an improved Trump-version of it, of course!) Or at least, Trump seems like a throwback to the populist Republicans of the early 20th century: he’s no corporatist like Paul Ryan or Romney. That’s why even so many Republicans didn’t like Trump!

 

Ever since the 2016 election, I have been hellbent on voting for anyone but Dems. And I do mean anyone. Some people might #WalkAway: I’m going to drag myself out of the clutches of the Democratic Party’s lying scheming duplicitous filthy claws and attempt to collapse their entire house of cards on my way out.

 

Some people might #WalkAway: I’m going to drag myself out of the clutches of the Democratic Party’s lying scheming duplicitous filthy claws and attempt to collapse their entire house of cards on my way out.

 

But after moving to Washington, DC and becoming a registered Ward 6 voter, even considering a Republican for my District Council member initially felt … so alien. I had figured I would vote for the independent or libertarian candidate. But then I found out about DC Log Cabin Republicans-approved Michael Bekesha.

https://twitter.com/Bekesha2018/status/1050891687189499904

 

This whole concept of an “urban republican” sounded interesting. It had a ring to it. It seemed sophisticated. It seemed like the perfect name to print onto the beige label of a bottle of 2019 Rose from the latest California vineyard. Ok, I thought, I’ll take a sip.

 

I went to Michael’s meet and greet and found out he’s an attorney for Judicial Watch (yay!). I found out he’s pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, and he’s just a cool down to earth guy all around! Super kind and friendly wife, they have a rescue dog, they know DC, having lived here a long time, etc. Good people. When we talked about not paying teachers and cops who work in DC enough to be able to also live (afford housing) in DC proper, he had real solutions to suggest, ones that have worked in other major cities. He’s genuinely worried about the recent uptick in violent crime. He cares about things that matter to every day people, like an aging metro system and getting the government out of the way so people can supplement their income by renting their home out through airbnb. All politics are local, as they say, and I even had a very interesting conversation with him about the role of government in regulating the sale of marijuana.

 

I thought, this is my type of Republican!! (Cue film noir voiceover: I looked in the mirror, and said to myself, could I be … an urban republican? Perhaps. Perhaps that longing and aching for a party … any party … could finally be … fulfilled!)

 

And as I canvassed door to door today, I had great conversations with the few registered Republican voters who happened to be home (or answered the door!) as I dutifully followed the trail of pindrops on the app on my phone. A whole lot more convenient than lugging around 20 pages of voters’ names and addresses on a bulky clipboard the way I did 6 years ago, I can tell you that much. This time, constituents shared that their biggest concern was crime and the quality of public schools. Everyone was nice — exactly the same as when I went door to door to registered Dem voters 6 years ago. Might “nice” be a personality trait of the registered voter?

 

People who vote, I posit, vote because they unconsciously feel that they are following a rule: just as you have to come to a complete stop at a stoplight on red, you have to vote on election day. There’s a good chance that the same people who taught us how to drive, also taught us how to vote — our parents. And this is where the current Dem party leadership takes such a sharp turn away from the Dem party voters. Who are rule followers. The Dem leaders, Feinstein, Pelosi, Schumer, et al, are literally praising rule-breaking — loudly and emphatically — on tv. And all these rule-followers are watching. And shaking their heads.

 

Which leads me from the local political scene to the national one. Being Republican in DC is basically a non-starter … unless you live in the White House and your name is Donald Trump. Bekesha likely won’t win the Ward 6 race but if he doesn’t run, it’s a total surrender to the one-party system that DC is entrenched in. A lot of people thought Trump was wasting his time and money. But standing firm in our views is never a waste. Every time we stand up and speak out, we add another layer to the snowball that eventually triggers an avalanche.

 

And President Trump is speaking very loudly: he’s saying things that ALL rule-followers are hearing. Registered voters from ALL parties. And they’re agreeing with those things. And nodding their heads.

 

One of the things Trump says is if you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country. It’s laughably obvious. He campaigned on enforcing **existing** immigration law. We have rules so that society doesn’t devolve into absolute chaos. No one thinks we put on the breaks at a stop sign so we can appreciate what a lovely job the local municipality did with such a vividly red octagonal accent piece. No one thinks we refrain from budging in line at the grocery store because it’s fun to wait our turn! No. We follow rules because we were taught to respect authority, or to fear authority and the negative consequences of not following the rules. The results are the same, either way: a compliant cooperative populace that *usually* stops at stop signs and doesn’t budge in line. Or kill. Or steal. Or break into someone’s house. Or break into someone’s country. Etc.

 

Even the Hill is coming to terms with the fact that the left has dug themselves such a deep rhetoric grave, that they’ve created an abyss. It’s very hard to scratch and crawl your way out of an abyss — the best strategy is to avoid falling into one (or for crying out loud, DIGGING ONE RELENTLESSLY) in the first place. The Hill retweeted President Trump saying, “The Democrats don’t like being called an angry mob but, really, that’s what they’ve become. They’ve gone so far left, they can’t even believe that they’re over there.” Now, the Hill wasn’t saying that because they agree with Trump, they were sending out a warning to the Dems: I read between the lines and I think the Hill is desperately trying to remind the Deep State (with whom they are a mainstream media partner and for whom they are a bullhorn) to reel back the gasping bloated struggling donkeys-out-of-water the Democrat Party has become.

https://twitter.com/Sarah__Reynolds/status/1053904619590574080

 

But please don’t conflate “dems” with normal people. Because normal people (classical liberals) like me wanted GTMO closed, to get the hell out of Afghanistan, to put our own people first, to hold the big banks accountable for crashing the economy in 2008, to have job and retirement security for Americans, but the Democrat Party leadership have become such shills for a globalist, border-free, US sovereignty violating world order that they’ve lost touch with the everyday man and woman. No, not the “forgotten man and woman,” the blue collar workers whose lives were devastated by NAFTA and other “free” (globalist) trade agreements, who elected President Trump by an electoral college swinging margin in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, no, I mean the AVERAGE person: the other group of normal, middle-of-the-road, working, tv-watching Americans. And those people PLUS all the forgotten men and women are watching that TV, and they’re seeing with their own eyes thousands of migrant people, mostly men of working age. And they’re reflecting. And they’re drawing a conclusion based on available information, as human beings who aren’t brain-dead are wont to do. And they are agreeing with the sentiments of Tera Marie Major below: this is not a caravan, it’s an invasion.

 

This is not a caravan, it’s an invasion.

 

 

And here’s some food for thought …

https://twitter.com/Real_PeachyKeen/status/1053491399541297152

 

Would the Dems be ok with 4,000 Russians illegally crossing our border? We know the answer. If 4,000 Russians attempted to illegally force their way through our southern border, the Dems would be UP IN ARMS. On the national mall, in front of the White House, parading down 5th Avenue, blockading the subways, the airports and the freeways. “Russian collusion, Russian collusion,” they’d chant, like deranged zombies.

 

 

https://twitter.com/Sarah__Reynolds/status/1053674328271867910

 

Borders are laws. And laws are designed to prevent chaos (and other types of pain, of course). President Trump is right: the Dems have gone so far left, they can’t even believe they’re over there. Everything they’ve done — from showing us that it’s one tier of justice for you and me, and a separate tier for people with the last name Clinton, to the DNC claiming in open court that they have every right to rig the primaries, regardless of what their charter says, to claiming bizarre denial of reality (i.e., there are more than 2 genders, gender is fluid, and attempting to normalize the sexualization of minors by glorifying child “drag queens” as glamorous instead of acknowledging that those MINORS are being exploited by adults) has shown the WORLD that they are losing their minds. They have no idea that they seem crazy. And they operate in an echo chamber (such as the one established and sustained by the crypt keepers of the abyss known as Twitter) so not only do they avoid any real debate that could lead to a change of heart, their existing viewpoint is freakishly and cultishly reinforced, thanks to such a high degree of isolation.

 

And I am so thankful I got away from that cult.

 

Vote Michael Bekesha for Ward 6 DC Council on November 6!!

 

#WalkAway

#RedTsunami