Tag: conservatives

Two important quotes on the Republican Party Establishment

Pat Caddell:

Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday with a blistering attack on “racketeering” Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like “marks.”

 

“I blame the donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers….It’s time to stop being marks. It’s time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get real,” he told the audience that included two top Republican consultants.

Caddell stole the show as a panelist in the breakout session titled “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?” He spoke with a fire and passion that electrified the room. When the session began the large room was half filled, but as word spread of the fireworks going on inside, the audience streamed in. By the end, it was standing room only.

Breitbart News spoke with Caddell prior to his talk, and he promised he would deliver a “brutal critique” of the Republican establishment and its political consulting class. He did not disappoint, pulling no punches with an unyielding evisceration of a small group of Republican consultants, the Romney campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super PAC.

“When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at the end of the campaign for the ‘fantastic’ get-out-the-vote program…some of this borders on RICO [the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] violations,” Caddell told the crowd. “It’s all self dealing going on. I think it works on the RICO thing. They’re in the business of lining their pockets.”

“The Republican Party,” Caddell continued, “is in the grips of what I call the CLEC–the consultant, lobbyist, and establishment complex.” Caddell described CLEC as a self serving interconnected network of individuals and organizations interested in preserving their own power far more than they’re interested in winning elections.

Jeff Goldstein:

In the years after the 2008 presidential election, and in particular, after my public chastisement of certain right wing sites for their having bought in to the establishment spin (as an aside, you don’t need to take my word for this, you can research it yourself:  look at the number of links I received from the top-tier right-wing sites prior to Obama’s ascension and then afterward when I started turning my attention to the problems within the Republican Party and its strategy makers and mouthpieces, whom I called out by name), protein wisdom was very obviously relegated to some sort of networking black list; people who once linked me routinely today won’t even follow me on Twitter, much less link back to the site.   Which is why I find the sudden return to a demand for conservative principles from some of those same sites who worked so determinedly to marginalize me both ironic and galling, and yet humorous in their cynical transparency.  That is, for those who wish to naval gaze.

All of which I mention only as a prelude to what many of us can feel is happening right now within the GOP:  a civil war, one in which the young TEA Party constitutionalists, far from backing down from the establishment old bulls (who are content to foist symbolic but feckless votes on us to “prove” they stand with us, while simultaneously surrendering their leverage in advance of every procedural battle in which they might actually affect change and slow down the march of progressive government growth and institutionalization), are actively — and, more importantly, publicly  — challenging them.

[…]

Aside from a few people left on the network, FOX News is not a conservative outlet.  It is the white-boarded symbol of GOP status-quo governance.  Similarly, the suddenly red-meat conservative commentators popping up in the online opinion circles?  I’d advise you go back and look at what they were writing in from 2008 before the TEA Party revolution, many of them having been caught completely off guard by it. I’d invite you to examine — regardless of the awards they are granted, or the incestuousness of the networking that keeps them extraordinarily influential — which types of Republicans they attack and which they support; if they have been pro-incumbent or pro-primary challenge; if they have counseled pragmatism or principle. If they’ve joined the chorus demeaning the “True Believers” and Hobbits and Visigoths, until such time as it became apparent to them that such people, and their message, is beginning to resonate with a revived and energized base.

Because these are the kinds of people who benefit from a perpetual state of political expedience, who blow with the political winds, as it were.  They dislike being criticized, and they are perfectly happy to freeze out those who they believe muddle the communication strategy they have determined is the right one — often quite wrongly.  They dislike debate and a free exchange of ideas, though they give lip-service to supporting it; they admire and seek to emulate the unified front of the Democrats, because they mistakenly believe that it is that unified front that secures Democrats electoral victories, when instead it is their own very determined decision to try to manage messages instead of fighting for principles that turns voters off.

And even now, many of them are trying desperately to cling to power, to maintain the status quo, because it is within the current broken system — the one that benefits politicians while screwing over their constituencies — that they thrive.  And they’ll be goddamned if any presumptuous set of “citizen legislators” — that is, those who aren’t looking to make a career out of living inside the DC bubble and adapting to its tony ways — is going to come along and upset their well-stocked, perpetually refilled apple cart.

They are concerned only with themselves and their own perks and powers.  And just because they wear an R behind their name, or sport a flag lapel pin and mouth conservative pieties from time to time, doesn’t mean they are at all on the side of the people, of the Constitution, of individual liberty and autonomy.  In fact, the vast majority of them reject such antiquated principles and instead seek to have a more efficient Leviathan running the lives of the masses.  And that’s deplorable.

I cannot say that I disagree with any of the above. I believe the Republican Party has two choices here; reform and change, or die. Hopefully, they will choose wisely.

Others: Conservatives4Palin, Rush Limbaugh and The Camp Of The Saints

Has CPAC gone politically correct?

It appears so:

For the last four years, Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com and the American Freedom Defense Initiative have held events at CPAC featuring guests she invites to discuss the influence of Islamism on America. But this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU) has no room for Geller or her message.

In 2009, she brought Geert Wilders, who is the head of the third largest party in the Netherlands and has spoken out against the Islamization of his country.

In 2010 she held an event that her organization, The American Freedom Defense Initiative, hosted, titled “Jihad: The Political Third Rail”, with speakers like Allen West, Wafa Sultan, Simon Deng, Anders Gravers, and Steve Coughlin.

In 2011, she hosted an event discussing the Ground Zero Mosque with 9/11 families. In 2012, the event was titled “Islamic Law in America.”

In years past, the events were standing room only thanks to their popularity, but that apparently was not enough to counter pressure brought to bear from somewhere to exclude Geller’s message.

Geller and her coworkers recently won a court battle allowing them to post ads that countered the #Myjihad ad campaign that posited that jihad was a peaceful word. Yet despite the law’s defense of her rights, the ACU will not stand up for her against critics

via CPAC Turns Away Pamela Geller.

You know there is nothing more that I despise more than racism, from blacks and towards blacks — and that is political correctness. I have not always agreed with Pamela Geller; her words and sometimes her tactics; but damn it, Freedom of Speech, is freedom of speech is freedom of speech! 😡 If CPAC is now starting to squish Anti-Jihad bloggers right to point out the truth, then they can just take the one-way train to irrelevancy!

For the record: I have never been to a CPAC, nor most likely will I ever be attending one. More so now that something like this is going on. Also too, this buffoon here can go play in the kiddy pool. Idiot Morally depraved buffoons. I got no love them nor their lifestyle, nor does God. 😡

Others:  Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, The Other McCain, American Power

Update: Counter Jihad Report Links in, as does I am 41.  Thanks Ya’ll! 😀

Update #2: ‘Da Tech Guy Links in, Thank You! 😀

GOP, Social Media and Democrats

Just a little comment about InstaPundit and Bryan Preston’s posting about Obama’s ground game.

Instapundit Says:

The GOP has some learning to do.

Bryan Preston says:

Obama’s personal political army posted it on the web and require a valid email to obtain it. So I downloaded it and have posted it right here. Download it for yourself and take a look.

The GOP had better not only pore over every detail of this at the national and state levels, they must build something better for 2014 and beyond. The Romney campaign’s ORCA project was supposed to be the GOP’s technological answer, but it was a total failure.

Last night, Gov. Bobby Jindal pushed the GOP to stop being the “stupid party.” They not only have to stop being stupid, they have to become very, very smart.

So, I did, I took a look at it; and I have to tell you all something. If the GOP thinks that they are going to be able to get anyone, who is that well versed in social media; who is a Conservative — they are crazy. Silly

The majority of the people that are well versed in social media are, unlike me, committed leftists. They will not just switch for the right some of money, they are liberal purists through and though and they will not do anything to help out a Republican cause at all. This is and has been the huge handicap and disparity between the left and the right. Most, if not all, of silicon valley and the social media world is of the liberal mindset.

It is a sad thing, but it is very true. Obama might be many things; but he is no idiot. Obama knew exactly what he was tapping into, when he decided to do the ground game for 2012. He learned from his mistakes and this time, he did very well. Romney did well himself, he just did not have the ground game to fight Obama well enough to get his message out. Plus too, there were demographic issues as well.

What needs to happen with the Republican Party is that they need to broaden the tent a bit. They need to moderate out their message a bit. They need to stop pretending to be something that they are not; and that is some sort of Democratic Party light. They need to quit doing the “Go along to get along” nonsense as well. They also need to stop pandering to protected minorities and get in touch with what true Conservatism really is. They need to also move away from this Feminist nonsense and move towards a Christian message, without being overly offensive about it. In other words: Celebrate being pro-life, but lose the silly rape comments.

They need to embrace the Huckabee crowd, and the Pat Roberson crowd, and maybe even the Pat Buchanan crowd a bit more. They part also needs to get in touch with the Conservative grassroots a bit more, and move away from the Elitist beltway crowd, as the cocktail crowd might get the big donations; but the heartland people are the ones that vote. An outreach to the farmers, and I do not mean the large corporate farmers either, I mean small-town farmers; this would help things out a good deal.

What needs to happen is the Republican Party needs to get back to the people that the Democrats left behind. Like the small-town farmer who’s making about $250.000 a year, but is barely able to keep his farm. Like the screw machine shop owner and employees, who put in a honest days work; just to put food on the table. Tell them, that they want to help them keep more of their own money. Reagan did this, and won big.

Populism is where the real people live, and if the Republican Party does not meet with these people and let them know, that they want to represent them; they will go the way of the Whig party. The American people will vote for someone that they can relate to; Mitt Romney was not that kind of a person and Ronald Reagan happened to be that kind of a person.

I just hope the GOP figures this out, before it is too late.

I hate to say it, but he does have a good point

A very good point:

Obama won two elections giving voice to these policies, but within the neocon-dominated punditocracy and a Congress subject to pressure by the increasingly extremist American Israel Public Affairs Committee, they are akin to kryptonite. Hagel’s critics have been quick to unsheathe the McCarthyite tactics employed whenever opposition to any position of Israel’s right-wing government is at issue. The accusation is almost always “anti-Semitism,” but rarely has that charge proven as empty as in Hagel’s case. Leading the assault have been Pavlovian attack dogs like William Kristol and The Weekly Standard, Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post, ex–AIPAC flack Josh Block, the ADL’s Abe Foxman, Bret Stephens at The Wall Street Journal, and convicted criminal and former Reagan and Bush II official Elliott Abrams, now respectably ensconced at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The allegation rests in significant measure on a 2008 quote in which Hagel—whom the interviewer, author and former US diplomat Aaron David Miller termed “a strong supporter of Israel and a believer in shared values”—criticized the use of political intimidation by the “Jewish lobby,” an infelicitous phrase he accidentally used to describe AIPAC. Hagel later said he misspoke and had meant to refer to the “Israel lobby,” just as he did elsewhere in Miller’s interview. It’s an easy mistake to make, since the “Israel lobby” is pretty darn Jewish. (Dick Cheney, for instance, has made the same error.) As it happens, Hagel is a better friend to Israel than the Likud quislings and apologists who make up what journalists mistakenly term the “pro-Israel lobby”; for starters, he is willing to tell its leaders the truth. Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general and adviser on US affairs to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, wrote recently that “Barak was thoroughly impressed not only by Hagel’s military background, but by his analysis, knowledge of the Middle East, and his understanding of Israel’s security issues and predicaments,” adding that Hagel “is not anti-Israeli and he is not an anti-Semite. In fact, if I were him I would lodge a complaint with the Anti-Defamation League, asking their assistance and support for being unfairly called an anti-Semite.”

What these hysterics may actually indicate is a genuine fear on the part of the neocons and conservative professional Jews that they are about to be exposed as generals without armies, demanding fealty to policies opposed by the vast majority of American Jews for whom they profess to speak. How marvelous, then, that Barack Obama finally decided there was one time he’d rather fight than switch. via Hooray for Hagel | The Nation

One thing that I really wish to dwell on here, and it bears repeating:

Hagel’s critics have been quick to unsheathe the McCarthyite tactics employed whenever opposition to any position of Israel’s right-wing government is at issue. The accusation is almost always “anti-Semitism,” but rarely has that charge proven as empty as in Hagel’s case.

I must admit, I can truly relate to this; I have accused of the very same stuff myself. I support Israel’s right to exist and all. But I do not support the stupidity of the Neoconservative right at all. This whole idea that America has to defend Israel unto the death is idiotic at best. Furthermore, the idea that America has to be the world’s policeman is out of touch with our economic realities here at home. The fact is that Wilsonian foreign policy is a disaster and America has had to learn the hard way many times already. We learned it in Korea, we learned in World War I, we learned it in Vietnam and now, we have learned it in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Furthermore, Israel has my support on existence; but this idea that Israel has the right to build on disputed territories and then sit, and moan and complain when Palestinian and Gaza terrorists fire rockets into Israel is mindbogglingly stupid. It is something that I cannot support at all. The said part is, that these Wilsonian Neoconservatives will tell you that I am a Jew-hater and Antisemite for simply saying what I just said to you here. I call it playing the Jew Card or playing the Semite Card. It cheapens the discussion and frosts any kind of criticism at all. Which is precisely what Joseph McCarthy did in the 1950’s.

So, as much as it pains me to say this; even though he is of the far left —- Alterman has a good point.

 

It’s not the image, it’s the party of the stupid people

Two interesting pieces on this one here, first from NBC’s first thoughts:

*** GOP goes off the image cliff: The clock is ticking over whether President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner can avoid going over the so-called fiscal cliff at the beginning of next year. But our new NBC/WSJ poll shows that the Republican Party has already gone off one cliff, per co-pollster Peter Hart (D) — the image cliff. The GOP’s fav/unfav rating in the poll now stands at 30%/45% (minus-15), which is down from 36%/43% (minus-7) right before the election. That’s compared with the Democratic Party’s 44%/35% rating (plus-9). And other than self-described Republicans and conservatives, just two other groups have a net positive view of the GOP: folks who live in rural America (39%/33%) and folks who live in the South (39%/38%), that’s it. What’s more, asked to give a word or short phrase to describe the Republican Party, 65% offered a negative comment, including MORE THAN HALF of Republicans. The top responses: “Bad,” “weak,” “negative,” “uncompromising,” “need to work together,” “broken,” “disorganized” and “lost.” By contrast, 37% gave negative descriptions of the Democratic Party, while 35% were positive. A Republican politician or operative might look at our poll and say, “Well, the good news is that our numbers can’t get any lower.” That might be true, and they could very well drag Democrats down with them if there isn’t a deal. But there’s another way to look at the poll: Republicans have a lot to gain, too. And if they want to be a competitive national party again and not simply a regional, rural party, they need to make gains.

Then there is this “crying my blues away in my milk and cookies” post by Erick “I’m too cool to run for office” Erickson:

Over the next couple of years, Barack Obama wants to raise the national debt to $18.9 trillion or so.

John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the congressional Republicans want to raise the national debt to $18.4 trillion or so.

The present leadership of the Republican Party has gone from making the case that government is the problem and the American people are the solution to making the case that Democratic controlled government is the problem and Republican controlled government is the solution.

By giving up on making the case that government is the problem and pivoting to “Democrats are the problem,” the Republican Party has failed the American people. Historically, when parties lost, their leadership went and hid for an appropriate amount of time under a rock after an acceptance of blame and a resignation.

The present Republican leaders in Washington, instead of hiding under a rock, have taken to standing on the rock and demanding conservatives self flagellate. Neither John Boehner nor Mitch McConnell are visionaries. They are survivors. They survive by recognizing the biggest threat to them and trying to befriend it or neutralize it.

Someone want to hand that poor guy a crying towel, before he drowns in his sorrows? Hee hee Gott-a-mighty, for the twelve-hundredth time; the problem is not the principles, nor the party, it is the incredibly insanely stupid people who make up the people that vote for that party! Silly The ones who are very prone to lie about stuff, the ones who are prone to go to protests, provoke fights and then lie about it afterwards. That is the problem with the Republican Party! Loser Furthermore, the problem with the Republican Party is the fact that they pick people to run, who kowtow down to the extremists in the party, that tell them to pass legislation that is not even remotely Conservative — and then those very same people lie to those that actually vote for them!

That, and that alone is what is wrong with the party! It is not the image, unless you are a far leftist or something like that; which in case, those who who are would not like that party if they were handing out free cocaine and condoms with free hookers.

The truth is the Republican Party and so-called Conservative movement has not been worth a damn since that day on January 3, 1987, when Senator Barry Morris Goldwater decided that he was not going to take any orders from any special interest groups and decided that a life of retirement was in order. When he left, that Party and that movement went to the toilet. It really kicked into high gear on January 20, 1989, when then President Ronald Wilson Reagan waved goodbye to the people at the airport and prayed that he had left the reigns of the Nation in good hands with his successor.

Image? Nah, more like total rottenness from within.

Update on hot dog stand owner

Needless to say, I feel like a chump. I trusted that those that I linked to, might be have actually telling the truth about this incident. Well, it turns out, they, of course, were lying about that as well. Go figure. Rolling Eyes

Anyhow, Chris Savage, much to his credit flushes out the spin and hype about this little lie told by the corporatist right. I hope like heck he does not mind me quoting him a bit, but here goes:

The right wingnut blogosphere is apoplectic that Lansing, Michigan’s iconic “Hot Dog Guy”, Clinton Tarver, was a victim of union thug violence at yesterday’s anti-Right to Work for Less rally. The reality is that Tarver is simply a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He also happens to be married to the Michigan Republican Party’s Ethnic Caucus Vice-Chair — perhaps one of the loneliest leadership positions in the entire state.

[…]

This is a far cry from the all-caps-can-you-believe-what-these-union-thugs-did freak out by conservatives who would have you believe that Tarver lost his entire livelihood at the hands of union goons. Tarver was set up on some tables under the tent and did not even have his cart. He must have had a very slow day. Anyone who was at the rally and wandered by the two giant AFP tents will tell you that they were essentially empty all day. There were a few AFP folks standing out front, taunting union members and provoking confrontations, but there was not a lot of activity inside the tent where Tarver was.

[…]

….According the article, they have raised over $10,000 for him (UPDATE: MIRS News reports that it’s now over $16,000.) The total value of what he lost in the scuffle?

$500.

I wonder what they’ll do with the thousands of extra dollars not needed to buy more buns, hot dogs, ketchup, mustard and a couple of folding tables and coolers?

Certainly Clint Tarver didn’t deserve to be treated as shabbily as he was by the union folks there. His wife claims he was called a “nigger” and jeered for working for the enemy. If true, that’s reprehensible and inexcusable. But the off-the-charts poutrage from the right on this is an absolute joke. Some of the same people decrying the verbal taunts that Tarver experiencde are here on this very website calling union members all sorts of hideous names. So let’s keep it real, shall we?

One more thing: if you’d like to meet Clint Tarver in person, I’m hearing that he’ll be selling hot dogs outside Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville’s office tomorrow, capitalizing on his newfound political fame with Republicans. Stop by and buy a dog.

Adding… Let’s not kid ourselves about what “Tentgate” and “Hot Doggate” are all about:distracting the country from noticing that corporatist ideologues have turned the birthplace of American organized labor into a Right to Work for Less state.It’s a smokescreen, chaff to make sure the conversation is not about screwing union members and is, instead, about the AFP losing a couple of tents.

I can understand the spin, it is what happens in politics; but I will never understand the lying about what happens. Do these people even have any sort of conscience at all?!?! The real cute part is this; this Steven Crowder guy, claims to be a Christian — to the point of writing about how stinking Christian he was to not get his noodle wet until he was married. But yet, he lies like this? My question is this: which God and Jesus does he serve? Does this man know not what the Bible says about lying and liars in the Old and New Testaments? Hypnotized I really hated to bring religion into it, but good grief these people give  good and honest Christians a horribly bad name. Not talking

Now before anyone points it out; Yes, I have commented on the fact that I thought his stuff was funny. Yes, I did and I still think he is funny, as an comedian and an actor. However, when he started acting as shill for the corporatist right, and came out in support of this union busting crap by Governor Snyder; he lost me. When he was making his video himself, without people like AFP backing him up. I respected him. I no longer do as such. Because he is a corporate shill.  Which is a far cry from the small business owners that I happen to respect and want to be myself.

This is pretty much dead on

Erick Rush writing at Canada Free Press, which has a ton more ads that I will ever have here:

On November 19, Pravda’s Xavier Lerma wrote an article asserting that President (I use the term loosely) Barack Obama had been re-elected “by an illiterate society.” Some conservatives have been wont to dismiss and ridicule some of the dead-on assessments of the former Soviet newspaper since it was once in fact a Soviet newspaper.

Some of this dismissal and ridicule did occur relative to Lerma’s piece; I think however, that such observations made by those who have been there and done that ought to be considered, if not heeded.

Lerma writes “He [Obama] is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so… His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia.  Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.”

Sounds pretty dead-on if you ask me…

[…]

Over the past two weeks, congressional lawmakers have been posturing over the “fiscal cliff” upon which America is allegedly teetering, and the resulting debate on taxes: Obama wants to raise taxes; the Republicans in Congress ostensibly want to cut spending; the Democrats offer some spending cuts in trade for raising taxes, and so on… Considering the intellectual indolence of the American public thus far, I suppose there’s no reason for Congress and the Obama administration to believe we’d call them out for this blatant display of smoke and mirrors.

With the knowledge that increasing income taxes to 100% on all earners in the US, and confiscating every dollar we currently possess wouldn’t make a ding in the national debt or the deficit, let alone a dent, it becomes obvious that all of the maneuvering by Republican lawmakers is mere pretense. Why not simply detail the detrimental effects that raising taxes will have on the economy?

Perhaps because they don’t want advertise these facts to the American public any more than Obama does…

While it might be a no-brainer to you and me, the average non-partisan American voter will not be aware that this is the worst possible time for Republicans to be conciliatory with regard to this administration on any issue. Thus, they will perceive Republicans as obstructionist if they do not compromise with evil. Any Republican lawmaker possessed of the knowledge of Obama’s intent ought to be fighting him at every possible turn as a matter of course, publicity be damned.

I would also submit that there aren’t any GOP lawmakers who are sufficiently stupid or uninformed not to know that Obama is taking us down the road to communism. If they presume to this, they are engaging in deception.

Spot on. I would suggest that you go read all of that.

2012 election voting broken down by region and religion

I found this to be mildly interesting…

Via VDare:


Hail to You uses Reuters’ America Mosaic polling explorer to check out his theory that the reason Episcopalians voted for Obama more than other Protestants did is because they are concentrated in the Northeast. So he looks at whites’ voting by religion for the Northeast and the South.

Mostly, it looks to me like whites in the Northeast went about 15-25 points less for Romney than did whites in the South and that holds for religious subsets. For example, Romney won 29% of the Jews in the Northeast and 46% of the Jews in the South. Romney got 45% of the Episcopalians in the Northeast and 66% of the Episcopalians in the South; 52% of the white Catholics in the Northeast and 72% of the white Catholics in the South.

Here are the charts:

The South via Hail to you:

…and the Northeast:

Mildly interesting indeed. The Republican Party has a bunch of work to do by 2016. We blew it this time around, we need a grassroots type and not another establishment type. This is why all of this talk about Jeb Bush makes me want to throw up. Please, no more Bush’s, not more President’s by pedigree. We want a real Conservative Christian President and not some wish-washy moderate and fake Christian. A protestant Christian would be nice too.

Also too, someone who is a not a chicken-hawk, neoconservative, warmonger would be nice too. For once, I would like to see a Republican run that is not all eager-beaver to run off to war. There used to be those kind of Conservatives out there; we need to bring them back. Another thing that the Republican Party needs to do is actually work harder here in Michigan. The reason Romney lost Michigan, is because he put little or no effort into winning here at all. Once he saw that Obama had him out numbered here in Michigan, he, like John McCain, gave up in Michigan. Ronald Reagan worked very hard here in Michigan and won big. The Republican Party could learn much from Ronald Reagan’s work here in Michigan.

Just my opinion.