6/23/14, "The Straw that May Break the Establishment's Back," American Thinker, William Sullivan
"House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) ouster in a recent primary campaign was undoubtedly a signal to politicians of both established political brands. It is only too obvious, media and politicians to the contrary notwithstanding, that Cantor’s constituents unseated him because of his position in support of rewarding illegal immigrants with an imminent path to citizenship, while securing our borders seemed a far more distant priority.
In fact, this is so obvious that few would argue against the truth in that last statement. The more fashionable tactic is to assert that this primary was just a microcosm that just cannot, in any way, represent the American people. Brit Hume suggested something akin to this on Fox News....And Las Vegas Sands Corp. CEO Sheldon Adelson argues the very same point at Politico.
 |
| Illegals, 6/5/14 |
 |
| Illegals, 6/5/14 |
Confronted with the recent reporting of this incredible influx of illegal migrants crossing our borders from Central America, particularly children escorted here by efforts that could be nothing less than orchestrated, even Barack Obama has taken steps to engage the Mexican government with the blunt directive that “immigrants crossing into the US illegally won’t qualify for legalized status or deferred deportation, including children.”
That may sound contrary to the Barack Obama we’ve come to know, but he is right to take such action, if only for the political implications involved for his presidency and his party.
But Republicans, in particular, are right to be not just fearful, but petrified of touching this issue....
Just as Rome could not have been built in a day, the razing of the corrupt edifice it became took more than a day, too. And given the bold and prescient social contract our Founders gave us, we have no need to sack the Capitol, but to employ the Constitutional measures afforded us to reclaim the sovereignty which is rightfully ours, and has never rightfully belonged to an elite gaggle of career politicians in Washington.
This is the entire premise driving Chris McDaniel in running a winnable campaign against six-term incumbent Thad Cochran in Mississippi, and why Dr. Milton Wolf may very well win a campaign in Kansas against three-term establishment Republican Pat Roberts. These will both be elections to watch with keen interest.
This very dynamic of dissent is the reason for the present fear in Washington among both establishment Republicans and Democrats today. They are all right to recognize it. The illegal immigration issue, and the recent unsustainable and calculated influx, has only brought what was once an obscure abstraction into the realm of uncomfortable reality for Americans, reaffirming our nation’s need for borders, and the enforcement of them....
 |
| Illegal, 6/13/14, UK Daily Mail |
====================
.
First two images above: 6/5/14, "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed," Breitbart Texas, Brandon Darby
Third image of so-called Central American "child" via UK Daily Mail: 6/13/14, Caption with image: "Disease: A border guard said the resources are so slim that diseased children are separated simply by yellow police evidence tape.
"Known gang members among thousands of illegal immigrant children storming the U.S. border and officials are now trying to silence officers from talking to the media," UK Daily Mail, by Ashley Collman and Ryan Parry In Nogales, Arizona
======================
Eric Cantor's view on amnesty was part of his elitist persona. His lack of curiosity about tens of thousands of people swarming across our Southern border into our homes was the last straw if one was needed:
6/11/14, "Top ten reasons Eric Cantor lost," The Bull Elephant, Jamie Radtke
"“Eric Cantor will never hold a town hall meeting. Over my dead body! You hear me?” Fatal mistake."
======================
George Bush 1 and 2 destroyed the Republican Party. Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are intent on keeping it destroyed. The US needs to get its two party system back:
6/2/2007, "Too bad," Wall St. Journal, by Peggy Noonan
"What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker -- "At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.
For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.
But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."
The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are are unpatriotic -- they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."
Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives? It is odd, but it is of a piece with, or a variation on, the "Too bad" governing style. And it is one that has, day by day for at least the past three years, been tearing apart the conservative movement.
I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they're defensive, and they're defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill -- one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible. The White House and its supporters seem to be marshalling not facts but only sentiments, and self-aggrandizing ones at that. They make a call to emotions -- this is, always and on every issue, the administration's default position -- but not, I think, to seriously influence the debate....
If they'd really wanted to help, as opposed to braying about their own wonderfulness, they would have created not one big bill but a series of smaller bills, each of which would do one big clear thing, the first being to close the border. Once that was done -- actually and believably done -- the country could relax in the knowledge that the situation was finally not day by day getting worse. They could feel some confidence. And in that confidence real progress could begin.
The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.
What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom -- a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.
One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance.
They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.
Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.
Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time."
=====================
Angelo Codevilla points to the US Ruling Class as the source of our problems. Three citations:
=============
(One): 2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes, op-ed
They "collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old."....(subhead 'Public Safety')
=========================
(Two) 12/15/13, "Breaking The UniParty," Angelo Codevilla, libertylawsite.org
"So long as the Uniparty exists, mere voters will have no way of affecting what the government does."
=========================
(Three): 10/20/11, "The lost decade," [2001-2011] Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute
"Our ruling class justified its ever-larger role in America’s domestic life by redefining war as a never-ending struggle against unspecified enemies for abstract objectives, and by asserting expertise far above that of ordinary Americans. (parag. 9)...It failed to ask the classic headwaters question: what is the problem?...(subhead, 'Whatever it takes')
"Whatever it Takes"...
That would have pointed to the Middle East’s regimes, and to our ruling class’ relationship with them, as the problem’s ultimate source. The rulers of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority had run (and continue to run) educational and media systems that demonize America. Under all of them, the Muslim Brotherhood or the Wahhabi sect spread that message in religious terms to Muslims in the West as well as at home.
That message indicts America, among other things, for being weak.
And indeed, ever since the 1970s U.S. policy had responded to acts of war and terrorism from the Muslim world by absolving the regimes for their subjects’ actions....Many influential Americans were making money in the Arab world."...
====================
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Comment: Not well known is the GOP establishment lost four big races this year before Texas, two in Florida, one in Pennsylvania, and one in North Carolina. In the North Carolina congressional primary a well financed former George W. Bush staffer lost to an incumbent that John Boehner and the Establishment desperately wanted to get rid of and failed to. The NY Times claims the Tea Party has lost "primary after primary," but the Tea Party has never been on the ballot. It's not a political party. Additionally, there are serious frauds and GOP Establishment co-opt jobs operating under the Tea Party name that have been ongoing since 2010. One in particular collects millions of dollars a year from small donors, gives little or none of the money directly to candidates, and is accepted as a national voice for the TP. This fraud has been reported since 2010 but nothing has been done to stop it.
So what? The problems that led to the TP's origin are still here. With the tragic exception of Andrew Breitbart, most people committed to removing the problems are still here and still committed.
Anti-establishment groups don't have to call themselves Tea Party. The March 2014 Pennsylvania winner was affiliated with a local group that pre-dated the TP by 4 years. He was sworn in on 4/2/14 as a Republican Pennsylvania State Senator.
=================
Citations for four 2014 GOP Establishment losses not including Texas: One in North Carolina, Two in Florida, and one in Pennsylvania for State Senate:
- ------------------------------
5/7/14, "DC GOP Establishment Flops in NC," Francis De Luca, Civitas Institute, "North Carolina's Conservative Voice"
"In a race that saw big outside money spent by “independent groups,” the Washington establishment suffered a defeat. I am not talking about the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate race to face Sen. Kay Hagan, which, by the end, was not really competitive; I am talking about the 3rd Congressional District in eastern North Carolina.
The incumbent, Rep. Walter Jones Jr., defeated challenger Taylor
Griffin in a race that saw Griffin’s D.C. and New York allies
independently spend more than a million dollars to defeat Jones. This
does not count the money Griffin was able to raise for his campaign from
the same well-connected crowd of insiders, enabling him to out raise
Jones in the final reporting period. By the way, a million dollars goes a
long way in the Eastern North Carolina media market.
Proportionally, more money was spent in the 3rd District primary than was spent on the U.S. Senate primary when compared to candidate spending. The disparity is even greater when you factor in the cost of the 3rd District media market versus the cost of statewide media buys. This is not an indictment of independent expenditures or of more money in campaigns. In fact, campaign spending of all types is good – it drives turnout. In the 3rd District, the turnout was up over 60 percent from the primary in 2010. That meant voters learned more about both candidates, and they preferred the incumbent to the Washington insider.
Why did this race attract such big money in a primary? Walter Jones is a 20-year incumbent, first getting elected to Congress in 1994 after having served multiple terms in the state legislature. Jones has had a record that can best be described as independent. He is solidly conservative on social issues and has opposed increasing the debt limit and the bailouts Congress passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
What appears to be his biggest flaw to his colleagues in D.C. (but not his voters) was his falling out with the House leadership. This resulted in his being removed from his seat on the Financial Services Committee. He was one of several GOP members removed from committee assignments immediately after the 2012 elections. These members were generally seen as too independent and willing to vote against the wishes of leadership. Others targeted by the GOP leadership included Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Justin Amash (R-MI).
Proportionally, more money was spent in the 3rd District primary than was spent on the U.S. Senate primary when compared to candidate spending. The disparity is even greater when you factor in the cost of the 3rd District media market versus the cost of statewide media buys. This is not an indictment of independent expenditures or of more money in campaigns. In fact, campaign spending of all types is good – it drives turnout. In the 3rd District, the turnout was up over 60 percent from the primary in 2010. That meant voters learned more about both candidates, and they preferred the incumbent to the Washington insider.
Why did this race attract such big money in a primary? Walter Jones is a 20-year incumbent, first getting elected to Congress in 1994 after having served multiple terms in the state legislature. Jones has had a record that can best be described as independent. He is solidly conservative on social issues and has opposed increasing the debt limit and the bailouts Congress passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
What appears to be his biggest flaw to his colleagues in D.C. (but not his voters) was his falling out with the House leadership. This resulted in his being removed from his seat on the Financial Services Committee. He was one of several GOP members removed from committee assignments immediately after the 2012 elections. These members were generally seen as too independent and willing to vote against the wishes of leadership. Others targeted by the GOP leadership included Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Justin Amash (R-MI).
The 2014 campaign against Jones looks like an attempt to send a message to other potential House GOP renegades that the leadership and D.C. establishment could and would come after them – and beat them. There also may have been some score-settling left over from Jones’ position shift in support of the war in Iraq to a vocal critic, even calling for the impeachment of President Bush. (As an aside, Jones was the congressman who proposed renaming French fries “Freedom Fries” over the French refusal to support our efforts in Iraq.) In trying and failing to unseat Jones, Republican leaders may have hurt themselves by showing both spitefulness and weakness.
The other interesting story in this election battle was the fascination of the media and lobbyists in D.C. with this race. This probably is a direct result of Griffin’s having operated in the bureaucratic, media and communications circles in D.C. He worked in the George W. Bush White House and the Treasury Department, and even formed his own communications and lobbying firm in D.C. Griffin hailed his roots in the Old North State, but that wasn’t enough, apparently, to erase the taint of his deep connections with the Washington Beltway.
For the reporters and politicos in D.C., his running and their belief that he was going to win was a validation of their own worth and wisdom. Folks who make and report the news in Washington, D.C. have a worldview which includes the belief they truly are the best and brightest. Most of them think they are far smarter than the folks that get elected to office and that if they were in charge things would be better. If Taylor Griffin was able to return to NC, successfully run for office, and return to the capital as an elected congressman, then that validated their opinions of their own importance – because he is them.
So on May 7, 2014 we can look ahead and see a landscape a little more dangerous for the GOP leadership in the U.S. House. Do they try and force their members to do things they don’t want to do? Cut deals with the president on immigration, spending and debt? Pass more crony-capitalism legislation advancing the special interest of big businesses and banks? The election yesterday makes it much less likely that they will be able to force their will on individual members. Walter Jones was in a uniquely vulnerable position that gave a campaign like Griffin’s a good chance to succeed – but it didn’t.
There is a saying that if you mean to shoot someone, make sure you kill them. In this case Walter Jones is very alive and dangerous. The fact that the party fat cats failed means independent members of the Republican caucus will be emboldened to resist. For the country that is probably a good thing."
===========================
2. Two races in Florida.
One, David Jolly for US Congress whom the GOP Establishment didn't want. He beat them in the primary. They continued to sabotage him but he beat them again as well as the democrat and the libertarian. Following are 3 citations about the David Jolly race:
3/12/14, "Why is NRCC wiping egg off its face?" The Hill, Rick Manning
"Oops. David Jolly won election to Congress in Florida’s special election to take the place of recently deceased Rep. Bill Young (R). Republican hearts in D.C. should be leaping for joy, because early betting in town was that this was a near-certain Democrat takeover and Jolly upset that apple cart.
Everything pointed to a victory for Democrats. They recruited a candidate with high name identification who narrowly lost a race for the governorship in a district that voted for Obama in 2012, the ideal D.C. candidate-recruitment win.
The expectations on the Republican side of the aisle to retain the seat were so low that on the Monday before the election, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was anonymously spinning to Politico that the election was likely to be lost due to Jolly and those running his campaign on the ground.
Imagine the fear in some unknown cubicle at NRCC headquarters as Jolly calls Chairman Greg Walden (Ore.) and asks for an accounting of why the group, whose sole responsibility is to elect Republicans to the House, sought to undermine his campaign in the final day.
Today, all the D.C. “gurus” are taking credit for their brilliance in winning the race and giving short shrift to the newly elected Jolly. Jolly ran a campaign against amnesty for illegal aliens, against ObamaCare, and he refused to modify his conservative stands and move to the middle, as the political intelligentsia so often suggests.
They cannot afford to give him credit or credibility, because his messaging directly contradicted their best advice. And in the next few days, he will be sworn in.
Now, Democrats in D.C. are scrambling for cover. And when they get there, chances are they’ll find a couple of NRCC staffers hoping to avoid the blowback from their almost treasonous attempt to submarine a soon-to-be-sitting member of Congress's election campaign.
Somehow I think someone at the NRCC is going to find out the meaning of the saying “politics ain’t bean bag.”"
.
==========================
Second of three David Jolly citations:
3/13/14, "David Jolly’s Next Problem: Boehner and McConnell," Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator
"So David Jolly wins the House special election in Florida this week by defeating a Democrat who pledged to fix Obamacare, not repeal it. But there’s more.
Jolly won the GOP congressional nomination in the first place by defeating State Representative Kathleen Peters in the GOP primary. And what was Peters promising? Said Peters:
“I do not think that we should take a stand and say absolutely repeal it. Not unless we have a plan and a proposal to replace it.”
Peters lost, Jolly won. Democrat Alex Sink made the same pledge as Peters. Jolly won again.
And what is John Boehner’s GOP House set to do? They’re going to fix Obamacare.
Yes, you read that right. Reports Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn (hat tip Taegan Goddard here)....
In other words, Boehner’s GOP House is set to do exactly what Jolly won promising not to do....
This is why the widening gulf between the GOP Establishment and conservatives, whether one describes the latter as Tea Partiers, conservative reformers, the heirs of Ronald Reagan or groups such as the Senate Conservatives Fund, Heritage Action, The Club for Growth, Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity and the Madison Project....
As the election of David Jolly illustrates yet again, there is a considerable difference between the grass roots — the base — of the GOP and its Establishment leaders in Washington....
The other message out of that Florida special election is a shot across the bow of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Establishment GOP Republicans."...
===============================
Third citation re: David Jolly win in Florida, cites GOP Establishment letting Mr. Jolly twist in the wind:
3/12/14, "Republican David Jolly wins special election in Florida," AP via NY Post
"Republicans failed to recruit their top picks, leaving Jolly to fight a bruising three-way primary."...
=======================
=======================
Second 2014 GOP Establishment defeat in Florida:
Florida Tea Party favorite won GOP primary, defeated Establishment pick Benacquisto to replace disgraced Rep. Radel who'd been endorsed by George P. Bush (Jeb's son):
4/22/14, "Tea party candidate Curt Clawson wins Republican primary to replace former Rep. Trey Radel," Tampa Bay Times, Alex Leary
"Curt Clawson, a businessman who was little known months ago in Southwest Florida, won a contentious GOP primary Tuesday to fill the U.S. House seat left open by the scandalous downfall of Trey Radel.
Clawson, 54, pitched himself as an outsider against more established candidates and was embraced by the tea party. He poured more than $2 million into television ads. In one, the former Purdue basketball player challenged President Barack Obama to a three-point contest.
The Bonita Springs resident took about 38 percent of the vote in the Congressional District 19 race, besting several rivals, including state Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, whose swift rise to prominence in Tallahassee made her an establishment favorite. Benacquisto was fighting for second place with former state Rep. Paige Kreegel.
"I got into this race because I felt like we needed more outsiders in Congress," Clawson said in a tweet. "The career politicians aren't getting the job done."
Clawson has to run in a general special election set for June 24 but enters as the favorite against Democrat April Freeman; the district is solidly Republican.
He would replace Radel, who was elected in 2012 and made a name for himself among Washington reporters for his incessant use of social media. Then Radel was arrested buying cocaine from an undercover police officer in Washington. Radel pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and eventually resigned amid widespread calls to do so."...
=============================
Citation for George P. Bush (Jeb's son) backing of Fla. Rep who was caught buying cocaine:
1/27/14, "George P. Bush’s PAC backed Fla. lawmaker resigning after cocaine bust," Dallas Morning News, Ben Kamisar
==============================
===============================
4. Pennsylvania-George W. Bush hire and current lobbyist Tom Ridge campaigned for the Establishment candidate for State Senate who lost. The "Pennsylvania election reveals yet again an electorate that is in full revolt against the political establishment:"
3/20/14, "Scott Wagner Beats the GOP Establishment, CAP and a Pennsylvania write-in revolt." Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator
"First, it was a Florida congressional race. Now? A Pennsylvania special election for the state Senate.
The Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania scores a major win — and yes, the winner says he heard about Obamacare. Scott Wagner is a Pennsylvania state Senator this morning. It wasn’t supposed to happen.
In a stunning upset, the York County businessman, taking a stand against the state’s political establishment of both parties, made state history by winning a special election for the Pennsylvania state Senate — in a write-in landslide, defeating both the Republican and Democrat nominees.
Wagner captured 48 percent of the vote. His Republican opponent, a state representative with the backing of the local and state GOP, received 27 percent; the Democrat 26 percent.
The election was set in motion by the resignation of a sitting Republican senator. The GOP establishment, in this case both in York County (located in the heart of central Pennsylvania) and in Harrisburg, decided to back state Representative Ron Miller.
With the Pennsylvania primary already scheduled for May 20, it was assumed that Wagner would face off with Miller in the primary. Out of the blue, the state GOP conspired to hold a special election on March 18, the winner to take the seat immediately. Miller was quickly endorsed and an incensed Wagner was out. He could still run in the May primary, but would then be up against a sitting senator in the GOP leaning district. The only way Wagner could participate in the March election was as a write-in candidate. In other words, Wagner was supposed to be out — quite deliberately targeted by the Forces That Be.
There is a story here, and yes it has national implications.
Let’s go back to another story about Scott Wagner and the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, written in this space back there in July of 2012. Titled “Pennsylvania’s Capitalist Revolt,” we recorded the sorry state of Pennsylvania politics. Two former Speakers of the statehouse — a post once held by Benjamin Franklin — were in jail on corruption charges, literally sharing a cell. A former state Senate Democratic Leader was also in the slammer — but with a $330,000 a year pension. Then there was the “Iron Triangle," the career politicians, the lobbyists, and the public employee unions that were increasingly seen as simply looting the state treasury. A few years before this, in 2005, literally in the dead of night (2 a.m.), the legislature had passed a pay raise for itself (without any hearings in advance) that ranged from a low of 16 percent on up to 34 percent, depending on the legislator’s length of service. There was an explosion at this, with legislative leaders losing seats in the next election.
As we noted in 2012, a group of Pennsylvania citizens who were so thoroughly disgusted — outraged is a better word — came together to form the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, CAP, as it is known. Predating the Tea Party by four years and unconnected with it, the new reform group sought to get citizens involved in the system and began targeting legislators across the state. Led by a Republican businessman named John Kennedy, who had served two terms in the House and voluntarily departed, the group included businessman Scott Wagner. At the time we wrote this of Wagner:
CAP, to the surprise — and anger — of its critics, is getting the job done. In fact, the reason the three-year old group has critics in the first place is that it has made an impact.
To start they have had Scott R. Wagner. Scott Wagner is a capitalist. An enthusiastic entrepreneur. A job creator.
This is the kind of guy who has been at the center of the storm over President Obama's gaffe-that-really-wasn't-a-gaffe about small business owners not creating their own business — the "someone else did that" routine.
Wagner begs to differ. After allowing that he respects the office of the presidency, Wagner pulls no punches whether the topic is the President, state government, or the 13 attorneys.
The 13 attorneys? What's up with that?
You guessed it. Here is a man who founded his first business when he was 20, turning his passion for skiing into a ski shop. Working night and day, he began adding rental properties and Laundromats. By 1985 he began a waste company, developed it in 12 years, sold it — and had so much fun he did it again, starting in 2000.
In 2000, Wagner began Penn Waste. Contrary to the impression left by President Obama, Mr. Wagner has built his business into a considerable success without the President's input. Respectfully, he calls Barack Obama "totally clueless," the presidential socializing profits routine leaving Wagner feeling "insulted." Wagner notes crisply that it was he who has "borrowed, leveraged and worked 100 hour work weeks" to build a company that now employs 300 people as it provides waste disposal services with 100 trucks in six Pennsylvania counties. All told, Scott Wagner is involved in 9 different businesses, directly or indirectly employing over a thousand people. And the 13 attorneys.
By now you can imagine. Scott Wagner is awash in government regulations — and he needs to retain 13 outside attorneys just to figure out how to satisfy bureaucrats he says make a profession not of helping entrepreneurs but of finding something they are doing wrong. Then fining them for it. And by the way, put Scott down as highly skeptical that bureaucrats are even capable of holding a job in the private sector.
In other words, Scott Wagner was one frustrated Pennsylvanian. Fed up.
CAP was his kind of deal.
To talk to Scott Wagner in the wake of all this is to realize the sheer anger that is in fact rolling across not only Pennsylvania but all of America. All these state legislators want to do, scorns Wagner, is get elected — and re-elected. That's it, that's the agenda. Why? Because the legislature, says Kennedy, has become the embodiment of Ben Franklin's warning about people in a position of power who can profit from that power wanting, endlessly, to retain that power.
Thirteen attorneys working for Scott Wagner are thirteen too many.
For the first time in some five decades of Pennsylvania politics, CAP is asking the question once posed by Ronald Reagan:
"If not us, who? If not now, when?"
With this in the background, one can only imagine the wave of incensed anger that swept through Wagner and a lot of York County residents when they realized some fancy footwork behind the scenes by the state’s GOP establishment had effectively denied Wagner a place on the ballot for the state Senate special election. There was little time for Wagner to make his case to the local GOP committee members who would nominate the candidate.
So Wagner was thought to be out as a candidate for the special election. The expectation, of course, was that Wagner was done for, his only recourse the impossibility of a write-in. He would stay as a primary candidate, but with Miller presumably elected to the Senate in the March special, that too was now an uphill battle.
Scott Wagner has built his business from scratch. He knew something about a challenge. And so, it turned out, did a lot of his fellow citizens who were enraged at the game played with the Senate nomination process. Wagner refused to throw in the towel. And while he would stay in the May 20 primary, he would now mount the uphill write-in campaign. He would treat the race just as he treated his business, coming up with what he told The American Spectator was a “rock solid plan” for the campaign, “doing everything by the book.” Suddenly he found the political guns of the state’s GOP establishment trained on him. As the Harrisburg Patriot-News recorded:
"Ads that were run cast Wagner as a bully and his trash hauling company, York-based Penn Waste, an environmental violator…. The attacks against him angered Wagner. He was astonished that his business-friendly Republican Party would go after a job creator like himself."
The ads — $350,000 worth of them engineered by GOP state Senate President Joe Scarnati and GOP state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi — were sponsored by the state Senate’s Republican Caucus. Former Governor Tom Ridge, now a Washington lobbyist, suddenly appeared to campaign for Miller. A man of means, Wagner fired back with both barrels. The air waves quickly filled with Wagner ads charging that the GOP had sold out to “Philadelphia politicians.” Being associated with the state’s largest city has always been a negative in other parts of the state — and the fact that a major player in funding the anti-Wagner ads — Pileggi — represents the Philadelphia area quickly gave Wagner a face and a name to match to the establishment’s shenanigans.
While he kept his name on the primary ballot, Wagner turned his guns on the March special election and began firing. He went after the legislature for “high salaries, lavish pensions, automatic pay raises and excessive per diems” that “are just a few examples of why we have the most expensive legislature in the country.” He was an unapologetic supporter of the Second Amendment.
Pennsylvania, he told voters, needed to create more private sector jobs — and fewer government jobs. He said it was time to control property taxes. And he was pro-life.
Wagner’s resounding 48 percent write-in victory has sent shock waves through the state and local GOP establishment. Last night he compared the state’s Harrisburg politicians to a country club, telling the Spectator that “there are country clubs that just don’t let people in” — and that in this case what was at issue was a “political club.” His victory makes him a Senator immediately and an overwhelming favorite for the May primary, not to mention the November election. Wagner has now crashed his way through the gates of the Harrisburg clubhouse, set to join the Senate Republican Caucus that had spent over a quarter of a million dollars to defeat him. As of last night, he said he has not received a congratulatory call from Pennsylvania state GOP Chair Rob Gleason.
Why is the Wagner victory important? Two reasons.
First, nationally, coming as it does on the heels of the upset victory of David Jolly in the recent Florida congressional special election, the nature of the Pennsylvania election reveals yet again an electorate that is in full revolt against the political establishment. While this was a race for the state senate, Wagner confirms that he did indeed hear from voters angry over Obamacare. One man told Wagner he had bladder cancer and before Obamacare was paying “$100 a pop” for his cancer medication. Now? The cost has shot up to “$600 a pop.”"...
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Scott Wagner was sworn in as a Republican Pennsylvania State Senator on 4/2/14.
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In Nov. 2010 the GOP-E said it was imperative to "co-opt" the Tea Party:
11/20/2010, "Revolutionary Do-Over," Wall St. Journal, John Fund
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"Former GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, now a big-time Washington lobbyist, has already told the Washington Post that it's imperative for his tribe to "co-opt" the tea partiers arriving in D.C....
An old Washington story goes that when Martians land near the White House, everyone inside the Beltway flees in terror.
Everyone, that is, except for the folks at the favor-factories known as Congress's Appropriations Committees, who rush to greet the spaceship and say, "We're here to help with the transition.""...
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