When it comes to politics or anything in life, get a dog if you want a friend. Dogs are programmed to serve our human needs for friendship. But don’t expect friendships in politics ever to sustain some deep seeded need. There is only one purpose for politics, and that is the management of community resources. Finding meaning in it of some social value is a path in life that will obviously have many challenges, most of which will be unfulfilling. Even on the best day of political exchanges, there will be disappointments because it never works out how you might want it to. Yet one of the many traps that emerge in politics is when a person involved finds that they get to sit at the table with all the cool kids, which is how the lobby system works at the federal and state level. That appeal to be accepted by your peers can be very alluring. And all too often, it causes good people to go bad relative to what people think they voted for. This is how we end up with RINOs in the Republican Party. They may not start out that way, but they certainly turn out to be far off their original position over a number of years, and it’s at that point they have to figure out if they can still be useful to a voting public. But we are dealing with people here, and I can think of a few politicians that I have known for a long time and may personally like. But, due to life circumstances, they are not as conservative today as they were ten years ago or even five years ago. And when that happens, they have to figure out if they are in politics to serve some deep seeded need they have or if they are only doing it to gain some joy in social acceptance, presenting themselves one way, when ideologically, they have drifted into a more liberal view of the world.
In politics, I still stand by former Speaker of the House Larry Householder, who was just sentenced to 20 years in prison over the FirstEnergy scandal. I found that case much like Sheriff Jones and Attorney General David Yost went after Roger Reynolds, the former Butler County Auditor. I feel sorry for the FirstEnergy people; they provide energy through a couple of nuclear power plants, and the political left is looking to destroy those companies and replace them with solar farms and wind power. I don’t think there was any justice in putting Householder in jail, I think its 100% politics, using rules to destroy your political rivals, and in that case, the FBI was weaponized just like it has been against Trump and the road to the start of the corruption leads to Mike DeWine’s door, the governor of Ohio who likely didn’t want a rival power in Columbus at the Speaker position. Look at the drama with the coup they had just this last year with the Speaker, so politics is a dirty game. People on the out go to jail, and millions of dollars get wasted in the name of acquiring power. I can say that as I just recently saw DeWine and his wife at a social event, and he’s turning back to his liberal ways again now that he’s in his last term and Trump hasn’t been in power for a while. And mentioning Sheriff Jones, you might remember all the drama between him and Representative Thomas Hall. They had been bitter enemies, but now they are getting along quite well. People move on positions all the time; the question always remains, can they actually do the public who votes for them any good, or is everything they show the public fake while what they do behind closed doors a different representation along the political spectrum?
And that’s certainly the case of a few names within the Butler County Republican Party presently. Life happens, and people find that their political views of the world change, sometimes quite a lot. But when you hold leadership positions and hang on to those positions, why would they do it if they aren’t that conservative anymore? Politics is one thing, and it’s easy to have political opinions in a vacuum of reality, in an untested environment. But when you love your kids and the kids move in a direction that challenges those conservative beliefs, do you try to take the party to a hard left position, or do you give up the leadership roles to take care of your family? Loyalty isn’t the question, but it’s what is expected in public office that does matter. Because votes expect the brand of conservative opinion that reflects them, this is how the RINO problem began initially. I’ve been involved in many meetings where powerful politicians became upset with being called RINOs. Because they didn’t see that they had become more “liberal” in their political discourse. John Boehner, who lives in my neighborhood and is good friends with several people I know very well, comes to mind. He used to be Speaker of the House, but he had to resign due to heavy calls from people in the Tea Party who thought he was a RINO. It hurt him. I hurt for him, so I never really jumped all over him too much. The world wanted a more conservative representative, and he wasn’t it. So, he needed to step away. And that is certainly the case for other area Republicans who find themselves in a similar situation.
Doing the right thing is hard. But ultimately, politics isn’t for the representatives; it’s for the brand of the party, and the party exists for the people who vote. This fantasy that people have that Ron DeSantis might fill the void of Trump is ridiculous because the move toward Trump is because people have become frustrated with RINOs, and they are looking to purge them from their party. And the same thing will happen in the Butler County Republican Party if RINOs emerge and take leadership positions; the voters out there will work to get rid of them, just as they did John Boehner. There may be perfectly valid reasons that people become RINOs. John Boehner cries a lot, and once people learned that about him, it changed how they saw him. Voters want tough people, not compromised people who have lost their confidence socially, who have made mistakes that are embarrassing, and who seek to hide those things socially through party leadership. It ends up not helping anybody but worst of all; it weakens the voter impression of their Republican Party representation. The most important thing is to protect the brand, and forcing voters to accept more liberal leadership isn’t going to help engage voters in the polls. Telling Darbi Boddy to calm down and play nice with RINOs won’t help the party brand. It hurts it. Because people want more Darbi’s and fewer John Boehners. I’ve heard the complaints, and it’s a topic in need of perspective. Essentially, I do have friendships with people who have moved to the hard left. And I will still like them even if I disagree with them politically. But protecting the Republican brand should be something everyone can agree with. Sure, there will be political squabbles. But they come and go. In the end, what ultimately matters is whether voters have a party that represents them. And if they don’t, why does it exist in the first place?
Rich Hoffman





