Killing the opposition with kindness is a viable political strategy and it was used by Kathy Wyenandt when she helped get the Lakota levy of 2013 passed, which increased property taxes dramatically in Liberty and West Chester Townships in Butler County Ohio–part of what is the 52nd District for which she is now running against George Lang for that House seat. Back then I advised against it but in the three previous levy attempts for which I directly ran, the no voters won. But a large part of the business community that was with me on trying to fight high taxes wanted to get along with the people on the pro levy side for which Kathy Wyenandt had been tasked to get passed after a fourth attempt. If everyone had listened to me, the levy would have been defeated, but to Kathy’s credit, she changed the behavior of her opposition and she managed to squeak out a 1% margin of victory, which was just enough to give Lakota teachers the big pay increase they had been looking for pushing their average pay well up and over $75K per year. And she was back to that same strategy in her debate with George Lang which was held at the Miami University Learning Center at the VOA Park on Tuesday the 25th of 2018. What follows is video coverage of that debate for voters to use to make their decisions.
As I have said before, I’m a George Lang supporter. Needless to say I think George is the far better candidate for the 52nd House Seat which he currently holds. I could caution him about playing nice with Kathy Wyenandt because it only helps her. But given the way this debate went, I don’t think he has anything to worry about. Essentially the best case Wyenandt made for herself during the debate was to say “I helped pass the 2013 levy at Lakota which cost property owners a lot of money in increased taxes and I want to go to Columbus to help fix it.” When it comes to all the other issues that go on in the 52nd District she wasn’t very interested. Clearly her passion was education. But on all other matters she wasn’t up to speed. So George’s seat is not in jeopardy. He still needs to campaign and do the work because Kathy is a competitor. But she just isn’t ready for a seat like the 52nd in Columbus.
But I did find that I liked Kathy Wyenandt. She knows that her personality is one of her best assets and after speaking with her after the debate for a good bit of time it was clear to me that she wasn’t a hole in her head Democrat. She is someone I could work with and maybe when this whole thing is over maybe we can tackle that school funding issue in Columbus on behalf of all of Ohio. I recently had a nice talk with Jenni Logan the treasurer at Lakota, and at this debate had similar good talks with Linda O’Conner and Ann Becker who like Kathy all want to solve problems. With the minds involved I think it might just be possible to tackle this school funding problem utilizing George Lang’s 52nd House Seat. The elements are all there for some sharp people to finally solve that issue and I think we might be able to do that.
But as I explained to Kathy when she asked me what I thought we needed to do to solve the school funding problem I of course said what I always have, that teachers are making too much money and we need to establish a per pupil education cost that Ohio can allocate funds to before we could ever begin to solve the problem at the state level. Just like any business, sure we can pay teachers six figures if that’s what we decide but what percentage can a school have of such expensive teachers. And to what effect if any does tenure play—does it help or hurt the education process—those are the real questions. But just asking Ohio property owners for a blank check for education isn’t ever going to get the job done. There are a lot of assessments that labor unions don’t want to deal with and no politician wants to touch the issue, so that is why Ohio has an unconstitutional school funding system. That is the conditional situation. I think the way to fix it would be for non-politicians to sponsor the fix and let the politicians write the bill by tagging on later. After Kathy is done with this campaign maybe we could work something out. I’d be open to putting up a bunch of ideas on a white board like we would in any business problem and see where it takes us.
As far as politics go, and she and I talked about this too, her approach is that people are sick and tired of politics as usual, that they want civility in their public officials. I would argue no. Let me put this in a way everyone can relate to. Everyone knows I love the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and they were on Monday Night Football this week playing the Pittsburg Steelers. I was so mad in that game that I nearly threw my television out the front window of my house. The Bucs almost won, but not enough and it disgusted me to no end to see the Buc players shaking hands with the Steeler players after the game, because I was so angry that I wanted to see someone punching someone out, to reflect my feelings on the matter. Politics is a lot like sports in our culture, for better or worse. Trump certainly understands that. If you want to rally people to your cause you must get them aligned with primitive emotion. Playing nice only helps the underdog who can only hope to keep a close race and that voter turnout will be in their favor. To win elections however, you have to make sure voters will show up to vote for your cause, and to do that you have to get them excited in the same way they might be driven to watch a sports game like football. In the end one side wins and one side loses. Monday night Steelers fans were elated that they held their slim lead until the end of the game. Bucs fans were devastated. I almost threw my $5000 television out the window in full rage. Does this kind of thing help the political discourse and solve problems? Well, I’d argue yes, because in politics you must have fundraisers and people like to bet on winners in the great horse races. And you must have majority parties in power for the cooperation of a republic to work right. It’s nice to think that people will be voted in and vote their hearts, but so long as the political philosophies of Americans are so different, party rule will be the primary strategy of determining policy, and of picking winners and losers. Until all Americans have a unified philosophy they can all agree on, politics will be another sport that people pick a side and root for.
I finished my conversation with Kathy Wyenandt saying that she didn’t sound like a liberal, she likes seeing money-making ideas evolve, so she’s not anti-business by any measure. She explained that she was conservative about most things but socially she leaned liberal. I find that’s the case with a lot of moms, the job of parenting especially for females evokes a lot of empathy. But empathy isn’t always the best way to solve problems either. Being able to understand the position of someone else isn’t always required to solve a problem, it can in fact be a hindrance. But I found it difficult to not like Kathy Wyenandt. I’m sure she will do great things if she continues to want to involve herself in public life. But I have the feeling she might be more effective free of public constraints. It takes all kinds of people to make things happen on a big scale, and as far as her passion goes to education, that is a big issue. But it’s certainly just one that concerns the 52nd District of one of Ohio’s richest areas.
All in all the debate was a good one, it showed two nice people running for the same position. George Lang has lots of experience and is battle hardened for life in Columbus where the not so nice side of politics is always present. And George knows how to navigate those dangers and still get things done. He’s very resilient without becoming pessimistic. He doesn’t worry about being all things to all people, he generally just does his best and it usually keeps him always on top. Kathy is another matter, while in this race her strategy is good in not wanting to draw blood in the campaign against George, and running as a liberal conservative in Butler County trying to be the nice person people can vote for, the reality is that her approach would be decimated in Columbus. I admired her ambition, but she needs a few steps to get there. I caught parts of her personality while we were talking that said she wouldn’t be so happy with the game of politics that are required to run an important House seat. Its one thing to say the system is corrupt, but it became that way for a reason—because under it all is the sport of politics itself. I myself have a hard time shaking hands with people I compete against, especially so soon after a big game. And in politics you have to do that kind of thing every day. I help where I can due to my temperament. I know what I’m good at and I put my efforts there. I think Kathy has a lot of that in her too. A school levy is one thing, it’s a single point issue that evokes great emotion in one side against the other. But running for a House seat involves lots of layers of politics and issues that are always changing, and it takes a certain kind of person to tackle those kinds of things. One thing that I learned from the debate was that George Lang was certainly the one who should be in that 52nd District seat in Columbus. But I also learned that I liked Kathy Wyenandt and that perhaps she may get what she wants done for schools done better outside the parameters of public office. Perhaps after this election a new journey will unfold, and it just might bring together people who were former enemies for a whole new challenge that would certainly be worth the undertaking.
Sherrod Brown has a big problem, and by watching this MSNBC interview with Chris Mathews, to his credit, he knows it and understands it. But as a very liberal Democrat Brown fundamentally doesn’t understand wealth creation, and that only 1% of the population in any society have the stomach for it, which is why they tend to possess more wealth. Working people is a classification created by the Democratic Party to exploit for political gain a jealousy toward job creators that began with the philosophy of Karl Marx. But in America such distinctions aren’t relevant and when the Republicans can distinct themselves as champions of the average worker and the job creators, the Democrats don’t have any real leverage politically to stand which makes this interview interesting because it is discussed in an intelligent way. Brown understands how the battlefield is lining up and it’s not to his advantage. Like he said in this Mathews interview, typically in that state of Ohio that leans red, Democrats win offices by out working their opponents. But that isn’t going to work with Jim Renacci who is running against Sherrod Brown for his long-held senate seat. Renacci works hard and he understands job creators and he respects workers, and he’s competitive. That makes this fight between Brown and Renacci a game changer for all future politics.
I hate even referring to people who would rather have a simpler life punching a pay check rather than doing the 60 to 90 hours it takes to be a job maker as “working people” but that is how they have been defined by politics. It takes all kinds of people to make strong economies and to utilize the miracles of capitalism, but for the sake of politics we have to use the terms that have been created to bunch us all into voters that can be counted on to pull the lever for various members of party politics. The great thing about Trump is that nobody in politics has done more for working people than Donald Trump, he has brought back jobs that left and he has put money in the pockets of job creators to help those jobs take roots again, and Sherrod Brown finds himself standing against both issues. Brown was against the tax cuts that Trump managed to get the Republican Party to back—which would have otherwise been consumed on socialist programs Sherrod Brown supports. Because of those tax cuts for what Democrats call the 1% investments have been made to bring jobs back from other countries and establish them once again in America meaning that for the first time in well over a decade, perhaps two, job wanted signs are now populating our communities with opportunities.
Speaking from personal experience there are quite a few very good workers who had been sitting jobless for a long time and being forced to take a government check because of the lack of options and they can now get a job and earn their money for themselves, which they like. This is a recent development, since the tax cuts essentially. Trump policies are responsible for both opportunities, the jobs coming back and the investment capital to get them rolling again leaving Sherrod Brown and his work with the liberalized John Kasich out of the process. All that Brown could manage with Kasich who made deals for his own presidential run was to expand government services to more people imprisoning them to more dependency, rather than the honor of self-reliance.
With Jim Renacci running against Brown as Trump’s hand-picked candidate, it essentially throws the Trump White House behind Renacci who is himself a very hard worker in much the way Trump has been. When Mathews pointed out the Real Clear Politics polling that showed Brown with a comfortable lead, Brown pointed out the poll I mentioned a few days ago where he was only up by four. That is not where Democrats want to be, up against a hardworking, and honest Republican, with the national backing of a president who has put his name next to Renacci and is personally responsible for bringing back the opportunities Ohio voters are seeing. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Ohio by 8% in 2016, so it wasn’t even close. Sherrod Brown is to the political left of Hillary Clinton so in a statewide election this time, even if the Republican challenger was terrible, Brown would likely struggle. But with a good candidate, like Renacci is, Brown is in real danger which is obviously very sobering.
The war of identity politics has expired with the election of Donald Trump and the Democrats are simply flat footed to deal with it. You can even see it in local races like the one in Butler County, Ohio where State Representative for the 52nd District George Lang has a Democrat challenging him for his seat in Kathy Wyenandt. Because Butler County is one of the most conservative counties in Ohio she has to run to the right of her comfort level, but the socialist nature of her party puts her in the same position as Sherrod Brown. People before politics is what she says, but what does that mean? There are all kinds of people. The 1% types who are job creators are people too, and they need workers to fill their factories. And the workers need the 1% types to make jobs for them to punch a time clock in to make some product that can then contribute to the economy. So where does that leave liberals like Kathy Wyenandt and Sherrod Brown in these days of the Trump economy? The entire Democratic platform has gambled that the Mueller investigation would erase Trump off the map by the midterms, and that hasn’t happened. That has put John Kerry out front as a potential presidential candidate to start panicking and calling Trump names as the frustration is starting to build. Not even the liberal hero Bob Woodward has stopped Trump with the latest hit book. Nothing has stopped Trump and his supporters especially in Ohio.
What has changed from now and then in 2016 in Ohio was that the Republican Party was ran by John Kasich. Now, Trump has taken over as the state leader and many of the big names of the Republican Party like Warren Davidson, Jim Renacci, and George Lang are all affiliated with the Trump presidency. If an election were held today in Ohio Trump would beat any Democrat by even more than he beat Hillary Clinton. And why, Trump has given both the worker and the job creator their pride back and cut the strings of regulation letting both do what they do best. All Sherrod Brown has managed to do was to attempt to put more people on government assistance, which for many is a disheartening thing to do. Lazy people of course don’t mind welfare, but people who can’t find a good job hate it, because they’d rather earn their own way of life than to wait for a government check to show up in the mailbox. Brown worked with the liberalized John Kasich to expand Medicaid, which is another outdated health maintenance model that could be radically altered with decentralized health care. And with those two loser positions as the only success Sherrod Brown can put his name to, he has a lot of reasons to worry.
At the meet the candidates’ forum at the West Chester Tea Party on September 4th 2018 my wife kept introducing me to people as a “blogger” which is a term I don’t find appropriate to what I do. While shaking hands, I’d correct her by saying that I’m an “independent journalists.” When I think of a “blogger” I think of people who deal with surface topics. What I do is often climb into the deep roots of things and my articles are certainly thoughtful, which has always been my intention. Even when dealing with the outlandish, which is sometimes a big part of our world, I always work to evoke some depth to a topic, and for that I’d say more what I do is journalism than just some hobbyist blogger. And I think that for good reason, after all I was proud to have just stepped away from an hour-long call with a producer with the Travel Channel on some work I had done on ancient cities buried under current cities in North America. So what I do and an average blogger do I think is quite different and I made sure to let people know that. The old timers at the West Chester Tea Party all know me of course, but many of the newer members didn’t as I haven’t been coming to the meetings as much over the last couple of years due to a professional project that I have been working on that has consumed a lot of my time—about 60 to 80 hours of work a week, so the Tea Party meetings for me have not been as frequent as an occurrence. But I came to this one to film some campaign footage for my friend George Lang whom I endorse completely for his re-election of the 52nd House Seat in Ohio.
George and I go back a few years, nearly a decade. We first met at the Miami University VOA conference center where we were both concerned about out of control public spending. He was already a trustee in West Chester trying to change a culture that was spinning toward becoming a high tax city rather than what it is today which is a thriving zone for business development. I had just come off a few entertainment projects, one in Hollywood and I was writing my second book and was doing a lot of talk radio. We wanted much the same thing but his role would become much more traditional politically speaking, mine would be to take on the role of antagonist, to a kind of an anti-Saul Alinsky persona but for good instead of evil and that has gone on now for nearly a decade. I instantly liked George as well as about 20 other Republican candidates at all levels of government and I wanted to use my background to help them in some way, so I started the blog you are reading now as a direct response to that sentiment. In so many ways the Republicans were hampered by restrictions that the Democrats weren’t. The two sides weren’t playing by the same rules, you can see a modern example of just what I’m talking about in regard to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Liberals had always been able to act in diabolical ways against Republicans but the same couldn’t be done the other way and that didn’t seem fair to me—so I endeavored to do work behind the scenes to make things a bit fairer for Republicans. After all, I figured I had a professional reputation and lifestyle that couldn’t be picked apart by even the most tenacious investigator, there was no dirt that anybody could find on me about anything and if things became physically violent, I had those bases covered too. So why the hell not make things in the world a bit fairer? The rest is history.
Sometimes of course I have had to push right up on that invisible line of civility, because that’s the way it is sometimes if you want to be honest. I never expected people like George Lang to stand by me through any of those moments, but to his credit, he has never even tried to put any distance between me and him, where any other politician certainly would have. On one particular event in 2012 when my name was being smeared all over the news, several of my supporters got together at a pizza place to provide encouragement. It was a secret little meeting to figure out what to do next. I was just a little stunned to find that George came to the meeting. I asked him why he would risk such a thing and he simply told me that he believed in me and that he wanted to support me. That was the moment that I realized what a good guy George Lang was. He was in politics for all the right reasons and if things got a little hairy, he didn’t back away from the people he believed in just to gain political points. At the time the Republican Party was very much John Boehner’s and John Kasich’s. Trump wasn’t even a thought, so I felt that George Lang being seen in public with me at that particular moment was very risky for him. I knew I’d be fine because I’m always fine. But for him public impressions were much more important, yet he stood by me.
Of course, George and I aren’t attached at the hip on everything. He has thoughts about things and so do I that are not always the same and my methods of evoking those thoughts are often very colorful, while his are more political, naturally. But I have found him to be one of the most honest people I’ve ever known in politics. Politics is very much like a poker game, friends can become enemies depending on who has what cards and how much is at stake. But I know George beyond that game and the person himself is a very good one—a guy who loves business and the tools that economic development brings to a region. As a state representative he simply wants to do for Ohio what he has done for West Chester, which he articulated well in the video presented here.
The question that people often wonder when they hear campaign rhetoric is whether or not the politician is sincere, and I can testify that George Lang is everything he says he is and does. Peal away the trappings of politics and he’s just a good person trying to do good things for the world. I’ve seen him under conditions of great pressure which is often the best way to get to know people, and I can say that he is very authentic, which is the reason I consider him a friend. People who don’t like him or who would campaign against him have their philosophic issues. They do so for the same reason that there are elements who just hate Donald Trump for no other reason than he is a person used to winning and thinking for himself. George Lang is one of those types of people, and when it comes time to vote in November, people can feel really good about voting for him for their state representative. George Lang is certainly the kind of person you want representing you in Columbus. He’s one of the good guys down to every last cell in his body, and that is a rare thing indeed.
I typically don’t pile on when someone I don’t care for dies. It is good to just let things go when they are not necessary for strategic implementation. But with John McCain, there is so much being made about his death that it has to be addressed. Greatness, as it is being sold to us through the various aspects of our culture is not what John McCain was. It is stunning how many liberals are yearning for him now that he has died. There is more unsaid than said in this case as McCain represented a Republican Party that Democrats could easily beat. In the manner for which he is being celebrated, it is not for his courage and triumph but for his complacency and defeat, so that his humble nature might be copied by current Republicans so that Democrats might aspire to new life. John McCain is not being paraded around for all his great deeds but simply that he was until his last dying breath of servant of the state, and it will be the state that misses him. To me John McCain will always be the loser of two presidential runs, the guy who prevented Obamacare from being scrapped with his late night no vote, and he’s the Never Trumper who helped put the Steele dossier against Trump in the hands of the FBI. When I heard he had died I changed the channel to watch something else.
Yet now for days we have been hearing about how great John McCain was and how his sacrifices for our country were so magnificent—which is why we have to talk about this issue. Anymore, in this era of the Donald Trump presidency that it is the people who believe so intensely in the value of institutions that are against the new president. They have a visceral hatred for him and his independence, as well as the independence of the people who support him. If you really peel back the onion it is the institutionalized state and its servants who hate Donald Trump like jealous caged animals stuck in a zoo hates the spectators who observe them from the freedom behind a moat. John McCain was on full display from a kind of guerrilla pin watching people watch him in his natural habitat, the cages of Capitol Hill, the former POW captured behind enemy lines and tortured by the little Vietnamese. John McCain wasn’t the Rambo type of soldier that Americans fantasized about, he was the compliant soldier who did what everyone told him to, even when captured by the communists. Again during his own run for president when he had an opportunity to slam President Obama, he gave up on the chance and surrendered behind politeness while real evil did its work. The reason John McCain is being celebrated now is not for all the good things he did, it is for essentially being a Republican who left the door open for all the insurgents against America to sneak in, and for that they called McCain a patriot.
The institutionalized state views people like McCain patriots because they will sacrifice themselves so that the state can live, which is why McCain’s time as a POW is such a sentimental endeavor. While the typical Trump supporter would find heroics in killing all McCain’s captors and making belts out of them, McCain was a good prisoner who did what they told him to. He was a good Senator who lost when the institutions told him to and to yield his hopes and dreams for the highest office in the world to a young black Senator named Obama. When 700 WLWs Bill Cunningham set McCain up to take some shots at Barack Hussain Obama during the 2008 election McCain attacked the popular talk radio host for conduct unbecoming. McCain lost the election and America ended up with a socialist as its president for the next 8 years. Markets plummeted just as they do in every country where socialists are put into positions of power because the smart money left the country and took their jobs with them. McCain losing that election followed by a poor performance by Mitt Romney the following cycle created Donald Trump. For McCain to hate Trump the way he did by not even wanting the President to attend his funeral says everything about the deceased senator. He wasn’t one of the good guys. He was a Trojan horse who sided with the insurgents and encouraged those protecting the gates of Americanism to let down their doors and work with their enemies.
McCain is being celebrated as a politician who could work with both sides, when civility ruled the Senate. But what the institutions that miss him now are really mourning is that the days of Republicans leaving the door open so that bad people could take over the institutions is over, and now they miss those easy victories. While McCain probably did love his country and believed that everything he did was for the better, it all goes back to him being a prisoner of war in communist Vietnam and growing empathy for his captors and putting his faith into the institutions for which the war was fought and resigning himself to just being one little speck in the grand scheme of things that made him dangerous as a major player within the institutions which seek power at any cost—because he was all too willing to give it to them. John McCain was not a great man by my definition, nor by Trump apparently where judgments are made about conduct successfully done. McCain was the professional Charlie Brown that always had the football ripped away by Lucy at the last-minute and for that the institutions will miss him. But to the real achievers in the world, they’d rather forget that he was on their team at all.
I don’t blame Trump for not lowering the flag to half staff on Monday. McCain did everything he could to feed the phony Russian story back to the FBI which started the whole process in an effort to make it look legitimate. McCain always the good institutionalist tried to use his experience and levity as a former presidential candidate to make the Steele dossier look legitimate which started this whole mess with Mueller which is in Trump’s back pocket every day. Then to make matters worse, McCain hated Trump so much that he made it clear that the president wasn’t invited to his own funeral.
Yet that is what the institutionalized state will miss about John McCain. His death is actually the death of easy Republican defeats and a propped up Democratic Party, so of course they are sad. But why should the rest of us be? Honestly, I’d rather forget about John McCain, I certainly won’t miss him. He was a loser who hid his failures behind the sacrifices that state control required, and he renamed them victories. And for that he is being propped up as a great man being paraded around the country for the people to mourn. Will we do the same for other senators in the future, will we do such tributes to Senator Bob Dole, or Mitch McConnell? No, because what is being celebrated is not the life of John McCain but the willing servant of the institutions themselves, a feeder of evil to the causes against individual liberty. And that is what modern institutions call—good. Yes they will miss John McCain, but I certainly won’t.
It used to be that when the FBI raided the house of a politician that the assumption of guilt was quite clear, but not anymore. However, since the Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger resigned as the lead Republican in charge of legislative work at the state house last month the place has been frozen at a critical time leading up to the midterm elections. From what we know of the case so far, it looks like Rosenberger is under a political hit and to survive it he is putting all his energy into defending himself from the FBI raid and the aftermath of it because as anybody knows who’s been through something like that, the legal bills can be ominous, and very distracting. And that would be the objective. With the liberal John Kasich leaving the governorship in 2018 and a key senate seat up for grabs between Sharrod Brown and the great Republican Jim Renacci, Democrats are making a power move and they want to take over the majority in Ohio at the House of Representatives. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn ten years from now or twenty that the FBI was playing a role in picking this investigation into Rosenberger to happen now so that the chaos left in the power vacuum might divide Republicans so that Democrats could take over in November by benefiting from the pandemonium. It’s not just the recent evidence of the FBI going after the Trump campaign, this kind of thing has been happening for many years—the agency is now quite well-known for becoming weaponized to attack political opponents, and as government workers, they go after Republicans in favor of Democrats—because that’s how things are in politics in this years of 2018.
With that stage set, it is important for Republicans to nominate a new speaker of the house quickly so that the legislative agenda can get back on track and all the House members can work together to keep their majority this upcoming fall. But right now, the House is more than split on who should take the gavel because it illustrates the philosophic divide between old Kasich Republicans and the new Trump conservatives. But as John Boehner has recently stated, the Republican Party is now Donald Trump’s and Ohio is one of the most powerful states in the union, politically on the federal level—which will increase in importance with each month that draws closer to November. The Democrats aren’t exactly stupid in their political movements, they may be idiots when it comes to personal philosophy, but regarding politics, they know how to play the game especially when the FBI is obviously on their side trying to work the strike zone in favor of their position.
There is a little game going on with Larry Householder who used to be the speaker from 2001 to 2004. He wants the gavel back in 2019 so he’s not interested in a bloody fight for a temporary seat which is what all the fuss is over. He’d rather let everyone else show their cards and get nice and bloodied so that after the House holds its majority after the fall elections he could then swoop in and declare that only he has the experience to be the next speaker. The trouble with Larry is that he has taken a considerable amount of money from the labor unions and that means trouble down the road for him and the leverage that labor unions always put on law makers. In Ohio that topic is tricky, we are not yet a Right to Work state like many of the states are that touch our borders so in making a pro-business foundation to draw in big manufacturing opportunities, Right to Work is a major consideration and Larry Householder will never allow a bill to enter the house so long as he holds the gavel, and that is one less option in the fight to be a more competitive state economically. Since John Kasich turned soft after his defeat of Senate Bill 5 which went after public sector unions in 2012, he has turned Republicans away from Right to Work. And these days because of Trump, labor unions are actually voting Republican for a change which is new. Trump continues to win their support and Jim Renacci is going to continue to garner support as this is a new aspect of party politics that has certainly changed in favor of Republicans. But in making decisions economically, the union lobby can’t have its influence on the House floor, and Larry leans left when it comes to union business. Not a good thing when a major business like Space X or Tesla might locate regionally just 90 miles to the west at the border of Indiana and pretty much get the same things they could in Ohio, access to good labor, highway egress, and political stability for their multibillion dollar investments—but Right to Work is the deciding factor. The Supreme Court is preparing to make a major decision on union monopolization and Boeing is taking aggressive action in South Carolina to fight back against union takeovers there, so the marketplace will be largely determined in the future based on Right to Work legislation—it will be a big national issue in 2021 and 2022.
Andy Thompson is a good guy and has been one of the candidates up for the interim speaker post however he is term-limited and would simply be a placeholder for Householder, which is why Larry is hanging back and letting the other Republicans fight things out. Larry is like a vulture sitting on an electrical line waiting for the dead carcass of an unwitting animal to be hit by a car for sitting in the middle of a busy road. He knows it’s just a matter of time, the FBI has just run over Rosenberger leaving him to be picked apart by those seeking to control the seat in his wake and Larry is waiting for that competition to be devoured as well where he will simply swoop in during the month of December and make his power move for the official vote.
However, that’s not what’s good for the GOP as a state organization. Personal power for some administrative seat isn’t what it used to be back in 2001 because the Trump administration moves fast and the business of a state that he cares about has to be nimble on its feet, so the new speaker for this interim seat needs to be someone who can continue to do the job into 2019 officially. The Ohio Republicans need to pull together ideologically and to keep that momentum going into the next calendar year. That leaves really only one competent name that all the other House members should rally behind, and that is that of Ryan Smith. He’s a good solid Republican who could continue doing the speaker job for the foreseeable future which is what the GOP needs for continuity throughout 2018 into 2019.
The national media has sat on those same electrical wires with Larry Householder using the chaos to attempt to weaken the Republican Party in hopes that the carryover effect would allow the state to go blue and away from Trump during 2020. To do that they need to elect a Democrat as governor and protect the Sharrod Brown senate seat—and divide and conquer the House Republicans. That is why Republicans need to come together during this upcoming week and get behind Ryan Smith so that the GOP can get moving again and not allow the legislative agenda to stay stagnant over the entire summer. Democrats want very much to be able to point at all this speaker chaos and declare that Republicans have not done anything all summer and that its time for a change, so that issue needs to go away quickly so the excuses are removed from the argument. The speaker issue needs to be solved not just for the interim, but for the duration.
It’s a shame that we have to worry about activists FBI agents who are picking party politics over true legal concerns, or that fellow Republicans are more than willing to let their partners get run over by the flow of political traffic for their own advantage in power politics, but that is the nature of our world and to win in that environment we have to make sure the right people get elected into the right positions for all the right reasons, and in that regard, the Ohio House will take care of that business this upcoming week and will get the matter solved so that business can continue on and chaos will be dismissed from the field of battle. The GOP must come together under the flag of Trump and maintain their majority, and advance conservatism into a growing party. The politics of 2001 is not the politics of 2019, and those who don’t get that need to get off the wire and stop trying to eat their own.
The last time I had seen Jim Renacci was when he was stepping off Air Force One with President Trump shortly after being asked directly by the president to run for the very important Senate seat in Ohio against the very liberal Sharrod Brown. Brown’s mission has been from the beginning several decades ago to turn Ohio from a red state to blue and after decades in public office has managed to help make it the color purple. Trump recognized that, and he looked at the map at where Senate seats could be picked up to help his agenda, and Sharrod Brown’s seat became part of his ambitious plan. When it was then considered who might have the fortitude and raw talent to take on such an entrenched incumbent the only name the President focused on was that of Jim Renacci—a self-made businessman with a background similar to Trump’s. Even more importantly to all that, Renacci like Trump has a history of winning what he does so for Jim to make a decision to abandon his run to become Ohio’s next governor he stepped up to the considerably harder task of unseating Sharrod Brown in what will prove to be one of the hottest national races in the upcoming midterm election. Before that happens though there is a primary to win and a lot of planning to do, so Renacci was in Mason, Ohio speaking to a very small, but important group of area Republicans.
As readers here know I’m not an autograph seeking, name dropping, picture-taking kind of person when it comes to people of celebrity and social importance. I’ve personally met President Trump on several occasions as well as Newt Gingrich and several other top-tier politicians and I didn’t go out of my way to have a picture taken with them, but Jim Renacci is different. He’s a very tenacious guy whom I believe is extremely sincere in what gaining that Brown Senate seat means to the nation and I respect him as a person for it. Getting to know Renacci as a candidate over the last several months, first as a person challenging the governor’s seat, and now under President Trump’s direct request, running for the valued Senate seat in Ohio to share one of the two available. Rob Portman is the other Senator, so there is a real opportunity here to gain someone in the Senate of Jim’s caliber and to further the Trump agenda with business people who understand it. The videos below are from this meeting which was only a few people listening to Jim speak in a private kitchen. Recording this meeting was a rare opportunity for others to get to know Jim Renacci without the Fox Business Channel cameras, the big rallies, or the interpretations of a left-leaning media filtering out the information they think important. In these two videos Jim just talks about his background and why he is the best candidate of all the Republican challengers to unseat Sharrod Brown.
One of the last questions in this meeting was directed at what Renacci specifically has regarding talent to perform this important historic journey and Jim modestly didn’t answer the question as fully as he could. Being a business guy, he is happy to let his record speak for itself because he honestly likes the other Republicans who are also running for the opportunity to take on Sharrod Brown. After all, only Renacci has been personally endorsed by the President of the United States, so he let that question linger softly—but I’ll be happy to answer it on his behalf. One thing that Jim has that others don’t is that he’s good on television. He is a frequent guest on the Fox Business Channel and MSNBC—among many others and in this modern era of television communication, Jim is good on camera. He knows how to speak the language of television, which is in how to communicate in short segments and with using all the range that a blocked off face can deliver to a direct audience in their living rooms. When running against an entrenched incumbent that has the power of the entire Democratic Party using a friendly press to preserve their position, it takes being not just a great candidate to win a race like this—it will take someone who is fantastic on television, and Renacci is.
In those videos Renacci told the story of how he came into politics in the first place, and it’s a good one that everyone should hear. Jim could easily live a good life as a self-made person and stay out of the political theater, but like Trump he found himself entering politics to offer his unique skills where they were needed most. Jim had a Chevy dealership around the time that General Motors went bankrupt and at the time many dealerships were being forced to be closed. This activity had nothing to do with Jim’s business skills, as he had been very successful, it was simply that he was selected to be closed which went against everything he understood about how things should work. So he reached out to his local congressman for help only to have that person vote against his dealership. The congressman was a Democrat and from there Jim challenged that seat in the next election and won. He has been in congress ever since facing down severe oppositions in the process.
There were many more stories than that communicated in that cozy kitchen in Mason which no media outlet would cover. There isn’t time or enough print for most media to dedicate to those types of stories, leaving voters often mystified about the actual people running. That left this little event to have quite great importance to those lucky enough to attend. To me there isn’t a better positioned person for that Senate job, and Jim certainly has the right level of fight in him to be successful. He will do what needs to be done to win, much like Trump did in his election against Hillary Clinton. Ohio may be purple now politically, but as Jim said in his speech, its going back to red and this upcoming election for this particular Senate seat is the battle that will define that political movement. However, even more important than all that is that it will solidify Trump’s agenda with more help at the federal level with the kind of Republicans that Trump is bringing to the Party as a whole.
I’ve been in the Renacci camp for most of a year now, first as a candidate for governor, and now in his run for Senate. Few politicians excite me the way that Jim does, which is why I did take a picture next to him. I did it because I was proud of him for taking on this big role and I want to help him any way possible. It is my hope that once he is elected that more business professionals at the height of their careers, like Trump was and now Renacci will follow in their footsteps and offer their skills to the world of politics. When we complain that politics is full of unsavory characters it is because many of them are not battle hardened in the rules of business. They are simply referees in the games of life, they are not the superstars who make their livings accomplishing things. Renacci is a new kind of candidate that are emerging under the years of Trump to bring the best of American enterprise into the role of managing our federal government. And that is a great opportunity for America to finally be politically what it has been in all other sectors of private endeavor, which is why getting excited about Jim Renacci for the Ohio Senate seat in Washington D.C. is very easy to do.
This is information for my readers who might want a chance to see the President in person. Here is the information on where and how to do it. Plan to give President Trump a nice welcomed return to the Cincinnati area.
Good Afternoon,
We are looking forward to having President Trump in Ohio tomorrow!
The President will be landing at Cincinnati Municipal Airport – Lunken Field on Monday. The shuttle bus parking lot opens at 11:15 am and will closed at 12:45 P.M. Please arrive early. Once the President’s plane lands they will not let people into the greeting pen. They will have security scanners in place so we recommend that you don’t bring any excessive bags or items with you.
Date: Monday, February 5th Location: 4265 Airport Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45266 Time: Parking opens at 11:15 P.M. // No entry after 12:45 P.M.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Cincinnati and appreciate everything you have done to make America great again!
There is nothing worse than a bully. I personally have no sympathy for any bully whether it be a motorcycle gang member, a labor union thug, or a 73-year-old woman trying to hold on to power to protect her out-dated world outlook. Bullies in all categories are bad and a threat to the American republic because such a political system requires a self-confident, intelligent population that participates as honestly in the election process as possible. But in Butler Country, Ohio there are a number of bullies operating within the political system of the GOP that prevent the kind of positive growth that is needed as market demographics change and new priorities face future voters. This is a story regarding the latter type of bully which insists that people vote not based on intelligence or free thought—but fear of compliance. In this case the Central Committee Chairperson for Butler County who has been involved in a lot of questionable actions over the last few years was the aggressor. Specifically of these strategic impositions would be the public and private actions against David Kern to push him out of being head of the Republican Party since he represented the Tea Party faction after the 2012 election. Another was throwing Ann Becker out of a John Kasich rally because she wanted to ask questions about Common Core, this was done by Todd Hall, but represented the anti-Tea Party position of this chairperson. Then there was last year’s ruckus involving Evan Thomas. There is a history between good Republicans and bad Republicans which indicated that some sort of quarrel would break out during a May 18th 2015 meeting which will be explained in detail during the subsequent paragraphs. In this article good Republicans would be defined by Constitutional purists against the machine politics of old who seek to build personal alliances through politics to secure business interests. George Nafziger wanted to warn voters at the May meeting of the chairperson’s strategy at that meeting so he was passing out a flyer explaining the activity—also shown below. He knew that the chairperson had been involved in a lot of behind the scenes arm-twisting and anticipated that he would be harassed in a similar way. So he turned on his camera and let it run—which recorded the following. What you are about to see is how politics works in Butler County, Ohio from behind the veil of the Central Committee.
Many voters don’t understand how the Central Committee portion of politics work so it would be helpful to have an explanation as George explained it to me during his report of the recent meeting happenings. Every county in Ohio is divided into a varying number of precincts, each containing a given number of voters. The Republican and Democrat Parties both have an elected “precinct member” representing their interests in that precinct. These precinct members [ward captains if you prefer] run for office and are elected in the spring primary. They literally run a campaign and present their political philosophy just like candidates running for Congress, etc., and the individual who most represents his precinct wins by gaining the highest vote count.
Their function is to keep their constituents informed of party and political issues, to get out the vote in the November elections, and to vote in party meetings to endorse or not to endorse a candidate for the primary elections.
These precinct members form what is called the “central committee.” There is also an “executive committee.” In most of Ohio’s counties the Executive Committee is little more than a rump group of the Central Committee who handle the daily functions of the party and run party meetings. It includes individuals who hold elective office in the county, i.e. sheriff, commissioner, etc.
However, in Butler County this Executive Committee grew into a major body in the party totaling 85% of the number of the members of the Central Committee. Some are appointed by the Central Committee Chair to assist in their party operations. However, the rest literally buy their way into the party functions by paying a fee of $150 and being voted, en masse, by the Central Committee.
For this $150 they get to vote on the endorsement of candidates for office, so they have bought a seat at the table and directly influence the public’s choices in the November elections.
The Central Committee Chairperson, in conjunction with the Policy Committee, develops the list of the Executive Committee members and submits it to the Central Committee for approval. There is rarely any discussion about individuals on the list and generally the Central Committee membership is asked to vote blindly on the names presented to them.
The process for developing the Executive Committee list has evolved over the years and recently it was changed so that a very small clique totally controlled the names that were put on that list. This provoked a revolt among the members of the Butler County Central Committee in the May 2014 organizational meeting. Because of the resulting chaos, the meeting was cut short and the Executive Committee was not established.
The chaos included an incident reported in the Hamilton Journal where a sergeant-at-arms, appointed by Mrs. Judy Shelton, the Central Chairperson, threatened a Central Committee member with physical violence for voicing his objection to the actions taken by the chairperson in this meeting.
Three months earlier, at the January 2014 candidate endorsement meeting the Executive Committee was manipulated by this clique so as to insure their chosen candidates would win the party’s endorsement. In Butler County the endorsed Republican candidate, by winning the party endorsement, has essentially won the general election in November. The vote in November has been reduced to a formality.
In this manipulation, a bus was rented and Executive Committee members, who would otherwise not have come to the meeting, were brought to the meeting, it was rumored, after being fed a free dinner and told for whom they were to vote. Their votes were essentially bought for the cost of a dinner and a bus ride. The bus was parked in front of the meeting hall. As to the contents of the dinner, it could only be confirmed by those attending.
Because of this and other issues many central committee members resolved to block the re-establishment of the Executive Committee.
A Regional Meeting of Central Committee members was held on April 28th, in which it became clear that Mrs. Shelton, the Central Chairperson, essentially said that the Executive Committee was being purged of those people who did not vote for her chosen candidates.
In May 2015 a meeting was called to re-establish the Executive Committee and those dissenting members moved to oppose this. One of them, Dr. George Nafziger, prepared a flyer explaining his position on the proposed list. He handed it out at the entrance to the conference room until Mrs. Judy Shelton confronted him. Dissent was not to be tolerated by the Chairperson who clearly indicated that only leadership was able to decide who received what at that meeting.
In the video made using a cell phone hanging from Dr. Nafziger’s neck during this incident it was easy to see several minutes of people greeting him and him giving them a copy of his flyer. The members in the video are all elected officials doing the work of the county. Then Mrs. Shelton confronted him, telling him that he had no right to pass out flyers representing his views on her proposed Executive Committee list. Shelton was obviously primarily concerned with exerting her authority to maintain the power position in the discussion as a way to quell any thoughts of un-unified discussion—as a party. This is the key to the problem; Shelton desires to unify the Republican Party behind the type of interests represented by her, which is centered on real estate development, and various ways to merge business with politics—essentially the old Carlos Todd approach to Butler County politics of which John Boehner is a direct product. That is clearly her motivation as indicated by her approach and dialogue. You will also see her threaten him with an expulsion by a police officer. His efforts to speak for the people he was elected to represent was shut down by the Republican Party Central Committee Chairman, Mrs. Judy Shelton for the purpose of preserving party unity which keeps her, and her affiliates in power—which is clearly not how any type of republic in the United States was supposed to ever function.
As Dr. Nafziger left the room and moved down a hallway, he passed out his flyers to the Central Committee members waiting to register for the meeting. Mrs. Shelton followed him, shoving him, and grabbing his flyers from the hands of the other central committee members. You can hear Dr. Nafziger repeatedly tell her to stop pushing him as she attempted to take the edge off by laughing to ease the crowd gathered. The law was present, including Butler Country’s top cop, Sheriff Jones, and allowed the behavior to continue as though this type of thing had become acceptable over the years. Likely there is a belief that the courts would line up behind Shelton’s actions and that she had become something larger than the law itself as defined by the election of resident representatives.
This is the material George was passing out, which provoked so much of a public insult.
CONSIDER VOTING NO
Do you think your neighbors elected you because they did not know you? No!
Do you know the qualifications of all or even most of those on whom you will be voting tonight? No!
Do you want your future votes for candidate endorsements to be diluted by the votes of people you do not know? No!
Are you willing to be a rubber stamp for someone else’s handpicked friends? No!
Do you know that the reasons to have these appointees are 1.) $150 in annual dues and 2.) their guaranteed vote in support of those who screened and selected them? No!
Do you know that the list before you was purged of names who voted their minds and not as they were told to vote? No!
Do you think your neighbors, who elected you, want your vote cancelled by people over whose selection you had no voice? No!
Should we risk giving control of our Party to people who were carefully screened and culled by a select few and do not represent the interests of the elected precinct members? No!
Recalling the May 2014 meeting, do you want to see these proposed members voting as they are told to vote by those who put them on the list before us tonight? No!
Do you know that the elimination of six of the seven regions has resulted in a situation where the vote of the Regional Chair we selected will always be overridden by the Executive and Central Chairs, who handpicked this list? No!
You took an oath of office to serve the interests of your neighbors. Do you think that a vote in favor of this list serves their interests? No!
Do not throw away the rights and duties entrusted to you by your neighbors who elected you to office. A vote in favor of this list of proposed members of the Executive Committee will negate your vote. The health and success of our Party depends on your vote tonight.
Immediately after this event George contacted me with the following note letting me know of the incident and looking for some way to tell his story knowing that most of the usual media contacts were loyally committed to the established politics striving to hold power against Tea Party insurgents. I have in my possession a rather damning audio clip that further indicates the level of animosity that Chairman Shelton has toward Tea Party members of the Republican Party–however, that audio was recorded during a private GOP event that was intended to stay that way. I’m not sure at this time that I will release it, unless needed. Given the nature of this audio recording which implicates many people I call friends, then hearing George’s story, it was quite obvious that we were dealing with serious bullies in the GOP that deserved exposure. I’m not going to allow that kind of thing in my backyard without saying something about it. So here is George’s letter to me as he wrote it.
Because of the threat of violence last year by a member of the party leadership against Evan Thomas I decided that I should have a written flyer to pass out to express my opinion on the proposed list of people to be elected to the Executive Committee. I also decided that I should record what happened while I was passing it out. If I have enough band on my e-mail, I’ll attach the video recording of what transpired. I will also attach two of the flyers that were circulating and which I was passing out.
As you will see in the video, Judy Shelton, the party central chairman, threw me out of the hall before the meeting began because she objected to my flyer. She manhandled me as you will hear and not being willing to strike or push back at a woman I went, but she was constantly shoving me. As I passed down the hall I passed out further flyers, which she grabbed from people’s hands. The video will give you the rest.
When the meeting began it was badly managed. Shelton even had to be reminded to get a vote to approve the agenda. She was eager to rush into the vote for the central and executive membership, which were the principal reasons for the meeting.
She then went into an harangue about the two lists of people to be voted on this evening: 1.) people to be appointed to vacancies in the central committee, and 2.) a re-established executive committee.
The vote for replacements to the central committee went fairly smoothly, however there was great opposition to the re-establishment of the executive committee.
A dozen people got up and spoke about it. Most of the speakers were opposed and Shelton had to ask for people to rebut some of the arguments. There were few takers.
The principal arguments against it were:
1.) It diluted the votes of the elected central committee members in the all-important endorsement votes. References were made to busing people in as was done in the January 2013 endorsement meeting. Comments were made as to how there was manipulation of the system, using the Executive Committee to give Shelton’s personally preferred candidates an edge in the endorsement process. You can confirm that with Roger Reynolds and Judge Oster as they were the targets of this (as was I) in the January 2014 meeting.
2.) Shelton claimed these people were selected because they were “workers” but attendance records were brought out and used as an indication of “workers” in the executive committee were not workers. Of 106 attendance records 80 of these “workers” attended less than 60% of the party meetings. The point being if you can’t attend meetings, then odds are you won’t do much work.
3.) It was argued that as the central committee members were elected by the residents of their precincts after they displayed their political philosophy, then they should not “sell their votes for $150”, which is the cost of being a member of the Executive Committee.
Shelton spent most of her time rebutting these arguments. It was also interesting to note that she complained that people had not turned out for the Lincoln Day Dinner/fund-raiser. The reason for that was her management of the party’s affairs and the lack of support she has after the May 2014 party meeting.
Anyway, when the motion to vote for the proposed executive committee went to the floor and the voting was to begin there was a motion to “divide the house.” This means that the precinct members literally have to move to one side of the floor or the other to show their support of a position. This is done to prevent voice votes from being deliberately misinterpreted by the chair.
That process was initially chaotic, but settled down after much confusion and some recounts.
The precinct members (central committee members) literally lined up on the walls of opposite sides of the room. The count was redone 3-4 times and the final result was that 57 voted against the proposed executive committee and 56 voted for it. One precinct member changed his vote during the course of this chaos and threw the vote to the “No Executive Committee” position.
There had earlier been a call for a secret ballot, but Shelton had told the woman who made that proposal that she would not allow it. However, after the house divided and the 57-56 vote came in, suddenly Shelton wanted a secret ballot. The membership shouted her down.
And that is what happened tonight.
George Nafziger
As a result of this incident Dr. Nafziger is planning to ask for Mrs. Shelton to be removed from her chairman seat. It is quite obvious that she is more interested in unifying the Republican Party around the type of machine politics that has left the party stagnant and ineffective in the past. For instance, if John Boehner is truly the best man for the job as congressman, then he should have no problem surviving the primary process provoked from healthy debate. But when it’s wondered how people like Boehner, who are obviously political moderates combating radical leftists in Washington—of which many think he’s losing—keep their jobs for decades as congressman, now you know. The reason is because they have people like chairman Shelton doing the dirty work of suppressing opinion for them out of sight from the media or the public in these central committee meetings.
As far as people go I like most Republicans. I have a bit of history with Todd Hall and I like him. I would probably get along fine with Judy Shelton when talking about our dislike of Obama. When talking about our resistance to legalized drugs in Ohio Sheriff Jones and I share a lot of common ground. He’s against it and so am I in a huge way. Relative to the rest of the world, we have more in common than not. But, in relation to the purity of how a republic is supposed to function in the United States they represent the bad Republicans whereas George represents the good. The good doctor isn’t such because I personally like him—which I do—but because he represents at great scrutiny the purity of how a constitutional republic is supposed to function. Competition is good—and the Republican Party would be stronger if it had a lot more competition, and a lot less thuggish behavior on behalf of party leaders seeking consensus more than theatrical criticism.
The Republican Party does not belong to Judy Shelton or anybody else. Because of her actions and desire to bend the shape of the party toward her personal predilections, she needs to be removed, as Dr. Nafziger has now made a motion to implement. The Tea Party is not a regional thing that is up to her to crush so that she can be a hero to the machine politics of old. It is a national movement created in opposition largely because of people like her controlling central committees at all levels of the GOP and preserving flat candidates for the last hundred years allowing the more socially radical progressives to move the social meter away from conservatism more to the political left. George isn’t involved in all this so he can sell another house or streamline a project through a zoning hearing. He really cares about the GOP and at the very least; Shelton has an obligation to give the voters of his district a voice in government. Even if she disagrees with him, she should at least respect the process enough to let the best and brightest ideas have their day in the court of public opinion. Instead she openly sought to suppress that voice and she got caught doing it on video. That is why she should be immediately removed from office in favor of a chairman who will respect the Republic and give a proper voice to the GOP in Butler County for the better. Competition should be what determines who holds what office and for how long. People like Shelton should not allow the mediocre to stay in office by protecting them from warranted criticism. That is why Dr. Nafziger has urged her removal from the chairman seat of the Butler Country Central Committee. And that is also why if she cared an ounce for the GOP, she would do it on her own without further provocation.
The Overmanwarrior 