What I Like about George Lang: He’s the perfect compliment to the Trump administration at the state level, and takes the Dirt out of Politics

One aspect of this modern Republican Party that has evolved over the last decade in Butler County is that it is very effective and surprisingly unified. I had been thinking about it for a while, but the matter became quite clear for me at the launch event for George Lang’s run for senate in Ohio. While there I found myself associating in a friendly way with many people, I would have called rivals years ago. Suddenly they were friends largely because the party had united so well behind the Trump administration. Ten years ago, we called more liberal Republicans RINOs while I ran more with the Tea Party Crowd. Then during the primaries, everyone had their various picks. Some liked Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or his dad Ron. Others liked the way the Bush family ran things. I was from the very beginning a Trump supporter, so there were obvious disagreements when Republicans came together for something like a public announcement by a great politician like George Lang. But at this most recent event I couldn’t help but notice how unified everyone was and it was good to see.

After George made his announcement and many politicians came forth to give their endorsement and tell stories of why they supported George through testimonials, seen in the video above, Sherriff Jones and I reminisced a bit about the last ten years while walking through the parking lot of Miami University’s Hamilton campus. As we talked it became obvious to me that the Trump presidency, which has deep roots into Butler County, had gone a long way to uniting Republicans in a way I could have only dreamed of. And it was only natural that a person like George Lang could build bridges in a positive way with all the different types of people that were in the Republican Party and get so many people to come forward to say such nice things. The Trump administration in all its genius had united Republicans in ways that just weren’t possible prior to 2016 and I was very happy to see it.

During all this contemplation I was thinking about why I liked George Lang so much and had for such a long time. I was very happy to hear that he was running for a senate seat, but I wasn’t sure why until after his announcement event. It wasn’t just that I liked him as a person, it was for another reason, a more important one. I have been involved in politics at many different levels for several decades, and it has been my choice to stay on the outside as much as possible to avoid too much corrosive contact. But I have never felt that way about George, whom I have now known for well over a decade. Even in the hardest of times George has always been a solid person and loyal to free market ideas, especially when they weren’t all that popular. Yet to my eyes he has always been constantly a good person, and that was rare in politics.

A lot of my reason for staying on the outside looking in, even when the door was wide open to step inside, was that I have always viewed politics as a dirty business and honestly, I don’t like the dirt. I’m happy to sling mud when challenged, but personally, I’d rather think about big things and find ways to bring about larger concepts to people. So politics just wasn’t conducive to that kind of thing. However, over time, George has pounded away his own kind of honesty in politics and it has shown to be a different way of doing business as a politician. George can still go out and raise the money it takes to run big campaigns, and associate with people all along the very fine edge of the political spectrum without becoming so disagreeable that relationships are no longer possible. George had found a way to work within the political spectrum of Republican politics at the local and state level without losing himself along the way and to me that is enormously encouraging.

Political enemies of George might want to roll their eyes at my assessment, but I have been with George through some perilous times and I know the guy well. I know his family and a dishonest person just can’t cut it with those kinds of relationships. George is an honest person who stands by the people close to him through thick and thin and oozes sincerity. Sure, there is always someone out there who wants him to do something that he doesn’t want to do, or that he disagrees with, but he never seeks to make an enemy out of them. Yet he has a tendency to stand resolute and that does make enemies. But that’s part of the territory. You can know a person by the way they are when the cameras are not around and nobody else is looking. And in those conditions, George Lang is the same good person. That ultimately is why I like George Lang so much; he takes the dirt out of politics.

George was going to be successful in politics whether or not President Trump ever entered the White House, but due to the current political circumstances, a politician and businessman like George Lang is poised to do much greater things than ever before. Under the Trump administration good people like Lang have far more clout than the back-room dealers of yesteryear and that was as much of a relief to the other Republicans giving testimony about George’s qualifications for higher office as it was me. Truly we are experiencing a new day in politics, something that none of us had ever seen. Trump’s presidency had like a vacuum sucked up all the disjointed disagreements and plotting for power that used to go on for the sake of obtaining any elected office and replaced it with a sincere effort to be a part of a greatness in keeping America great now that it has been built that way once again.

There is tremendous room in the years to come to make Ohio one of the great economic powerhouses of the world and George Lang sees it, he has always seen it. I remember a very dark time when he and I stood in the parking lot of a restaurant and contemplated the universe and how unfair it seemed at the time. Neither of us thought we’d be able to do much to help it. But George has always been the same person, from that hard time to the opulent present, he’s had the kind of integrity that is contagious to other people and a real desire to help people reach their full potential in life. And for George, that is as a senator doing great work now that the Trump administration has set the pace for allowing such audacious dreams to happen.

You can tell a lot about a person by the type of people who will actually come forward and provide an endorsement, and on that day a wide range of people who have been in public office for a long time came forward and said nice things about George, and the event was a great unifier. If one little event can show that kind of solidarity toward purpose, just think what a senate term in the Ohio Statehouse could provide. The prospect is very exciting and is something we can all look forward to with George Lang as the 4th District Senator in Ohio.

Rich Hoffman

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The Ex-Wives of Rob Porter: Nobody, not even the White House, should make employment decisions based on battles between the sexes

Since when does the accusations from ex-wives mandate a national crisis? Why did Rob Porter have to resign again—just because his ex-wives put up some pictures of themselves with black eyes? How do we know those were caused by the former White House aide, Rob Porter? Women, especially if they feel a man they were involved with sometimes can be very vengeful if he’s moved on to someone else. They will do some pretty crazy things to get attention—so how do we know that’s not the case here? Has this #metoo movement drove everyone into insanity? And now we’re saying that the White House Chief of Staff should be fired just because of the comments of some women? We are living in a crazy period where it is assumed that anything a woman says is true and cannot be even contemplated in a court of law, and that is just insane. Nobody in their right mind would allow for such a thing because regardless of what is being proposed in the #metoo movement, women can be just as devious and manipulative as men, so everything has to be taken within reason—especially in the White House.

Domestic violence is one of the most dangerous elements of any of our lives. As I’m writing this on Valentines Day of 2018 the sweet parts of courting a potential mate is the fun part—what we all celebrate as part of the relationship experience. But reality dictates that most of the time a relationship between and man and a woman is difficult, because the two versions of human being have much of the time completely opposite biological impulses and matching those up is hard for even the most seasoned communicator. Dealing with the depressing fact that a relationship of more than five years with another person beyond the realm of friendship is often disappointing, affairs often become part of the equation which then brings more complications to an already difficult one and emotions can become very erratic. A perfectly calm person can turn into a monster when all their hopes and dreams are leveraged against them by a vengeful spouse and domestic violence may appear to be the only way out.

Men are not the only villains in domestic abuse. Where men tend to hit or punch their way out of trouble when they feel the walls closing in on all sides of them, women tend to be more cerebral in their cruelty, using sex, family, or even collective assets as forms of slow, sustained mental torture against someone in their life whom they are trying to dominate into their way of thinking. Just because physical violence may not be part of that reality doesn’t mean the abuse isn’t going on. That doesn’t mean a man can just haul of and slug a woman who is mentally abusing them, but just like a child that cries when they don’t have the communication range to articulate a challenge to their intellects, grown men will often lash out with violence when they feel pressed to the point of having no other option. Just because a man hits a woman in a domestic fight it doesn’t mean that the woman was free of guilt. It just means that the man lost the fight because he surrendered thought and used his usually greater strength to shut down the conflict through the only means he felt he could dominate. The woman certainly plays her part in propelling the anger usually.

How people manage their domestic affairs is largely a personal problem, it’s not one for the greater society. Look at what happened with the tragic situation of Quentin Smith who was fighting with his wife when she had called 911 and officers Anthony Morelli and Eric Joering showed up to save the day. Smith had a long history of criminal conduct and it is a bewildering case of masochism that the abused wife was even conducting a relationship the Smith, which from an outsider’s perspective she shouldn’t have been engaged in. The result of the confrontation was that tempers where hot and Smith shot and killed the two officers—and he’s going back to jail, where he had spent time previously. The woman in this case had a relationship with a known loser, and usually in such cases kids are involved and so is money needed to raise the needs of a family—so there’s always pressure in how to allocate resources. The police did what they had to do, they were called into a family’s home to resolve a fight that the couple couldn’t take care of themselves and they ended up losing their life in the process—because the couple couldn’t manage on their own. Likely, Quentin Smith isn’t the sharpest tack in the box so when pressed he gets angry and tries to use violence to get leverage over the people he deals with. In the case of a physically weaker woman, that was his default mode and the wife understood that about him, and probably at some level liked that threat of violence. Some people like to walk on the danger zone, especially masochists. There is a very fine line between couples who experiment with versions of sadomasochism and physical abuse. Sex between such couples who are already riding that fine line can be rough and dangerous. Things can become deadly when the context of that rough sex translates into the anger of real life events where barriers get blurred under emotional distress.

Not much has been said about Rob Porter’s ex-wives. But speaking from experience, they both likely enjoyed that Porter was a man who could access power, otherwise he wouldn’t be working in the White House in the first place. Sex with such a man likely made them feel safe and secure even if it was a little rough. They probably liked it. That is, until they couldn’t move him where they wanted emotionally and the relationship crumbled, and they became ex-wives instead of just wives. That’s when the daggers come out. Perfectly nice people can become extreme villains from the perspective of the other spouse under such conditions and that little harmless guy who just wants to mow his grass on a Saturday and hide in the garage to avoid the wrath of his crazy wife suddenly becomes the equivalent of a mass murderer when the antics of the husband are talked about insistently by the wife looking for a divorce, but not wanting to be the bad one to ask for it. Emotions can get pretty out of control. An ex-wife can really get vengeful if her old husband is doing well, hanging out with the president of the United States and is starting to bang a much more attractive woman—or a younger woman at that. Women in such a position may do some pretty crazy things, like hit their face against a wall and blame the ex-husband when there are bruises. Or even perhaps the woman had a rape fantasy that occurred within the context of their former marriage and there were pictures taken for the fun of it, but those pictures were resurrected to gain leverage during divorce proceedings. What is promised in pillow talk often disintegrates in a courtroom because judges almost always listen to the woman’s side of the story right or not. What happens in sexual relationships can get pretty strange and are fine until the relationship ends and there is evidence to condemn the man.

So what was the White House supposed to do with Porter? What the guy does in his private life is his business, and especially what he does with women. If he’s doing a good job at work, the employer really doesn’t have the right to go any further into personal affairs. Any employer has that restriction, we can’t go around firing people just because ex-wives are engaged in legal battles with their former lovers. We don’t hire and fire based on acquisitions and we don’t get into other people’s personal business. The courts can do what the couples desire through divorce proceedings and custody battles. But Trump and his administration were smart to take the high road. There is no scandal in the White House involving the employment of Rob Porter. Women can say a lot of things for a lot of different reasons, and so can men. How people conduct their personal relationships shouldn’t be a deciding factor on how people perform at their jobs. If we do add such a thing to the mix, we would likely find that most human beings aren’t qualified for employment. And we really don’t want to open up that can of worms, because nothing good will come of it. The #metoo movement isn’t about saving women from abusive husbands. It’s just a power move by a political class of women looking for their own advantages in the battle of the sexes. And in that battle, they are hardly innocent.

Rich Hoffman

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