By Steve Woodward
Data coming in after one week of early, or one-stop, voting in two Moore County locations indicates Republicans are, as predicted, motivated and energized as the countdown to Election Day, November 6, continues.
Nearly 41% of early voters as of October 27 were registered Republicans, outpacing registered Democrats (who represent 30% of early voters). The remaining 30% are unaffiliated, also known as “independent” voters. The numbers are significant for another, perhaps more important reason. Greater numbers of Republicans have voted early (4,622) in 2018 than at this point in the last mid-term election in 2014. That was not expected to happen, experts assured us. (Thank you, volunteer data guru Josh Lowery, who is tracking numbers provided daily by the Moore County Board of Elections).
The necessity of getting out the vote is obvious to those who are engaged in political trend watching and who consume news (and know the difference between it and proliferating fake news). If effective GOP members of the U.S. House, such as our congressman, Richard Hudson, are defeated in 23 or more mid-term races, the House will be controlled by Democrats who will stall and derail the Trump agenda with every fiber of their beings for at least two years.
In state elections, Republicans Tom McInnis (Senate 25), Jamie Boles (House 52), and Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jackson are up against well-funded opponents. Millions of dollars are flowing in from sources outside of North Carolina. Encourage your neighbors and friends to fixate on the down-ballot races, especially Jackson’s race where Democrats are fired up about securing a solid majority on the court, and have employed a sinister tactic to make it happen. (Supreme Court candidate Chris Anglin is a Democrat who switched affiliation before filing with the state to confuse voters and help fellow Democrat candidate Anita Earls).
We are acutely aware that many fellow citizens simply tune out mid-term campaigning and can’t wait for the yard signs to disappear on November 7. So what can we say to motivate them? Start by reminding them what Americans lose if Democrats win — lower tax rates, fewer regulations, and freedom to choose when it comes to their healthcare options.
In the era of Trump, the Democrat party is turning harder to the left. It’s leadership seeks open borders, abolishment of the Second Amendment, marginalized law enforcement, rule by intimidation and a lust for destroying people they disagree with, beginning with President Donald Trump.
Another President, Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale (MI) College, recently spoke before an audience of local Hillsdale supporters attending a luncheon at Pinehurst’s Carolina Hotel. Arnn is one of America’s greatest living historians, but he does not speak using dramatic flourishes. Arnn is a soft spoken, deeply thoughtful orator. His message to those assembled in Pinehurst was sobering, alarming and precisely what Americans need to be thinking about as we go to the polls, and encourage others to join us.
The question Arnn asked is the question we must ask our neighbors and friends who express indifference toward voting.
“Are you concerned about the times?” Arnn asked as he opened his remarks on October 22. “The crisis we are in, I think it’s deep, myself.”
No student graduates from Hillsdale, founded in 1844, without acquiring thorough understanding of the U.S. Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. Hillsdale produces Constitutional scholars. One graduate currently is a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The political climate at Hillsdale is quite different than what is now common across the country, as institutions of higher learning continue to deteriorate into incubation centers ruled by the hard Left. Tolerance and debate are out of style. Arnn referred to recent campus unrest at a liberal arts college in Portland, OR, Reed College, where a group of students denounced a reading curriculum as being “racist”. Professors were subjected to threats and gangs of students as they walked to their cars.
“At Reed College, they have cancelled half of that curriculum,” Arnn said. “And that means the other half is soon to go.
“We (at Hillsdale) think there is something abiding and worthwhile that can be known (by studying history). And if you give up on that, just think what happens to this (Constitutional) doctrine that we have our rights according to eternal principles, and (that) no power can take them away?
“Do you see why that kind of idea would have young people demanding things by force? Because force is all that’s left. That’s why members of Congress, if they happen to be in the wrong (Republican) party, they get hazed and heckled in public restaurants in the Nation’s Capitol. And that’s the kind of thing that used to happen in 1850, and we know what that was tending to. It’s like a cold Civil War.”
In this time of heightened conflict, voting emerges as a more fatal weapon than physical violence or public intimidation. We must find a way to win, as Americans, as patriots, as Republicans, because of what the opposition intends.
“What’s against that today,” Arnn said, “is just the assertion of the raw, human will. (The Left says) we must have things the way we want them, and if we go further down this line we are going to be shooting people. That’s the conflict.
“(Hillsdale) lives in reverence of and in the activity of knowing things that are beautiful, and fine, and true, and it labors against all opposition to keep them alive, as it did when it was born through the Civil War. This is not the first time people at our college saw this kind of thing. Are we going to rally? The answer is, come what may, yes we are.”