Judicial endorsement quandry

By Dan Barry

In a few weeks we will gather with Republicans from across our great state in Hickory as we unite our party for the coming election during our annual convention.  

Like so many of you, I am thrilled to have the primary behind us so we can focus on the task at hand — electing Republicans. Union County, like other counties across the state, has been hard at work getting organized, raising money, and walking a few neighborhoods. We are busy building the Red Wall to prevent the Pelosi Progressives from gaining an inch.

This year I had the privilege of serving on the North Carolina Republican Party Plan of Organization Committee. The committee is asking delegates to approve a change in the Plan of Organization to allow Executive Committees to endorse candidates in judicial races where there is no primary. From a fundamental perspective, this is not something that any of us are pleased with. It is, however, necessary given the NCGA’s elimination of primaries in this year’s judicial elections.

The problem is simple math. If we have multiple Republican candidates enter these contests, the vote will be diluted and the opposition candidate runs at a significant advantage. Additionally, there is nothing to prevent a Democrat from switching party affiliation, filing as a Republican, and immediately switching parties after the filing closes. The Executive Committee will have an opportunity to vet these issues and make recommendations on candidates worthy of support. In no case is the Executive Committee required to make an endorsement.  

Union County has firsthand experience with this challenge. Several years ago, Union County had a number of individuals file in a non-partisan School Board election for an at-large seat. Only one Democrat filed. Diluting the Republican vote among several candidates gave the Democrat candidate a significant advantage and the Democrat was elected. 

We have all seen and are too familiar with what happens when Democratic activist judges are on the bench. We must come together and do all in our power to prevent this from happening.

The Plan of Organization Committee report is available online at the Convention Tab of the NCGOP.org website. I also welcome email inquiries to chairman@uniongop.com.  

Dan Barry is Chairman of the Union County Republican Party

Media high on Hogg

By Dalton Clodfelter

I grieve with the students of Santa Fe, Texas, and Parkland, Florida. These tragedies are becoming all too familiar across America because municipalities and school boards have insisted school campuses remain gun-free zones and, thus, vulnerable to mentally ill attackers.

David Hogg, a Parkland student and anti-gun activist, has become the “face” of this tragedy, particularly at his new home away from home, CNN. And the liberal media has jumped on his bandwagon — supporting his profanity-laced tirades with countless articles and appearances on news/talk shows. The media has given Hogg a voice to support its own liberal narrative. 

Hogg is not my voice or that of hundreds of other young people who aren’t given a media platform. And, he is certainly not the voice of my generation. 

I am a proud member of the NRA; a young Christian Conservative who supports our Constitution, and isn’t afraid of the mob mentality that is the liberal culture on many high school campuses today. I’m David Hogg’s worst nightmare. 

Hogg has been praised by the left as a virtuous advocate for peace. He has now entered into a contract along with his sister to publish a book titled, “#NeverAgain”, which will pursue a theme that if you are pro-gun then you must be pro-killing children. Expect to find this book a short time from now on the discount tables at Costco and Walmart. 

Here, Mr. Hogg, are some facts. Statistics maintained by data.cityofchicago.org show that, in 2017, more than 600 people were killed by illegal use of a firearm even though Chicago is among many large cities with stringent gun laws. 

The mainstream media crow about declines in urban murder rates, overlooking that outlaws are still randomly killing innocents on the streets. Are the families of the 5,738 victims of homicide in the nation’s 50 biggest cities in 2017 consoled by the fact that 2.3% more were killed in 2016? Where is the outrage centered on the slaughter of 26 law enforcement officials so far in 2018?

Remember when the “Black Lives Matter” movement was emerging and a Maryland lawmaker was roundly shouted down for retorting that “all lives matter”. That same illogic seems to to pervade the “gun control” crowd. The deaths of high school kids gunned down by mentally unstable fellow students are unthinkable, but the drug lords and gang members in cities killing kids are just statistical anomalies.

Washington, D.C., also was known for its climbing homicide rate and strict gun ban policy enacted in 1976, with the annual homicide rate rising from 188 to 364. Of course, after politicians eliminated the gun ban, there was a decrease in homicides. 

According to the University of Chicago’s gun crime stats, from 1977 to 1999, the right-to-carry laws drastically decreased the frequency and devastation of mass public shootings, and where shootings did occur they were in areas of the state that still did not permit concealed handguns.

The liberal media and its Hogg puppets focus much of their venom on the National Rifle Association. Some have labeled the NRA a “terrorist organization”. Yet, the NRA, more than any other organization, has labored to address the core issue tied to school shootings — preparing and protecting schools from massacres. Parents and school administrators are doing the kids in their communities a disservice if they are not visiting the the NRA’s web site and learning about the National School Shield program.

Hogg’s book will be nothing more than another attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, just like his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts. David Hogg is the epitome of today’s social justice warrior the liberal media loves and promotes. Unfortunately, his 15 minutes will not soon be up.

Dalton Clodfelter is a high school senior and founder of the web site rightwingworld.com, which strives to enable young people to break free from the mob mentality and collectivist movement on school campuses today.

 

 

The war on Trump rages on

By Norman Zanetti

Recently, sitting on my front porch, I  watched a breeze blow the Stars and Stripes to a beautiful horizontal. A short time later, a thought occurred to me — a scary “what if.”

What if an incredibly malleable electorate were to succumb to a systematic gutting of confidence in Republican initiatives and their leaders, especially an elected president?

The media continues to camouflage the benefits of tax relief, sensible border control with proper vetting, sanctions on terroristic regimes, job gains, reduction in the number of Americans on food stamps, the lowest unemployment rates for minorities, and renewed confidence in our economy by every consumer index that reports it.

The scariest contingency to contemplate is that Americans are taking all these muddling allegations of nefarious behavior without questioning where they come from and why. Those leaning to the ideological left are betting on American complacency.

The truth forthcoming will destroy mountains of lies. Skeptics are surfacing and reaching out to listeners.

They are working overtime to expose the chicanery and mudslinging against an elected administration, an administration dealing with North Korea, Russian provocations and trade imbalances — all while delivering on programs that got candidate Trump elected.

Prosecutorial overreach by implication has worn thin, and Americans sense it. It is being questioned and reversed by skeptics.

The mandarins in Congress and heads of news organizations will soon have to accommodate these new revelations being unearthed or lose total creditably.

If that comes too late, I can see our proud flag bellowing in the wind with teardrops and drooping in fatigue.

Remain a sophisticated skeptic in your own right. Americans voted in the millions for Trump. Not a single vote was cast for media heads who despise him, or prosecutors hell-bent on destroying him.

Norman Zanetti is a contributor to ResolveNC.blog.

Backing McInnis

At last, we move on down the path to the Fall mid-term elections. More than a few Moore County Republicans surely harbor lingering resentment about the lengths to which the state GOP establishment sunk to sink a primary challenge by Whispering Pines Mayor Michelle Lexo against incumbent Tom McInnis in NC-25 (although McInnis was no incumbent in Moore due to haphazard redistricting).

But in conceding defeat last week, Lexo took the high ground and graciously thanked her supporters. Republicans must now rally, reunite and take the high ground in embracing McInnis. Maintaining a GOP supermajority in Raleigh is priority one.

Although McInnis is facing a first-time candidate in Helen Probst-Mills, she is widely known in the community and not long ago hosted a fundraiser attended by Gov. Roy Cooper in her Pinehurst home. And that’s not all.

In its analysis of “races to watch” in 2018, the non-profit public policy web site RealFactsNC.com, makes the chilling observation that “the voters who sent (McInnis) to the General Assembly are gone (our emphasis) from his redrawn district.” Furthermore, fewer than half of NC-25 voters “have seen McInnis on their ballot before.”

Given that Moore County accounts for just under half of all voters in the district, this ostensibly means that Probst-Mills can legitimately make the same argument voiced by Lexo: I live in Moore; McInnis does not. (He counters by saying, legitimately, that he has owned property and paid taxes in Moore for 40+ years, and does, in fact, own a Pinehurst home).

The bottom line is that getting out the vote for McInnis is absolutely vital, and we must now leverage his backing from NC GOP heavyweights. Probst-Mills has fundraising chops, too, due to her status as a member of the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees (and her alliance with far-left SCC President John Dempsey), and ties to Cooper’s inner circle.

But she embraces several positions that will encounter fervent resistance in Moore County. Probst-Mills echoes the baloney from the left that North Carolina teachers are underpaid and that our schools are neglected. (Some are and yet school boards are not held to account). She favors further expansion of Medicaid, fueling the entitlement engine Democrats always seek to expand. And her campaign web site makes the unsubstantiated — if not false — claim that “people’s ability to vote is being curtailed” in our state. What a whopper!

Sen. McInnis holds a significant advantage that can be a double-edged sword for politicians. He has a voting record in the NC General Assembly. Opponents can use this as fodder. Unless, of course, a majority of Moore Republicans support McInnis’s positions on jobs and the economy, education and vocational options, and Second Amendment preservation.

These issues, if communicated effectively, will re-elect our Republican Senator. Get to know the issues and get to work!

 

 

 

 

 

Rocket (Man) science

President Donald Trump is counting down toward an opportunity to achieve one of the most significant diplomatic triumphs in American history. His June 12 face-to-face summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore is comparable in momentousness to Ronald Reagan’s summit with then-Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s.

One of the leading experts on the Reagan Presidency, John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, recommends that Trump devote part of his prep time for the meeting to examining how Reagan prepared to confront Gorbachev. Writing in USA Today, Heubusch observes:

(Reagan) positioned the United States strategically before he sat at the negotiating table and made his goals clear. His preparation and focus lent finesse to his negotiations, resulting in the eventual elimination of all intermediate and short-range missiles in Europe.

Heubusch, the author of the best-selling The Shroud Conspiracy novel and forthcoming sequel, The Second Coming, is scheduled to be keynote speaker for the 2019 Moore County Republican Party Ronald Reagan dinner this February.

Trump will always be Trump, Heubusch acknowledges, but it would be wise for his inner circle to coach him on the Reagan formula that would change the world more than three decades ago.

In the month leading up to his meeting with Kim, Trump should make his own strategy just as clear and consistent. He should also be clear on his specific aims. He must combine his negotiating tactics with rigorous preparation at the level Reagan mastered.