Tag: 2024 election

Apathetic or afraid?

By Steve Woodward

During the afternoon business session of the 2024 North Carolina Republican Party convention on May 25, 2024, Moore County was represented by 48 Republican delegates who not only were pre-registered but had “checked in”. They were in the conventional hall, having reported for duty.

This band of citizens who chose to launch their Memorial Day Weekend in a hotel ballroom with seating configured similar to the economy section of a discount airline cabin could have elected to be anywhere else. Driving to the Atlantic coast. Driving to a mountain cottage. Smoking a pork butt at home on their patio. Playing 18 in the Cradle of American Golf beneath the pines.

But they assembled instead in an antiquated hotel and conference center overlooking strip malls to conduct the business of their party. Alongside them were more than 1,300 delegates from most of North Carolina’s 100 counties. Believe it or not, in this moment in time in America which finds us hurtling toward tyranny and Socialism, there are counties in our state that can’t find even one Republican to show up for the annual convention.

As for Moore County, our brigade was a familiar one. The “usual suspects”. Dedicated. Reliable. We are family. We respect one another though we do not always see eye to eye. There is underlying tension. There are generational issues. When we return to our county, we will have our disagreements while continuing to be united by a sense of duty.

Amid this perilous moment in American history, it is striking that actively engaged Republicans are perpetually worried that we’ll be outworked by well organized Democrats. One important function of a state convention is to energize attendees to go back home to rally citizens away from the sidelines. Each county is limited as to convention delegate counts, but it’s worth noting that the 48 Moore County delegates in the hall accounted for .00155 percent of the county’s 31,107 registered Republican voters as of April 2024. They could have traveled to the convention in a chartered bus with seats to spare. 

Why do Republicans rarely max out their delegate counts at the annual gathering? There are plausible explanations. Some people avoid large crowds at all costs. Attending a convention is not inexpensive. The base registration price is $75. That ticket will not get you into the luncheons and dinners where the keynote speakers are on stage (Lara and Eric Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, etc.). Those tickets costs hundreds more.

But a majority of right-of-center folks have never and will never consider attending a convention, door knocking or phone calling on behalf of the cause. A lot of citizens are fully aware of what is at stake when voters go to the polls this November but choose to tune out the Left’s persecution of Judeo-Christian values amid overt weaponization of the judicial and legal systems to punish adversaries. They say they are not “political”. They chose not to watch “the news”. 

What if we are mistaking what appears to be apathy for a deeper symptom? Maybe it’s fear. In the freest country in the world citizens are afraid. It’s easy to pay lip service to the courage of our Founding Fathers but our inherent fears — of character assassination, of job loss, of strained friendships and family relationships, of cancellation — stop most of us from embracing that courage. The Left is ruthless. A few short years ago, fear was weaponized to escalate a health crisis, to turn family members against one another, to isolate children, to re-order social norms, and to force healthy citizens to submit to experimental injections, and, ultimately, to compromise the integrity of an election season. 

Some fear they’ll be labeled racist or transphobic for confronting the identity politics of the Left. But there also are Republicans who are afraid to stand up to fellow Republicans when our own teammates betray or disappoint. It’s easier, less confrontational, to sink into the shadows as the establishment shamelessly defends the status quo. Consider how many Republicans ardently condemned those who sought the removal of feckless Kevin McCarthy as House speaker. 

In Moore County, the only vocally conservative member of the local school board is the one denounced by a Republican board chairman and the Republican Party leadership. The one person who demands fiscal accountability and transparency in public education was “primaried” last March. The ploy failed because authenticity and loyalty to principle always win. Ultimately, the establishment Right prefers that those who push too hard, say too much, and denounce the hypocrites just become fed up and quit. And many have.

At the convention, Ramaswamy (photo nearby), the former presidential candidate who is a rising star and now a Trump surrogate, and Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor, issued stern warnings to timid Republicans. The crowd applauded. Let’s hope their words resonated. 

“There is a culture of fear that has spread across this country like an epidemic,” Ramaswamy said. “Fear of losing your job; fear of your kids getting a bad grade in school; fear of becoming an outcast in your own community. And that culture of fear has actually totally replaced our culture of free speech in America. What is the best measure of the health of our democracy? It is the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public. We stand for truth, and we do not apologize for it.”

Republicans are “not just on the right,” Robinson said. “We are right.” He went on to exalt the assembled to become “warriors” and to resist the urge deeply rooted in far too many Republicans to “tone it down”.

“This is our moment to start running to something, back to what it means to be an American,” Ramaswamy said. “It means we stand for the rule of law. It means the people we elect to run the government actually run the government, not the deep state … that is pulling the strings of power. 

“These are American ideals we fought a revolution to secure, and the question is, do we believe those ideals still exist? The next question is, are you willing to fight for them? That’s what this year is about. … When we meet George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, and John Jay in the afterlife, and they look us in the eye and say, ‘What sacrifice did you make for your country?’ We had better have a darn good answer to give them. What sacrifice are you willing to make for this country?”

We know these fearless warriors are out there. They were in Washington on January 6, 2021. Owed to the sinister trap set by the Biden regime and then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, some engaged in and were not deterred from criminal activity, while others, curious about photo ops inside the Capitol, have been falsely charged as criminals and languish in prison cells. History will record that the motives of the vast majority assembled on January 6 were pure and just. 

More than three years on, the spirit of January 6 grips the nation. It is seen and felt every time Donald Trump arrives at a rally. A recent rally in the South Bronx in New York City suggests the fervor to derail the Biden wrecking machine is building. The 25,000-plus who gathered demonstrated the power of hope over fear. What else explains the surging numbers of black and Hispanic citizens, and college students, boldly expressing their support for Trump’s re-election?  

Political conventions are moments in time that have their place and fulfill a purpose. But that’s all they are. What matters in the four months until the onset of early voting is compelling sporadic voters to actually vote with courage for Trump and all of the Republican candidates who will advance the MAGA agenda. How is this accomplished? It is accomplished when individuals liberate themselves from their fears by adopting the spirit and courage of the founders, who relied on the hand of God to sustain them. 

They knew their lives and finances were at risk, and some lost both. Today, in 2024, no one is asking fellow Republicans to run into a hail of gunfire. The asks are actually very reasonable. Get over the fear of signing a letter to the editor that condemns Leftist hypocrisy; of standing up at a school board meeting to defend the right of parents to protect their children from sexually graphic books and gender grooming; of denouncing elected Republican leaders when they betray our core principles; and of flying banners, planting yard signs and engaging with friends and neighbors even at the risk of enduring their wrath. Relish their misery.

Worse than fear is its by-product. Despair. Until the Left is silenced it will pursue its Marxist goals of ruling over a frightened, despairing, and defeated people no longer recognizable as Americans. 

Winging it

By Steve Woodward

On Christmas Eve 2023, respected CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge joined a Face The Nation panel during which she was asked to crystal ball the coming new year. She made headlines by expressing concern that the United States has become vulnerable to a “Black Swan” event, a “national security event with high impact”.

Herridge cited a heightened homeland “threat level” (presumably, owed to the influx of millions of undocumented aliens across the U.S.-Mexico border) and emboldened adversaries who sense American weakness (China, Iran, North Korea and Russia). But she said something else. She observed that “we’re divided in this country in ways that I haven’t seen before.”

In February 2024, CBS News fired Herridge amid a network-wide culling of 20 employees instigated by its parent, Paramount, and temporarily seized her private files. At CBS, and previously during her years with Fox News, Herridge comported herself as a dedicated professional, the gold standard for reporting on national security. It was clear she never was a corrupt, agenda driven operative masquerading as a journalist. 

But when her instincts prompted Herridge to forecast a Black Swan scenario on national television she had to go. And now, in May 2024, we know why. In recent days, the foot soldiers of the Obama shadow government have begun, clearly in lockstep, issuing tightly veiled Black Swan alerts. They sound like cries of desperation from defeated individuals. They are emerging as polling continues to warn that Joe Biden will lose in his bid for re-election in November. 

As with everything the Left does, this is orchestrated. Deftly managed. I suspect that what we’ve seen in recent days is coded language communicated at the behest of Black Swan field generals. The objective is to soften the other side by lulling the MAGA masses into a state of invincibility that finds them making travel plans for Inauguration Day 2025.

In the various war rooms assigned to sustaining the Biden “campaign”, it’s Code Red time. And if the operatives were not already on high alert, tee up Donald Trump’s 100,000-patriot rally in Wildwood on the Jersey Shore last weekend. Assume that the Black Swan’s wings are extended and ready to take flight.

The play to look out for is the loyalists appearing to “throw in the towel”, symbolic of a fighter, bloodied and defeated. That’s not what James Carville is doing when he laments in a video post that his podcasts “don’t matter” because nothing is stopping Trump’s MAGA movement.  Your humble conservative observer assumes Carville is merely green lighting the escalation of the war on Trump. These Marxist Democrats do not give up. Like their Jihadist brethren, they play the long game.

On cue, The Weather Channel reports on May 13, 2024, that researchers are “racing” to contain a bird flu outbreak with epidemic potential. Well, how about that? Seems there are not enough testing devices to assess the potential threat. But they know one thing. In March a head of infected cattle passed a strain of flu to a rancher. That has rarely ever happened in human history.

In her weekly column in the weekend Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan writes that she senses a “fatalistic” atmosphere six months removed from the presidential election, referring to the Biden camp. “Political operatives, veterans and thinkers (are) now asking, honestly, if there is anything (Biden) can do to pull it out,” Noonan laments.

Listing the various cracks in the Biden armor, Noonan conveys the mindset of someone who is just now discovering the dumpster fire that is the Biden regime. 1. Interminable campus riots (she calls them “demonstrations”) will hurt Biden. Do you think? 2. Trump’s “criminal cases seem a bust.” Really? What an astute political observer.

Over at CNN, the stoic Fareed Zakaria joined the chorus of pearl clutching doomsayers during his Sunday program, GPS. “I have to admit — none of this is paying out as I thought it would,” he said as his brow deeply furrowed. And then he tapped the third rail of the Biden runaway economic train. “Inflation is a far more pervasive problem than unemployment,” Zaharia correctly notes, and it’s overshadowing “a relentless stream of good economic news” (a disingenuous characterization oft repeated by the likes of CNN). In other words, productive, hard working Americans (who vote) in the fly-over states are a bunch of cry babies about the pervasively high cost of living. 

On MSNBC, former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki went to a very dark place while awkwardly trying to explain why high profile Republicans are still backing Trump. “Maybe he’ll go to jail,” Psaki said. “Maybe he will die. Not to be too morbid, but maybe, I mean, he’s not a young man. Who knows what’s in their minds?”

Obviously, her “mind” is fertile ground for conspiracies. Or, maybe, in her circles, they call it optimism.

But let us revisit the technical definition of the Black Swan event. It is a “high-impact event that is difficult to predict under normal circumstances but that in retrospect appears to have been inevitable.” The inevitability of a coronavirus bioweapon sweeping the globe became logical once we understood the extreme risk of gain-of-function lab testing, in a Chinese lab no less. (Herridge, in early 2023, was among the first to report on COVID’s lab origins). 

And what exactly distinguishes black swans from white swans other than color? Black swans demonstrate “opportunistic responses to either rainfall or drought”. In other words, like the Left amid a financial plunge or an out-of-the-blue pandemic, they never fail to exploit crisis. 

Predicting the nature of a coming Black Swan event is a futile exercise. It is safe to assume, however, that if the Marxist Left now controlling the Democrat party is the architect the event will seek to retain or expand its power. That probably rules out a “hit” on Trump (which only motivates more Republicans to vote for his replacement). But remember what Trump has always said to growing millions comprising the MAGA armies. 

“They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you,” Trump said. “They’re not after me, they’re after you (emphasis added), and I just happen to be standing in the way.”