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Yesterday at the annual Real Options pregnancy center banquet I spoke to General Don Bolduc who is running for the US Senate in NH
His campaign’s website is here:
Update: To make it clear he is a candidate for US senate in NH not the NH senate
Update 2: Linked by Granite Grok, thanks Mike
The Canadian snap election that PM Trudeau called for took place yesterday and the result was a mixed bag.
Basically Trudeau’s liberal stayed where they were with the most seats but not the majority that he was hoping for. Meanwhile conservatives who thought a bit ago that they might end up winning stayed right where they were.
“Hubris led Trudeau to call the election. He and the Liberals won the election but lost the prize they were seeking. This is only a great night for the Liberals because two weeks ago it appeared they would lose government outright something they could not fathom before they gambled on an election,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.
That seems to be the consensus story but I think the real story was much later in the piece:
O’Toole advertised himself a year ago as a “true-blue Conservative.” He became Conservative Party leader with a pledge to “take back Canada,” but immediately started working to push the party toward the political center.
O’Toole’s strategy, which included disavowing positions held dear by his party’s base on issues such as climate change, guns and balanced budgets, was designed to appeal to a broader cross section of voters in a country that tends to be far more liberal than its southern neighbor.
So let me get this straight:
The “conservative” leader after getting the nod to go after Trudeau suddenly decides to run away from his base and the issues that got him to where he was and surprise surprise he ends up losing a winnable election because he thought a bunch of liberal Canadians given the choice between an actual liberal and liberal lite decided to vote for the real thing?
And I’m sure his base was delighted at the prospect of turning out to vote for a leader who disavowed them and their positions. Cripes was Mitt Romney running his campaign?
This year, rather than sitting on the sidelines, I decided to volunteer to help on a local conservative’s campaign. This particular candidate had a small campaign going, running against someone that hadn’t been challenged in two election cycles. I’m two months into helping him, and I’ve both knocked on quite a few doors to campaign and hosted a small fundraiser at my house.
What I’ve experienced in just this small amount of time has really surprised me.
When I started going door to door with a survey and some candidate literature, I expected to get yelled at. Given everything we hear on the news, walking around and campaigning for a conservative candidate seems like a quick way to get attacked by some nut-job left-wing whacko. But that hasn’t been my experience. Most people are pretty decent. A few have actually invited me into their homes. Nobody has swore at me, or told me I was trying to put people in chains, or anything else awful.
The second surprise is that most people I polled aren’t registered to vote. In fact, most people weren’t really following the election at all. Maybe its a Virginia-politics thing, since the governor elections are off-cycle from federal elections. When asked who people would vote for, most answered as “unsure.” Now, that might be because I’m polling them in person, and among their friends they have stronger beliefs. But I thought it was telling that there were so many people seemingly out of the loop of an election that directly affects them.
Hosting a fundraiser was a surprise disappointment. Despite having a really good candidate, I found that most conservatives are lazy. My church is significantly more traditional, yet nobody, repeat, nobody (save one family that is a close friend to mine) from my church showed up, despite our pastor encouraging it. Getting other conservatives to show up was incredibly difficult. Keep in mind this wasn’t a “300 dollar a plate” event. We had pulled pork, macaroni and steamed vegetables. More importantly, people had plenty of time to interact with the candidate and speak to him personally about what concerned them. You couldn’t find an easier way to interact with a potential politician, yet it felt like a Joe Biden press conference. Personally, it was really disappointing, and it makes me think that most conservatives are an awful lot of talk without any action.
I highly encourage people to get involved now with your local party. Talk to your city about becoming an election official, since you have to do some training and get registered. Volunteer to go door to door now, because its far less scary than you might imagine. Check that your friends are registered to vote, and not just in the federal elections. And for crying out loud, be willing to donate to candidates that have your values, especially the local candidates that control things like school boards, redistricting and local tax rates, and who are far closer to your concerns than your federal representative. Because if you don’t, the other side is going to out-compete you, and we’ll get more years of the same stupid policies.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Please take a minute to stop by Amazon and buy my book, “To Build A House,” available on Kindle or in paperback.
By Christopher Harper
As Joe Biden’s approval ratings plummet and his policies falter, the Democrats are turning to a tried-and-true strategy of promoting anxiety and fear over the delta variant of COVID-19.
The renewed imposition of mask wearing in St. Louis and other locales seems to be just a start in the election battle for 2022. Moreover, some major cities are forcing students to wear masks when school starts in the fall.
I firmly believe that the COVID coup forced Donald Trump out of office, but I don’t think the strategy will work for the upcoming election.
At the outset, it should be noted that Biden’s approval rating, according to a recent Gallup poll, fell from 56% approval to 50% in only a month. An estimated 45% disapprove of Biden’s performance, with 5% having no opinion. The poll found that 90% of Democrats, 12% of Republicans and 48% of independents approve of the job Biden is doing. His ratings among Democrats and independents are the lowest to date among those groups. See https://news.gallup.com/poll/352733/biden-approval-drops-lowest-date.aspx
As is often the case, the media have become water carriers for the Democrat strategy—as evidenced by recent stories about possible opponents.
For example, The Wall Street Journal ran a story that targeted Florida, the home of potential GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis.
“Driving the rise are the delta variant, large numbers of unvaccinated, relaxation of preventive measures, and more indoor time,” the news organization reported.
The local CBS station in Miami picked up the attack by quoting a local physician. “While hospitals in our state were filling up, DeSantis was shouting about ‘Freedom over Faucism,’” said Dr. Bernard Ashby, who leads a group of Florida physicians. “If DeSantis were as concerned about stopping COVID-19 spread as he was about coming up with these clever jabs about Dr. Fauci, we might not be in this position.”
Ashby said DeSantis has bragged about Florida’s approach to handling the pandemic, but he accused the governor of being reactive and not having a plan to protect residents.
That sure sounds like the same media-fueled attack that Trump faced during the election campaign in 2020.
The article failed to acknowledge how successful DeSantis had been in dealing with COVID in comparison with other states.
But let’s be clear: The Democrats have no one other than themselves to blame for what’s happening in every aspect of American life.
As Gallup noted: “Consumers are paying higher prices for gas and other goods. Biden has also struggled to deliver on his promise of greater bipartisanship, although negotiations on an infrastructure bill continue in the Senate.”
Add to that Biden’s moves to divide rather than unite Americans over issues such as the border crisis, critical race theory, energy independence, and international affairs.
Simply put, the play toward politicizing the pandemic once again should not have much traction. That’s because Joe Biden—not Donald Trump—has been in charge.
Fool me once; shame on you! Fool me twice; shame on me!
