No slow march: The deep state crumbles as Trump wields his executive pen



National Review editor Rich Lowry offers sharp insight into Donald Trump’s "countermarch through the institutions.” He argues, "Never before has control of the executive branch of the federal government had such potentially momentous cultural significance."

Lowry notes that conservatives have long analyzed the left’s "long march through the institutions" — the strategic takeover of elite cultural and political spaces. Inspired by radical thinkers like Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s, the left systematically embedded its ideology into key institutions. In response, conservative activists have sought to reverse this influence by reclaiming cultural and political power.

The left has always used political means to achieve its cultural ends. It would be foolish for conservatives not to do the same.

Trump, however, has taken a different approach. Rather than gradually reshaping institutions, he has used executive authority to dismantle the left’s dominance. His administration has aggressively defunded and fired members of the woke managerial class, making bold moves from the top down rather than engaging in a slow institutional takeover.

Lowry, along with activists like Christopher Rufo, notes that this is not the long-term cultural shift many conservatives hoped for. Instead, Trump is leveraging direct government power to strip the left’s influence from its strongholds — reversing its victories through swift executive action.

Those on the right should applaud Trump’s efforts to dismantle the influence of leftist public administrators over American culture. Instead of slowly unraveling the left’s grip, he is cutting the Gordian knot in one decisive strike. Regaining a traditional culture and restoring family morality are worthy goals, but they can only be achieved once leftist elites are removed from the positions that allow them to impose their policies on an unwilling public. Only then can conservatives begin restoring what the left has subverted.

Allow me to share a little secret. Over the decades, I have known many cultural conservatives who have called for restoring traditional education or confronting leftist colleagues. Yet, their efforts have done practically nothing to slow the left’s momentum. Meanwhile, Trump is achieving far more with the stroke of his pen.

As a former humanities professor, I fully support teaching the works of great thinkers, bringing back gender-specific pronouns, and reviving interest in classical languages. But statements promoting traditional learning will not change the climate in which the woke left thrives. Conservatives remain vastly outnumbered in universities and the culture industry. As we continue fighting for our values, we can use all the help we can get — including from the president.

Only power can counter the tyranny the left has unleashed, and cultural conservatives should be grateful for leaders willing to fight — and win. For decades, I have heard that politics is downstream from culture, but I am no longer convinced. In today’s reality, separating cultural issues from political practice is nearly impossible. The public sector, including most educators, has wielded significant political influence to push American culture in a radical leftist direction.

The idea that the left seized power through a slow march through the institutions is also vastly overstated. The modern left gained control by capturing the government and mass media — the same method, incidentally, used by Nazis and communists.

As a former academic, I strongly opposed the radicalization of the institutions where I taught, but I never mistook my colleagues or college administrators as the root cause of these shifts. They responded to a chain of command that ultimately led to the government. If the power structure at the top had changed, it would have reshaped everything below.

The modern administrative state expanded dramatically across Western countries in the 1960s, as I explain in “After Liberalism.” Reforms similar to America’s Great Society emerged in England, France, Germany, and Canada, leading to a surge in public administrators overseeing newly created or expanded social programs. As these bureaucracies grew, the media increasingly aligned with the managerial, therapeutic state, while the welfare system became deeply entangled with social engineering.

While leftist academics’ war on “repressive bourgeois capitalist institutions” influenced progressive thought, their ideas would have had little impact without a political class and mass media willing to amplify them. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had remained a bartender or if Al Sharpton had pursued full-time ministry, their rhetoric would have had no influence on American society. Their political activism and access to government power enabled them to shape policy and culture.

Had the American government not vastly expanded its reach and authority since the 1950s, President Trump would not be waging a cultural war through executive action today. If the intellectual right and cultural traditionalists hope to gain ground, they must accept a fundamental truth: The left has always used political means to achieve its cultural ends. It would be foolish for conservatives not to do the same.

Did Jan. 6 threaten ‘our democracy’? Or prove the republic still works?



Like Dec. 7, 1941, Jan. 6, 2021, has taken on a mythic stature that surpasses the actual events of that day. Trump’s opponents view it as an “insurrection” — a deliberate attack on the Constitution, carried out by his supporters at his command to illegally overturn the 2020 election by threatening members of Congress. Many of his supporters, though, see it as a protest that spiraled into chaos, ensnaring citizens who never intended harm but wanted to express their belief that the election had been unfairly conducted.

I do not consider the events of that day an insurrection, nor do I believe that all those arrested received fair treatment. Still, Jan. 6 was a dark day for the republic — an act of lawlessness that stains Donald Trump’s legacy.

As Lincoln stated, no matter how desirable our goals may be, 'there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law …'

I do not believe he intended to overthrow the constitutional order. Instead, the events reflected the folly of taking politics to the streets, a tactic once favored by the left. More than anything, Jan. 6 exposed the dangers of unrestrained democracy — a threat America’s founders understood all too well.

The Great Seal of the United States proclaims that the American founding represents a novus ordo seclorum — a new order of the ages. The Constitution of 1787 was a remarkable achievement, establishing a commonwealth designed to protect the natural rights of all citizens. At the same time, understanding the founding requires looking to the past, particularly to the taxonomy of regime types identified by Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, the founders of political science.

What the Greeks knew

Greek political science differs from modern political science by focusing on fundamental questions. What is the best form of government? What system best ensures citizens’ excellence (areté) and happiness (eudaimonia)? What causes political communities to decline?

In contrast, today’s political science fixates on minutiae. Modern scholars, adopting a value-free perspective, struggle to explain why one form of government is superior to another beyond personal preference. As a result, they increasingly write more and more about less and less.

For the Greeks, political constitutions directly corresponded to the human soul (psyche). They divided the soul into three parts: nous, the intellective, reasoning part; thumos, the spirited part, concerned with honor and justice; and epithumeia, the appetitive part, which governs basic desires and is especially vulnerable to passions.

Each type of government, according to this framework, reflected a part of the soul. In this political taxonomy, the noetic part of the soul corresponded to rule by one; the thumetic part to rule by the few; and the appetitive part to rule by the many.

Each system had both good and bad versions. In a just system, rulers governed for the benefit of the entire polity. In a corrupt system, they ruled for their own benefit. The Greeks classified kingship as the good form of rule by one, while tyranny was its corrupted counterpart.

Aristocracy was the noble form of rule by the few, while oligarchy or plutocracy represented its decay. The good form of rule by the many was politeia, or a balanced constitution — a concept the Romans translated as res publica, best rendered in English as “commonwealth.” The corrupted version of rule by the many was democracy in its worst form: ochlocracy, or mob rule.

The founders feared unbridled passion and mob rule, which led them to reject democracy. They saw it as easily corrupted and unstable, prone to constant turmoil and disorder, and just as much a threat to citizens’ rights as tyranny or oligarchy. Democracies, they believed, were especially vulnerable to demagogues who could manipulate the masses.

To prevent this, the U.S. Constitution deliberately established a self-governing republic — the virtuous form of rule by the many.

Republic vs. democracy

No founder articulated the dangers of democracy — the perils of unchecked passions — better than Alexander Hamilton. Like most of his contemporaries, he viewed the American Revolution as an act of deliberate action, designed to secure the natural rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

However, Hamilton also recognized that revolution is inherently lawless. Before establishing a government that safeguards rights and liberty, men must first “dissolve the [existing] political bands.” But revolutionary fervor, he warned, is ill suited for maintaining a stable political society — even one dedicated to protecting individual rights.

Hamilton understood that a passion for liberty was necessary if the cause of American independence was to succeed, but that ultimately it had to be tempered by the rule of law. As he said during the New York Ratifying Convention in 1788,

In the commencement of a revolution … nothing was more natural than that the public mind should be influenced by an extreme spirit of jealousy … and to nourish this spirit, was the great object of all our public and private institutions. Zeal for liberty became predominant and excessive. In forming our confederation, this passion alone seemed to actuate us, and we appear to have had no other view than to secure ourselves from despotism. The object certainly was a valuable one. But Sir, there is another object, equally important, and which our enthusiasm rendered us little capable of regarding. I mean the principle of strength and stability in the organizing of our government, and of vigor in its operation.

Passions unleashed in the fight for rights can ultimately destroy those very rights. Individual freedoms survive only when society maintains a strong sense of law and order.

Hamilton was alarmed by calls for “permanent revolution,” a theme that dominated Thomas Jefferson’s rhetoric. He saw Jefferson’s dismissive and intellectualized response to Shays’ Rebellion and the French Revolution — expressed in statements like “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing” and “the Tree of Liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants” — as a dangerous philosophy. To Hamilton, this mindset invited chaos and guaranteed frequent upheaval rather than stable governance.

He believed that the solution was to instill respect for the Constitution, binding Americans to the rule of law. Though a creation of the people, the Constitution imposes necessary constraints that must be respected while it remains in force.

Hamilton argued that attaching people to the Constitution’s rule of law would preserve the new government as if it were an ancient institution. This stability would allow for the just administration of laws, without which the Revolution’s central aim — the protection of rights — could not be secured.

Through both words and actions, Hamilton worked to temper popular passions and connect citizens first to their state constitutions and then to the federal Constitution. He defended New York Loyalists after the Revolution, a position he reinforced through his "Phocion" letters. During the ratification debates in 1787 and 1788, he vigorously argued for the new Constitution, emphasizing its role in securing national stability.

As treasury secretary, he promoted fiscal responsibility, stressing the necessity of paying debts and honoring contracts. Within Washington’s administration, he sought to subordinate American gratitude to France and enthusiasm for the French Revolution to the dictates of international law.

Nothing better illustrates Hamilton’s commitment to moderating revolutionary fervor than a letter he wrote to John Jay around the same time he was crafting his own revolutionary pamphlets.

The same state of passions which fits the multitude … for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to contempt and disregard of all authority. … When the minds of those are loosed from their attachments to ancient establishments and course, they seem to grow giddy and are apt more-or-less to turn into anarchy.

Lincoln: Passions vs. reason in politics

In his 1838 speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, “On the Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” Abraham Lincoln warned against the dangers of mob violence in pursuit of political goals. He saw it as a sign that unchecked passions were overtaking reason.

Lincoln identified the greatest threat to American freedom and prosperity not as a foreign enemy but as an internal danger. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” he declared. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country …

Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed — I mean the attachment of the People …

… Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. —Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws …

Lincoln allowed that there were bad laws, among which he included the laws supporting slavery.

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made. —I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

But he maintained that “there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law …”

The mobocratic spirit and Jan. 6

Political conservatives consistently denounced political violence, including the unrest that followed Trump’s 2016 election victory, the riots and destruction that erupted after George Floyd’s death in May 2020, and numerous other instances of domestic looting and property destruction carried out by left-wing groups in recent years.

Yet as former U.S. prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted, the central charge against Trump regarding Jan. 6 — that he undermined the Constitution’s electoral process — is difficult to dispute. He gave the mob assembled that day the false impression that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. More importantly, he failed to quickly and decisively use his influence to call off his supporters, denounce violence, and urge them to leave the Capitol grounds.

McCarthy contended that if Democrats had pursued an impartial investigation rather than overreacting for partisan purposes, they could have built a compelling case that Trump violated his constitutional duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution while faithfully executing the laws. A thorough congressional inquiry would have produced stronger articles of impeachment. Instead, Democrats omitted key allegations, allowing them to frame the riot as an “insurrection” for political advantage.

As McCarthy argued, the congressional January 6panel “was a blatantly partisan, monochromatically anti-Trump political exhibition that presented the country with a skewed picture, eschewing cross-examination and perspectives that deviated from its relentless theme: Trump’s incitement to insurrection had our democracy hanging by a thread.”

In the end, the riot of January 6 did not “prevent the peaceful transition of power.” Was the peace disturbed? Yes ...

... that’s why so many people have been prosecuted, some for serious offenses, and many others for trivial crimes that the Justice Department would normally decline to charge. But there was so little damage done to the Capitol that Congress was able to reconvene a few hours after order was restored. It promptly affirmed Biden’s victory, as it was always certain to do. No one tried to blow up the Capitol. No one tried to mass-kill the security forces. Our Constitution held firm, and there was never any reason to suspect it wouldn’t. Our democracy was not realistically imperiled, much less at the precipice of annihilation.

Ultimately, January 6 did not represent a threat to “our democracy” but instead illustrated why the Founders prudently established a republic rather than a democracy. They understood that democracies justify behavior such as occurred that day. Deliberation and the passage of laws by representative bodies are designed to permit prudence to curb the passions. As Lincoln stated, no matter how desirable our goals may be, “there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law …”

Dems Who Called For Biden’s Removal Fail To Address How Voter Voices Will Now Be Heard

Americans voted for Biden via the primary system, however, and now 14 million people have in essence been disenfranchised.

So Much For ‘Democracy’: Democrat Oligarchs Just Overthrew Their Own Voters

Democrats moved to subvert the will of their own voters to better their chances of retaining power.

Unexpected warning: Glenn Beck's startling interview with Ken Paxton



Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is well aware of the challenges facing America, and after an unexpected exchange, he’s left Glenn Beck with some concerning insights to chew on.

“He didn’t give me calming advice,” Glenn tells Stu Burguiere, relaying that Paxton told him, “If you don’t have a rule of law, if you have a court system or a country that says you cannot protect your own people, then you don’t have a constitutional republic any more.”

“And we’re back to the Declaration of Independence and requiring people to stand up for it,” Glenn says.

“I walked away from that interview feeling as though that was a historic comment.”

That comment being that Texans are being told they’ll have to stand up for the Declaration of Independence.

“That shows we are way down the road, way down the road in unsafe territories,” Glenn says.

While both Glenn and Stu don’t believe that Paxton was forewarning of civil war, they are concerned by his comments.

“I don’t think Ken Paxton is calling for something like that,” Stu tells Glenn.

“He mentioned just standing up and fighting. Look, we all stand up, stand up every day to argue on behalf of the Declaration of Independence in the Constitution.”

However, Stu says, it’s “just a couple of people really standing in the way now of losing our republic.”

“The Constitution is hanging by a thread, and we’re in a scissors factory. And the guy rushing to save it is Edward Scissorhands,” Glenn says.

“We’re not really in a stable place.”

To learn more, watch the clip below.


Want more from Stu?

To enjoy more of Stu's lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The REPUBLIC Is DEAD, but the BORDER Is WIDE OPEN! | 1/8/24
play icon

The REPUBLIC Is DEAD, but the BORDER Is WIDE OPEN! | 1/8/24

Horowitz: Most important outcome of Dobbs decision? Making state legislatures great again



It’s the body of government closest to the people, yet it’s the most forgotten, overshadowed, and weakened body in recent years. However, with the Dobbs opinion returning the power to regulate abortions to state legislatures, we now have the opportunity to focus our attention on legislative elections, sessions, and policies and settle our acerbic cultural and legal differences in the most prudent and democratic process.

We are an irrevocably divided nation, and it will only get worse over time. We can’t agree on the definition of a marriage, a woman, a citizen, a criminal, a fundamental right, or the purpose of our existence, much less the purpose of our government. We can either continue forging ahead with a winner-take-all approach to politics and have the federal executive bureaucracy – the least accountable and transparent branch of government and most distant from the people – decide every important political question. Or we settle those debates in state legislatures – the branch closest to the people where most members are elected every two years.

Whether you abhor abortion as murder or think it’s the greatest sacrament of virtue, the reality is that red states are going to ban abortions (many already have) and the blue states are going to obsessively expand access to them. Unlike the seven justices who initially banned all regulation of abortion in 1973, all those legislators in each state will be subject to removal every two or four years. For the most part, the legislators will vote in a way that reflects the values of the majority in their areas. This is the self-sorting process we’ve always needed. This dynamic needs to expand to every other important issue of our time. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s much better than where we are today, and it will allow us to live side by side harmoniously in a de facto amicable separation, albeit with shared custody over certain issues that are national in scope.

In the coming months, conservatives will be trained by their favorite Fox News media figures to obsess about the potential of a RINO takeover of Congress and the coming presidential election, even though the latter won’t even be relevant, policy-wise, until 2025. But the reality is that Republicans control trifecta supermajorities in a number of states today and will only expand that dominance next year. Come January, they have the ability to make those states de facto sanctuaries for our rights and values – if only we focus our pressure on elected state Republicans and educate them concerning the enormity of their power. It’s time to use it.

In his national design for governance, Madison explained the state vs. federal arrangement in Federalist #45 as follows: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Think about issues like COVID fascism and transgenderism. Internal order, liberties, and property, etc. – this can all be rectified at a state level. Anything outside war and foreign commerce is fair game. This is where conservatives failed to act during the lockdowns and COVID fascism. They should have activated the legislatures immediately and forced debate for the states to immediately reject the federal policies. It’s still not too late to change course.

In responding to the Biden administration’s immoral and illegal policies and edicts over the next two and a half years, conservatives should have a one-track mind and be singularly focused on how they can pressure their legislatures to interpose against the federal tyranny. Conservatives have long been distracted away from a state legislative focus, but perhaps the Democrats will teach them how it’s done. Believe me, the blue states will immediately take action and juice up funding for abortion while expanding its legal scope – perhaps even to after the birth of the baby.

Likewise, most GOP legislatures and attorneys general seem to have acted swiftly to immediately ban abortion at the first opportunity. But we now need to see this swiftness on other issues as well. For example, Biden’s Department of Education just promulgated a rule putting any school or university on the hook for sexual harassment if they don’t call men who think they are women by female pronouns. This is the sort of illegal federal regulation that states must immediately stop. Legislatures should instantly convene and block its implementation within their states.

The big problem we have in legislatures, though, is that so many of them are only in session for a few months a year. In states like Texas, they are only in session every other year. This means that, for example with COVID, when you have federal and state executive branches suspending the republic, we often have to wait months or years for legislatures to act. It was OK to have a part-time legislature when we had a part-time executive branch and the legislature was the only organ of government that legislated. However, now that the federal and state departments of health and education legislate 365 days a year without any checks or balances, the concept of a part-time legislature actually harms us.

As such, conservatives must begin pushing reforms to make it easier to call legislatures back into session, and it should not be tied to the whims of the governors. We don’t need state legislatures voting on bills all year, but we must reserve the prerogative to get them back into session at a moment’s notice to interpose against tyranny.

For years, Republicans have accumulated a ton of power in many states, have done nothing with it, and have failed to clean up their own cultural Marxist swamps within state-run agencies. Abortion was the only red line conservative voters established and held their elected representatives to. It succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Now it’s time we harness that energy for issues like medical freedom, Pfizer liability, transgenderism, illegal immigration, crime, First Amendment protections, and interposition against the tyrannical Biden administration. What the Dobbs victory has clearly shown is that we will only enjoy the rights and policies commensurate with our desire to fight for them.

Horowitz: Breaking the uniparty: It’s time to run fresh independent candidates in general elections



There’s been a lot of discussion and debate over election fraud in Pennsylvania. But there is an undeniable form of election fraud nobody discusses, and that is the existence of the Republican Party, which runs conservative in the primaries but then governs like Democrats – just like a potential fraudulent voting machine that swaps out a Republican vote for a Democrat one. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Pennsylvania race for U.S. Senate, where on the issues of our time, Mehmet Oz is indistinguishable from Democrat John Fetterman. Moreover, he is unelectable anyway and will lose to Fetterman. Isn’t it time we break the uniparty oligarchy and start recruiting impressive independent candidates in general elections?

Late in the senatorial primary, conservatives around the country were inspired by Kathy Barnette’s shoe-string campaign against two elitist opponents who spent millions of dollars. She was one of the few candidates this cycle to actually inveigh against the premise of COVID fascism and the Pfizer bio-medical state. She looked like she might pull off an impressive win based on some of the final polls, but the establishment and Trump effectively dissuaded some voters from casting their ballots for her because they suggested she couldn’t win the general election.

It is an old tactic of the GOP establishment, and unfortunately, it works. They know that our voters are most concerned about the Democrats winning, so they convince them – without providing any evidence – that the only way to beat the Democrats is to elect Republicans who will essentially codify the Democrat agenda but with slightly less enthusiasm. Thus, in this case, we were stuck with Dr. Oz, a candidate who supports the grooming agenda, “bail reform,” the vaccine biomedical state, gun control, and the World Economic Forum and who suggested that “America needs to learn from Wuhan’s quarantine lessons."

Then, the minute Oz won the primary, he wasted no time scrubbing from his website all references to Trump, who stupidly helped him win the primary, along with Fox News. Most others at least wait a few months before migrating back to their true political leanings, but Oz is getting a head start on demonstrating how he would govern. Except he will never get that chance.

Any thinking conservative should understand by now that someone like this is actually counterproductive to advancing our agenda – much like the negative efficacy of the Pfizer shot – and yes, is worse than a Democrat because he will work to subvert our agenda from within to create consensus for the globalists. But either way, this is a moot point, because two recent polls show that it is actually the liberal Republican who can’t win the general election. Even in the worst year in memory for Democrats, Fetterman is leading Oz by nine in the USAToday/Suffolk University poll and by six in an AARP poll.

Now, all things equal, this deficit is not insurmountable for Oz. However, all the polls so far show him starting out extremely unpopular, particularly among independents. He has a -26 approval among critical independent voters, according to the AARP poll, and in general is starting the race with a -33-point approval among all likely voters. That is simply toxic. It is also astounding, given how bad a year it is for Democrats and how much voters want to send a message to Joe Biden. Republicans, for the first time, actually cast more ballots in the primary than Democrats did, despite Democrats having a 554,000-person registration edge.

Imagine if these voters had a fresh face, a complete outsider with an impressive background and even more impressive agenda that drew a bold contrast to both major candidates, who essentially agree on the issue of our time – bio-medical tyranny and the World Economic Forum agenda.

The bitter truth conservative voters (and disenchanted independents and Democrats) must confront is that so long as those who badly want to see change are terrified of rising Democrat wins if they don’t support duplicitous Republicans in the general election, we have no chance of ever changing the system or leverage to make Republicans more attuned to ordinary voters. Just watch Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn betray us in broad daylight. Can you blame them? They know that it’s impossible to win against incumbents in primaries – challengers fail more than 99% of the time – and they know we will always be on the plantation for them in the general election no matter how much they stab us in the back.

This point was perfectly expressed by one liberal Florida GOP official to the New Yorker in the now infamous expose on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “There was always an element of the Republican Party that was batshit crazy,” said Mac Stipanovich, the chief of staff to former Florida Governor Bob Martinez. “They had lots of different names — they were John Birchers, they were ‘movement conservatives,’ they were the religious right. And we did what every other Republican candidate did: We exploited them. We got them to the polls. We talked about abortion. We promised — and we did nothing. They could grumble, but their choices were limited.”

This is why we only have one Ron DeSantis. Every other governor is horrible on every issue that matters. Ditto for nearly every GOP senator. They know we will always support them in the general elections, and primary challenges simply do not work. Thus, why should they antagonize the masters of the universe on behalf of the poor slobs? Until we make it clear that we are off the plantation, we will continue to suffer interminable and immutable decline with Republicans in charge.

I know I’m in the minority among conservatives in believing that it is actually worse to continue electing perfidious Republicans than Democrats and that we need to rethink our political strategy and focus altogether. It’s not to say I think we should just vote Democrat to make things more obviously worse or not vote at all. It’s that we should unite and work to recruit impressive candidates who understand the spirit of the age but have a slightly broader appeal than just a traditional conservative Republican and run that individual in the general election.

It’s nearly impossible to start a third party and consistently get on the ballot in each state, but in most states it’s fairly easy to get on the ballot as an independent. Independent candidates never win because they are usually throwaway campaigns; after all, the most viable contenders will run as Republicans or Democrats. But what if we changed that game? What if we found individuals somewhat well known, with a fresh message and agenda, no pre-existing labels as a partisan, but someone who is currently in the trenches on the issues that matter and would fight the oligarchs of both parties and appeal to the fastest-growing base of voters – the unaffiliated?

Just to throw out a random example to paint a caricature for you, think of someone like Dr. Robert Malone, one of the leading opponents of the mass vaccination and the mushrooming bio-medical state. He actually voted for Democrats in the past and was never a right-winger. But he more effectively articulates the concerns of our voters, plus so many Democrats and independents, than any Republican running for office. He is more known as a scientist than as a politician, much less a conservative Republican politician, but his impressive background would actually allow his candidacy to gain traction and raise money. There is no question in my mind that someone with this background, in this environment, could have a shot of winning a three-person race in the right state.

We only need one example of a successful independent bid to break the monopoly of the “uniparty” and actually bring change to the American people. One of two things would then occur. Either it would spawn a revolution of better-organized independent candidacies, or it would force the Republican Party to be more responsive to the people than the other half of the elite oligarchy they share with the Democrats.

This is different from simply “allowing the Democrats to win.” Yes, we won’t always succeed in winning or even recruiting such candidates, but can we at least try. Do we have to throw ourselves at the GOP oligarchs who hate us immediately in every general election, no matter how much they betray us? Can we at least make them sweat and work for our vote?

Again, I know those conservatives who watch Fox News all day will have a hard time seeing the light in cases where the RINO is a shoo-in to defeat the Democrat in a two-person race. But we should at least try a test run to break away from the duopoly in a race like the PA Senate contest, where the fake Republican is almost assured to lose anyway.

Now, obviously, Robert Malone doesn’t live in Pennsylvania, nor have I seen evidence that he is planning to venture into politics. But it is someone who fits that persona, particularly from the growing medical freedom movement, who would have to run if there’s any hope of us disarming the GOP’s blackmail of conservative voters while also having at least a chance of denying the Democrats an automatic win. I’m sure such a person exists in this large state who would not needlessly turn off non-traditional conservatives but at the same time would speak to the important issues of the day – medical freedom being the top priority. The deadline to file and gather signatures is August 1.

For over three decades, we’ve been forced to vote for the “lesser of two evils” in nearly every election – always with the promise that somehow that would lead to incremental improvements. Yet we’ve consistently suffered plain evil, not a lesser version of it, even when Republicans win, culminating with the GOP support of COVID fascism with control of two of the federal branches and half the states. If we are ever to change any aspect of our government for the good, we will have to break the duopoly at some point. In the case of the Pennsylvania Senate race, there’s no time like the present.

Horowitz: Idaho conservatives poised to remake legislature like never before



Idaho has long suffered a paradox, in that it is so dominated by Republicans that it is not so Republican at all. Because it is a de facto one-party state, many liberals who are well connected to the woke industries and lobbyists choose to run as Republicans and use their superior campaign cash to campaign as conservatives, the exact opposite of what they plan to do in office. This is why, despite a 58-12 majority in the House and a 28-7 majority in the Senate, conservatives rarely enjoy legislative wins that other red states are able to easily secure. Last night’s elections might have changed that in a big way.

Establishment Republican elites are crowing about their apparent victories in both the Pennsylvania Senate race and the Idaho gubernatorial race on Tuesday. Idaho Gov. Brad Little warded off a challenge from Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. However, when you get past the statewide elections, which require tremendous money and organization to make competitive – money true conservatives don’t have – we find a different story.

A total of 20 incumbent Republicans – 11 running for the Senate and nine running for the House – were defeated or poised to lose as of Tuesday night. A big part of these results is thanks to the work of the Idaho Freedom PAC, which actively recruited candidates against incumbents.

It’s truly hard to overstate the significance of this development. Thirteen of the 28 Republican senators didn’t stand for re-election. Out of the 15 remaining, nine were defeated, and several RINO House members seeking a Senate seat lost to conservatives. There is almost no parallel to that in recent history. While some of the races involved other quirks or were due to redistricting, and a few others were conservatives who were defeated by more ideologically ambiguous candidates, for the most part, conservatives downed many liberal Republicans and made gains in open seats.

Among the highlights were conservative Rep. Codi Galloway beating Sen. Fred Martin, the five-term Senate Health and Welfare Committee chair from Boise. Sen. Jim Patrick, who served five terms in the Senate and three in the House, was defeated by a conservative as well. He was chairman of the Senate Commerce & Human Resources Committee. Also, Rep. Greg Chaney, the outgoing chair of Judiciary, Rules & Administration in the House, lost his bid for a Senate seat, and Sen. Carl Crabtree, vice chair of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, lost his seat.

Additionally, two conservatives who moved from California to seek freedom in the Gem State defeated prominent incumbents. Retired California firefighter Carl Bjerke took out Senate Health and Welfare Committee vice chair Sen. Peter Riggs. Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee co-chair Sen. Jeff Agenbroad was defeated by Brian Lenney, who moved his family from California to Nampa in 2010.

Even in a number of instances where the incumbent survived, the challengers came much closer than we usually see in statewide elections. Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder only won his race by about 640 votes. Now he will face a brand-new caucus that can possibly vote him out of leadership. Conservatives would have enjoyed an even better night if not for the fact that leadership drew several of them into the same district and forced them to compete with each other. This dynamic made the House results more of a wash, but the House was already fairly conservative. So, the fact that the Senate has caught up to it will give the legislature a lot of clout over Gov. Brad Little.

What this success at the legislative level demonstrates is that for lower offices, where the bar to entry is much lower in terms of financial needs, conservatives are on a much more level playing field.

Even in the statewide elections, there are signs that in the future, conservatives can sweep the state. Former Congressman Raul Labrador defeated a 22-year incumbent for attorney general. Conservatives also came within a hair of winning the office of secretary of state and only lost because of vote-splitting. Even for governor, Brad Little only secured 53% of the total vote. Had there been a runoff option, the race might have picked up more momentum and could have become contested. With less vote-splitting and slightly stronger candidates, conservatives can truly take over the state next time.

In other states, mainly in the South, where there are runoffs, conservatives have a stronger chance to compete statewide. Next week, conservatives have an opportunity to draw Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey into a runoff. One recent poll showed Ivey only garnering 40% of the vote, with socially conservative businessman Tim James in second place for a potential runoff. Vote-splitting has plagued conservatives for decades, and the institution of runoffs in more states would allow them to compete against the establishment without fear of dividing the vote of thinking voters.

The Idaho media cheer for liberal Republicans because they don’t really have Democrat horses to ride, but even they recognize the significance of the Idaho Freedom PAC’s work in changing the state’s politics. A bigger focus on state legislatures will pay great dividends in the future, and other states can mimic the work of the Idaho Freedom PAC.

Indeed, the trend of RINO chairmen losing their seats played out in other states on Tuesday night. Three RINO Kentucky House chairs lost their seats in northern Kentucky. Eight-term incumbent Adam Koenig, chairman of the House Licensing and Occupations Committee, was defeated by Steven Doan, a liberty candidate supported by Congressman Thomas Massie and state Rep. Savannah Maddox, a rising conservative star who might run for governor next year. Rep. Ed Massey, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from Hebron, and Rep. Sal Santoro, an eight-term incumbent and chairman of the Transportation Budget Committee, were also defeated.

In Pennsylvania, Rep. Stan Saylor of York County and Sen. Pat Browne of Lehigh County, both the House and Senate appropriations committee chairs respectively, were defeated by conservative challengers. Saylor had been in the House for 30 years. Republicans already have strong majorities in both houses, and if they can pick up the governorship with Doug Mastriano, a more conservative legislature can dramatically alter the political trajectory of the state.

So, what gives when it comes to 63% of the Pennsylvania Republicans voting for Mehmet Oz or Dave McCormick over the conservative favorite, Kathy Barnette? Very simple. They each raised close to $16 million and ran as solid conservatives, so the other challengers, including Kathy Barnette, were outgunned. On the other hand, Doug Mastriano, likely the most conservative in the gubernatorial field, won his primary in a landslide. In that case, there was no unified establishment candidate with endless sums of money to fool the voters.

Overall, conservatives would be wise to focus more on state and local races rather than federal races. Making red states red again and state legislatures great again will go a long way in divorcing ourselves from the morass of Washington. The RINOs can have the irremediably broken federal system, while we focus on rebuilding liberty in some of the states.

Horowitz: Why is Governor Kristi Noem attacking the small group of conservative South Dakota legislators?



Why are red states not nearly as red as California is blue? Why is it so hard to pass bills against chemical castration, COVID fascism, illegal immigration, and medical tyranny in states with few Democrats in the legislatures? Well, unfortunately, in red states it’s not so much the voters who control the arc of legislation, but the special interests. And in smaller red states, the Chamber of Commerce and the medical cartel wield an outsized share of influence, often turning red states into de facto anti-abortion/pro-gun versions of blue states. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Dakota.

On paper, Democrats are an endangered species in the Mount Rushmore State. Not a single labeled Democrat holds a state office. Republicans control the state Senate 32-3 and the state House 62-8. Sounds like a conservative paradise, right? Well, as it relates to abortion and guns, like most other red states, the politics reflects the political orientation of the majority of the people. Other issues? Democrats as may as well hold a super-majority, particularly in the Senate. They just run as Republicans.

In that vein, it was shocking to read how Governor Kristi Noem has declared war, not on the RINOs who legislate like Democrats, but on the few House Republicans who actually want to make the state distinct from a blue state. Last week, the Argus Leader reported that Noem is taking a “hands on” role in training candidates to run for legislature, including those challenging the few conservative incumbents.

Not seen as vulnerable in her primary, Noem says she's still not taking her party's nomination for governor for granted. But she is managing to find time to involve herself in some battleground legislative contests. She's offered candidate school seminars to up-and-coming politicians, making endorsements and even going as far as publicly chastising Republican incumbents she doesn't see eye to eye with politically.

Last month, for instance, Noem joined District 4 House candidate Stephanie Sauder on a radio program where she openly accused Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, of being a poor legislator doing damage to South Dakota's way of life.

According to the Argus Leader, the governor is also working with Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, the president pro tempore, “to unseat far-right members of the party seeking re-election.”

Here is a list of targeted races based on a paper circulated by Schoenbeck referenced in the Argus Leader:

The highlighted members are the establishment picks not deemed “far right.”

But what does “far right” mean? People who oppose men in female sports, chemical castration of minors, corporations violating human rights and mandating dangerous shots, but support reduced taxes? The aforementioned issues have essentially been the dividing lines between the governor and some of the House conservatives over the past two years. These members were pushing for a half-percent reduction in the sales tax, but were stymied by the governor. Then they tried to eliminate the sales tax on food and institute a gas tax holiday, something done even in some blue states. Yet the governor evidently opposes it enough to primary them out of office.

Conservatives in the state and nationwide clashed with Governor Noem last year when she opposed the bill barring men in female sports.

“All of the people on her target list are true Christian conservatives, and those are the people she wants gone,” said Rep. Rhonda Milstead, the lead sponsor of HB 1217, the female sports bill, in an interview with TheBlaze.

Milstead also accuses the GOP establishment of targeting the most conservative members with new districting maps. “Our redistricting was awful because it put the people they want out in districts where they will have a hard time, or they placed solidly conservative people against each other in the same district,” charged the freshman, who represents the greater Sioux Falls area. Milstead claims the map was drawn with the intent of placing several other conservatives into her district.

Fred Deutsch of Watertown was placed into a new district because he was viewed as more repugnant to the GOP establishment than Joe Biden and the Democrats. His crime was the sponsoring of a bill banning chemical castration for minors, a bill that easily passed in numerous other red states. Yet this year, South Dakota failed to pass a single meaningful bill on any important issue, from transgenderism and illegal immigration to medical freedom and COVID fascism.

In an interview on KXLG in Watertown on April 21, Kristi Noem, who hails from that part of the state, lambasted Deutsch and others for being a drag on the state and sloppy legislators who don’t read bills and understand the consequences of good governance. “We need people who are thoughtful,” said Noem in a common refrain we hear from establishment Republicans.

Milstead disagrees. “Fred is an excellent researcher and probably does more research on the issues than the next 10 legislators. He always does his homework, even when I disagree with him, and Gov. Noem knows that.”

There is a common thread undergirding this intra-party battle in South Dakota that reverberates nationally in the Republican Party. It’s not a divide between conservatives and liberals or moderate Republicans and “far right” Republicans. It’s an unbridgeable gap between the priorities and the values of the average red state voter and the special interests that control the powerful entities in the state.

Although red-state Republican governors and legislative leaders will find some minor ways to distinguish themselves from Democrats, as it relates to the issues combatting the spirit of the age, they will always be incorrigibly on the side of the corporatists. Whether it’s transgendersim, mass refugee resettlement, illegal immigration, or COVID fascism, the powerful Republicans in office will always side with big business, which, unlike in past generations, is squarely on the side of cultural Marxism and against individual liberty. Even as it relates to the tax issue, which in the past united Republicans of ever ilk, the corporatist wing wants to focus on targeted tax provisions rather than broad-based cuts for obvious reasons.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the health care cartel. Sanford Health and Avera Health are the top employers in the state. It’s quite obvious why medical freedom will be taboo in the legislature. “The game is very simple,” notes Rep. Milstead. “The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations political action committee contributes to numerous liberal candidates around the state who they feel will walk the line on their issues. Most candidates do not have a lot of money, and so they operate with a sense of fear over what these lobbyists and PACs can do to them.”

Rep. Steve Haugaard is running against Noem in the June 7 primary. On his campaign website, he makes it clear that it is not any one issue that is motivating his run, but the power structure behind the results we see on numerous issues. “The axis of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Education, and Hollywood have changed our culture dramatically just in the past decade,” writes the former House speaker, who now faces a David vs. Goliath contest. “Today, large multinational corporations are dictating how we should live, how our children are raised, and what values our children should be taught.”

The South Dakota Constitution begins with the phrase, “We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberties …” Today, we face the challenge of corporations that have essentially become an arm of government or often even stronger than government, with the ability to destroy civil and religious liberty while shielding elected government officials from having to do the dirty work. They often enable elected red-state Republicans to campaign on doing the opposite, knowing full well they will work hand in glove with the lobbyists of those entities to silence the voice of the people.

Thus, anyone who wants to advance the cause of liberty and traditional values beyond the two legacy issues will inevitably have to engage in a full-scale war with the most powerful interests of the state. It is not for the faint of heart.