Instead of asking themselves why they can’t field better candidates, ‘my’ Republican Party leaders are taking their own people to the woodshed for not supporting the clowns they put into the political circus.
This article by EJ Montini on AZCentral today provides a good example of several interrelated malfunctions of the Republican Party in Arizona (and elsewhere). Barbara Espinosa is not only a Republican, she’s one who’s trying to change the dynamic via her participation as a leader in the Republicans’ state Legislative District 23 structure, and her blog at http://www.americanfreedombybarbara.com/:
Election today, Republican kangaroo court Thursday
EJ Montini, columnist | azcentral.com 3:14 p.m. MST November 4, 2014
GOP activist and blogger Barbara Espinosa, who is also a Republican committee chairwoman for District 23, was among 11 Republican district chairmen to have received a letter from the Republican Party’s county chairman A.J. LaFaro informing them that their announced support of “Non-Republican Candidates” could lead to removal of their voting rights at all legislative district and committee meetings through the end of their terms.
Espinosa did not back down.
On Tuesday she sent out an e-mail reading,
“Today I voted, tomorrow night I stand before a Republican Kangaroo tribunal for thinking and daring to support a Democrat. For Fred DuVal (a Democrat) for AZ governor, Michele Reagan for Secretary of State, David Garcia (a Democrat) for Education, Paula Pennypacker (a Democrat) AZ LD23 Senate, AZ AG Mark Brnovich. I ignored the letter next to their names and voted for the person I had researched and best to lead Arizona forward.
“That would not continue the failed policies of the Arizona Senate which has been controlled by Republicans for the past 14 years. Democrats shared a bipartisan 15-15 split with the election of 2000 that lasted only two years (because of GOP domination of the newly created Independent Redistricting Commission in 2002).
Democrats last won control of the Senate chamber outright in the election of 1990. And you have had a Republican Governor for last 6 years: Hows that working out for jobs and economy? Arizona is 14th in nation for job growth. It was time to change leadership.”
Espinosa included in her e-mail a copy of a demand from LeFaro’s “Executive Guidance Committee” to appear Thursday at Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix (no cameras, recording devices or journalists allowed) where “the EGC will discuss and take action on the 11 precinct committeemen (PCs) who have reportedly endorsed Non-Republican candidates — in violation of current MCRC EGC Bylaws. The 11 PCs cited for endorsing Non-Republicans will be allowed to defend their actions. The EGC can remove their voting privileges as a PC for the rest of their two-year terms.”
Espinosa previously said that LaFaro’s “nonsense” would expect Republicans to support a GOP drug cartel member over a Democratic minister.
She added in an e-mail to me on Tuesday, “BTW what they are doing is illegal. Yes I am a PC in LD 23 and been very vocal that I do not believe (Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug) Ducey is qualified to be governor of any state and that includes Arizona.”
Odd, isn’t it?
On Tuesday we celebrate everything that is good about our republic — citizens voting for the candidates of their choice.
On Thursday the party that is likely to benefit most from that process holds it’s version of the Salem witch trials.
Will the Republican political “heretics” get burned?
Oh well, that democracy thing was nice while it lasted.
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In the words of our first president, George Washington in his farewell address.
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Or if you prefer Thomas Jefferson.
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.