A GOP candidate can finesse Trump's supporters.
But not Trump.
Yesterday's post looked at Randy Sparacino, a GOP candidate for Oregon State Senate. There are thousands of candidates across the country with the same problem he has: Trump and his supporters.
A Medford journalist wrote me yesterday:
"I'll bet Sparacino won't say a word at this point in the campaign. After all, we have short memories for something like the summer central committee action."
That's a good bet.
Sparacino is ignoring the proclamation by activists in his party that declared the 2020 election fraudulent and Biden illegitimate. Election denial is the supposed official position of Jackson County, Oregon Republicans.
The problem for GOP candidates in purple areas is that a majority of Republican voters support Trump and his claims. They want to shout it from the rooftops. Some get onto Fox News and Newsmax. Some do it locally, like the Republican Central Committee with its proclamation. Trump's strongest supporters enjoy a feeling of solidarity. Where we go one, we go all. Us versus you. I see signs like this near my farm in a rural part of Sparacino's district. Messages like this don't make friends or win crossover votes, but they reflect an attitude.
Sparacino isn't telling his voters there is no evidence Trump won the election. As I wrote yesterday, Republican voters don't want to hear it, not in Southern Oregon or elsewhere. Trump says it; voters believe it. Republican officeholders and candidates play along. They say they heard rumors, that people have doubts, and who really knows anything for sure.
The best candidate strategy is to say as little as possible. It is cowardly but at least they are not standing in front of a stampede of the gullible. Look at Liz Cheney. What did standing up for principle get her? Republican voters can be finessed. Let them believe what they want to believe. Pivot to safe ground of inflation, regulations, and guns. Mumbling preserves some access to discontented Democrats and independent voters. At least the Republican candidate isn't a total conspiracy nut-job.
Republican candidates need not worry about local media calling them out. Here and nationwide, local small-city newspapers are a Potemkin Village with minimal staff. TV news needs stories with visual content. A candidate not taking a position isn't TV news. The political risk comes from social media. Facebook posts that call out Big Lie enablers could be devastating, if they catch on and spread. But so could viral stories that circulate among Republicans sharing that a candidate admits that Trump lost the election--the dirty, rotten RINO! The risks balance out.
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| Trump rally. Index finger up. Q symbol with thumb and middle finger. |
If you like Donald Trump you will love Randy Sparacino.
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7 comments:
That mild mannered guy with the nice tie and smile is a member of the Taliban?
Who woudda thunk it?
What the signs in the pictures display are the Republican Party’s stock-in-trade: fear, anger and hatred. That’s about all they’ve had to offer since Newt Gingrich came out with his Contract On America.
How did so many working class Americans become so angry and alienated that they resonate with someone like Trump? The answer to that question is the wreckage that the globalist elites have wreaked on the working class for the past four decades.
Export their jobs, flood the labor market with illegal immigrants, call them racist when they object, and you will reap exactly what you have sowed. Donald Trump is a giant orange middle finger raised at the globalist elites.
I don’t blame the working class for their anger and alienation. I don’t blame Donald Trump for having his pathologies resonate with so many voters. I blame the globalist elites for letting America deteriorate to the point where this could happen.
"Randy believes freedom is a fundamental right of every American. Our founding principles are under attack, and he will work to ensure our rights are not infringed upon." (My Bold)
There you go...
It's interesting how the Trump influence has infiltrated down to the local level to the point where candidates like this, who previously would be a lot more circumspect in their language, have jacked up their rhetoric to hyperbolic levels. While extremely short on specifics, the inference is that crime, spending, etc. are out of control, including references to "defunding the police" and "dysfunction in Salem", and the state is in crisis.
Oregon Republicans used to be pretty reasonable...
We would do well to respect the intelligence of local voters. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as the saying goes. A vote for Sparacino may well be just a vote for Sparacino, not a vote for Donald Trump or, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Isn't it a disservice to local voters to imply that, as a general rule, they can't tell the difference between former president Trump and Mayor Sparacino? (Or, for that matter, Sparacino and Kim Wallan.) Sure, the Republican message is problematic. But whatever one might say against Sparacino, there is still the question of whether Jeff Golden is better. What can be said against Jeff Golden? You should critique him in a future post.
K-12 schools do not teach literal CRT. But a significant number of them teach curricula that are heavily influenced by CRT.
Golden was great as a County Commissioner and just as effective in his current position. Golden is definitely not a coward, like his opponent.
I have donated to Golden and will again. Other than donating to Golden I've had no personal contact.
The USA needs more leaders like Jeff Golden!
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