Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Hanging In

Rich Galen

Thursday October 26, 2017

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I just got back from Chicago having given a speech to the NTEA - the Association for the Work Truck Industry.
My speech was titled (by them) as "Exploring the current state of U.S. politics and the possibilities ahead."
I began my remarks by saying from the time I got on the airplane to ORD to the time I got off a U.S. Senate, Jeff Flake (R-AZ) had announced he would not run for re-election.
I do not believe I have ever been in the same room at the same time as Senator Flake. I do know Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) who announced several weeks ago he had had enough and would not run for re-election.
There are only eight Republican-held seats at issue in the mid-term elections next November. Now, two of those are not being contested by the Senators who currently hold them.
Flake said on one of the morning shows yesterday that he would not be able to win a primary election in Arizona without, in effect, artificially pledging fealty to Donald Trump. He said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor that was not going to happen.
Last week, when I was in Marietta, Ohio (45750) I made the point several times that I have been a Republican for a long time. I started as a precinct committeeman during the Nixon Administration. I was elected the treasurer of the Washington County Republican Central Committee (where I refused to send money to Columbus, Ohio until we had raised enough to fund our own programs.
I was elected to the City Council as a Republican, and I have worked for Republican candidates and organizations for my entire adult life.
All that adds up to about 45 years of being a Republican.
Forty-five-years.
I am asked, with some regularity if, in the Age of Trump, I still consider myself to be a Republican.
Yes. Is the answer. A Trotskysite Republican, but a Republican nonetheless.
The notion of Donald Trump and his dogsbody, Steve Bannon, trying to seize control of the GOP and remake it in their own image has, so far, not dissuaded me from remaining a Republican.
Maybe it's just my natural pigheadedness.
Maybe it's listening to the stories friends of my mom and dad who escaped from Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Or my own relatives who got out of Russia and Ukraine in the 1900s to escape the pogroms.
Italians and the Irish made their way to Ellis Island. Later Chinese and Latin Americans.
I'm getting away from my point.
My point is, I am not leaving the Republican party.
I'm sorry Bob Corker can't take any more of the madness. He is one of the most decent, hardworking, and knowledgeable members of the Senate. Jeff Flake is in his first term, but he has made it clear he defines the job of U.S. Senator about the same as his colleague, John McCain: Do and say what's right.
Sen. McCain made the point the other day that some people went to Vietnam. Others got a doctor to attest his patient had bone spurs and couldn't serve. The bone spur guy said that the Vietnam war vet is deficient because his plane got shot down.
I'm not leaving the Republican Party.
Following the astonishing victory in the election of 1994 when the GOP gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years, Newt Gingrich routinely reminded people that if you want to be the majority party the edges, by definition, have to move farther and farther apart.
He taught us that, at the edges, we had to understand that the left edge and the right edge would not agree on everything, but they should seek out the SOMEthings they could agree on and move the Republican agenda ahead.
I'm not sure what the Republican Agenda is, anymore. The embarrassment of not having a "Replace" program for Obamacare ready for prime time has been matched by a desultory run at a tax bill, and zero evidence that an infrastructure bill is coming anytime soon.
Here's what I am sure of: The Republican Party has never been a cult. From Abraham Lincoln forward it has more often been the party of fairness, of progress, and of common sense.
Not always, but more often than not.
I'm staying in the GOP and I will fight to restore it to its grandeur.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Subscription Drive page and to the text of Jeff Flake's floor speech.
The Mullfoto is of a very strange street sign in Marietta, Ohio (45750).

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