The Arizona Daily Star must be feeling left out today, but don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about them.
Instead of publishing warmed-over press releases from the Martha McSally campaign as “news,” CD-2 candidate Martha McSally headlines Lincoln Day dinner in Hawaii, maybe the Star should have hired a political reporter to send down to Cochise County to cover the Lincoln Day dinner in closer proximity to Tucson. What, the Star can’t afford a stipend for gas and some food? Have Jim Click chip in.
Bill Hess at the Sierra Vista Herald can show your reporter how it’s done. Check out this report. Fighting for the ‘will of the people’ (the link has been fixed):
FORT HUACHUCA — Some words spoken more than 150 years ago are still a battle cry for Republicans.
For the GOP today the fight to ensure the will of the people is heard is what the Republican party stands for, Casey Jones, the chairman of the Cochise County Republican Committee, said at the formal opening of the annual Abraham Lincoln Day Dinner.
Quoting Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the final 14 words of the speech should be the motto of the Republican Party, Jones said.
Those words: “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” remain the clarion call of the party, the county chairman said. “We are in a grand battle to save our nation,” Jones said, noting two speakers at the dinner — U.S. Rep. David Schweikert and Arizona’s Chairman of the Republican Party Robert Graham — will specifically address the issues facing the party in this year’s federal, state and local elections.
Schweikert noted in less than four minutes Lincoln encapsulated the importance of America’s Civil War and the battle in the fields in and around Gettysburg, Pa. But in his closing, Lincoln noted the Union victory at Gettysburg did not mean the war was over, said the congressman who represents Arizona’s Congressional District 6.
And that battle continues to ensure his final words that the government of, by and for the people does not perish.
For the congressman, the people’s government is in danger of collapsing. His solution is to ensure more people with conservative values are elected to office and to do that means putting in Republicans who have those values.
Of the nearly three million Arizonans of voting age “only 2,000 are actual conservatives,” Schweikert said.
Did you catch that Republicans? David Schweikert believes that only the GOP crazy base of wild-eyed Teabaggers are “actual conservatives.” The rest of you are suspect.
True conservatives want to end the out-of-control spending at all levels of government, the congressman said.
America’s true total debt is $205 trillion and the best estimate of the world’s value is $180 trillion. That means America’s debt “is greater than the entire wealth of the world,” he said.
The greatest spender is the U.S. government, Schweikert said.
“Washington is absolutely evil,” he said — speaking of the capitol not the first president.
And the driver of that evil is “the president and the election machine for the left,” the congressman said of the Democrats.
Are you feeling that bipartisan love from Davey? Obama Derangement Syndrome.
When it comes to reality, “the left doesn’t care about honesty, they care about power,” Schweikert said.
A bit of psychological projection here. This is a hallmark of the conservative media entertainment complex.
And Democrats are hoping Republicans forget about election day, he added.
Now it’s fine for Republicans to “have liberals as friends and family members … (but) we cannot let the left screw things up,” the congressman said. The mission of Republicans is “to stop the left from eroding our country,” Schweikert said.
To engage in that missions means Republicans have to gear up, he said.
“Let’s go take it to them,” the congressman said.
“AAAARGH!” with spittle flying.
Robert Graham [chairman of the Arizona Republican Party] started his speech with a pugnacious “we got to fight to win.”
GOP values have to be touted not hidden, he said.
Every district in every county has to step up and no longer can Democrats say what Republicans are because we “have to define it.”
* * *
Spending time talking to Democrats is wasting money so the goal is to get Republicans who don’t vote and independents to go to the polls and vote for Republicans, Graham said.
* * *
“It’s time not to be nice. It’s time to knock them (Democrats) down and step on their chests,” Graham said.
Thems fightin’ words!
Since this was a Lincoln Day dinner (The “Party of Lincoln” has long since ceased to exist. This is not your father’s GOP.), maybe Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address would have been a more appropriate selection:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
BTW: isn’t there a problem with holding a partisan political event in a military installation facility? (The Thunder Mountain Activity Centre on Fort Huachuca). Someone should check into this and find out.
Maybe the Star will find someone to cover the Pima County Lincoln Day dinner this Friday. National Committeeman Bruce Ash and Christina Corieri from the Goldwater Institute are the speakers. Somehow I do not imagine that will be any improvement.