The Hugin campaign would have done better in a Democrat primary.

Bob Hugin is a great guy.  Really.  He’s a good and decent man.  It was unfortunate that he found himself in a Republican primary… this year.  The fact that he persevered with such confidence and grace makes him a heroic, somewhat tragic, figure.  

Bob Hugin could have run in the Democrat primary.  $35 million… against Bob Menendez?  Hugin had the issues right for a Democrat primary… and the media wouldn’t have pounced on a Democrat Bob Hugin the way they did a Republican Bob Hugin.  The media love rich members of the One Percent when they are Democrats (it is a capital sin when you are a Republican)… they love woke, right-on pharma folk of the proper political affiliation.  They would have forgiven him everything.

But Bob ran as a Republican, and he ran this year.  A year when the media he wanted to appeal to was working to nationalize the election – to make it about Trump.  That media ended up vouching for Bob Menendez, despite having formerly called for his resignation. That media still cuts it with the people who Bob Hugin wanted to convince:  Democrats and liberal-leaners.   

Rather than shutting down Menendez, Hugin’s attacks were used by the media as evidence that he – Bob Hugin – was a “bad” man.  Of course, this only works with those who are open to receiving a message from the likes of Tom Moran and MSNBC.  Unfortunately, they were precisely the voters that the Hugin campaign was aimed at. 

Can we put aside the myth that Republican voters will come out no matter what, and dutifully vote Republican?  That myth should have finally, once and for all, been discarded after the low turnout Assembly races in 2015, when Republicans AGAIN lost seats in the Legislature and were AGAIN provided with irrelevant excuses for having done so. 

Oh the excuses!  One year it is Christie’s fault, the next it is Trump’s, and in between, the dog ate it!  New Jersey Republicans should set up their own public relations firm specializing in excuse-making.  Excuses aside, New Jersey’s GOP establishment should understand that the days of Republicans “holding their noses” and voting are over.

Republican voters are like anyone else.  Ignore them, say you are embarrassed to be with them, that you are “different” from them… and they will reward you in kind.  As an experiment, try some of that language next time you are in public with your wife and her family (or your husband and his).  Invite them out to a restaurant, then tell the host:  “I’m a different kind of member of this family, I’m not really one of them… They are a little, umm… backward.”  And say it so they hear it.  Say it loud, like ten million dollars’ worth of loud, and see how they like it.  Go ahead, try it.  Get back to us on it.

And that’s what the whole Hugin campaign was based on, wasn’t it?

“I’m a different kind of Republican.”  They are a little backward, a little off, but I’m with it.  I am a cool Republican.  Except that there are no “cool” Republicans.  Not in the minds of the media.  They only thought John McCain was cool when he was pissing on Bush.  The moment it became about him and Obama, John McCain became a troglodyte in the minds of the media.  After the dust settled, he became cool again, especially when pissing on other Republicans… especially when pissing on Trump.  But when he needed them, the media screwed John McCain.  So why even bother with them?

President Ronald Reagan understood the media (and they were a lot more condensed, more centralized, and a lot stronger back then).  That’s why he talked past them – to the people.  He didn’t give a damn about their approval.  He fed them the diet he wanted them to eat and even when they shit it out it contained the kernels of his message.  Reagan wasn’t afraid to be a Republican and to explain what that meant.  He had a message that he tested and honed by human contact – by speaking to people, engaging them, listening for the examples that would be used in his speeches, turning them on to his way of thinking, building a movement of ideas and about issues that mattered to people.

How many Republicans today, in New Jersey, can explain why they are Republicans or what Republicanism is?  At the big Republican show put on by the NJGOP last spring in Atlantic City, two professional Republican organizers up from Washington, DC, posed the same questions to attendees.  Not only was there no apparent theme or connectivity between the responses, even the organizers couldn’t adequately provide reasons or an explanation as to why they were there in the first place.  It was kind of sad.

What that confab did showcase, however, is the top-down meddling that has become the hallmark of the establishment in New Jersey, with a congressional candidate in a contested primary receiving top billing as the event’s featured speaker.  Yes, there was resource-draining meddling in districts 2, 5, and 11 – in an effort to promote candidates who would fit seamlessly with the statewide message being promoted by the campaign of Bob Hugin.

Instead of building a grassroots coalition of Republicans and reformers – of the kind Ralph Nader wrote about in his book, Unstoppable – the Hugin campaign  actually determined that their best chance lay in targeting “soft” Democrats and culturally “left-leaning” independents.  But these are the very same voters open to arguments from left-leaning media like CNN, MSNBC, NJ.com, and the Bergen Record.  So when the Hugin campaign pushed a relentlessly negative message about Menendez, those “independent arbiters” pushed back and were listened to. 

This allowed the Menendez campaign to focus on making the link between Hugin and Trump – which the media backed up.  The more the media pressed, the more Hugin denied Trump, the more he suppressed his own base.  Meanwhile, the Hugin campaign went right on churning out GOTV communications and efforts to turn out those “soft” Democrats and culturally “left-leaning” independents who had by now been convinced by the media that Hugin was a “bad” man who was lying about Menendez.  Gagged and gagged again.

In the days and weeks ahead we will be taking a proper, in depth, examination of the Republican operation in the Garden State.  It will be a necessary, warts and all, detailed review.  So stay tuned.

For now, we will leave you with this: 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  - Winston Churchill

Rasmussen Poll: Voters mixed on trusting Government

Trust... but verify. 

President Ronald Reagan's message regarding dealings with the then Soviet Union seems to have been adopted by most American voters in how they view their own government, according to a recent poll by the Rasmussen research organization.  Rasmussen describes it as "cautious trust."  Among the poll's findings:

--Just 26% of Likely U.S. Voters trust the federal government to do the right thing at least most of the time, including just four percent (4%) who almost always trust them to do the right thing.

--Fifty-two percent (52%) trust the government to do the right thing some of the time, while 21% rarely or never trust the feds to do the right thing. That’s down from the 30% who rarely or never trusted the government in 2016.

--Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Republican voters and 30% of Democrats trust the federal government to do the right thing at least most of the time. Just 18% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree.

--Thirty-seven percent (37%) of black voters trust the government at least most of the time, compared to just 25% of whites and 23% of other minority voters.

Rasmussen surveyed 1,000 likely voters nationally.  The poll was conducted April 23-24, 2017.  The poll had a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.  The question asked was as follows:

"How much of the time do you trust the federal government to do the right thing?"

  4% Almost always
22% Most of the time
52% Some of the time
21% Rarely or never
  1% Not sure

Curiously, trust in government declined with educational attainment.  With just 64% of those without a high school diploma reporting any trust at all.

Attended high school, but did not graduate

  6% Almost always
21% Most of the time
37% Some of the time
22% Rarely or never
 14% Not sure

High school graduate

  7% Almost always
23% Most of the time
49% Some of the time
20% Rarely or never
  1% Not sure

Attended college, but did not complete

  6% Almost always
17% Most of the time
51% Some of the time
25% Rarely or never
  1% Not sure

College graduate

  4% Almost always
21% Most of the time
54% Some of the time
21% Rarely or never
  1% Not sure

Graduate school

  1% Almost always
27% Most of the time
54% Some of the time
18% Rarely or never
  0% Not sure

Very interesting data.  For more information, visit www.rasmussenreports.com.

Trump's infrastructure jobs need state matching funds

You know that it is over for the nattering nabobs of negativism when all they have are lies and disinformation.

Take this post put up over the weekend on a Tea Party website:

FACT #1: We are paying less for gasoline now than what we paid 18 months ago.  Costs have declined dramatically from 2014.  Here is the graph that proves it:

FACT #2: The Tax Reform bill (S-2411/A-12) actually cut taxes by $1.4 billion:

   - A tax cut on retirement income that means most New Jersey retirees will no longer pay state income tax.  This tax cut is worth about $2,000 annually to the average retiree.

- Elimination of the Estate Tax.  This protects family farms and small businesses from being forced to choose between paying taxes or closing and laying-off workers.

- Tax cut for veterans.  Honorably discharged active duty, guard, and reserve veterans now get an additional $3,000 personal income tax deduction.

- Tax credit for low-income workers.  Worth $100 annually to the average worker.

- Sales tax cut.  Worth another $100 annually to the average consumer.

- Property tax relief.  The legislation doubled the amount going to county and municipal governments to repair roads and bridges and so offset property tax increases.

After 28 years of failing to adjust the gas tax for inflation and borrowing to make up the difference the TTF was deeply in debt.  The last time the gas tax produced enough revenue to pay for New Jersey's transportation needs was in 1990.  Because of the debt that was allowed to accumulate, by 2015 the annual cost of that debt to taxpayers was $1.1 billion -- outstripping the $750 million revenue from the gas tax.  That's what happens when you suspend the iron rules of economics and tell people that they can have something for nothing.

The Transportation Trust Fund was broke.  Road and bridge projects funded by the TTF were frozen.  That included all those county and municipal projects dependent on TTF funding.  Work had stopped. Without funding from the TTF, local governments would have had to raise property taxes by an average of more than $500 a household just to make up for the lost aid to keep county and local roads safely maintained.  And if county and local governments failed to repair roads and bridges and allowed people to use them anyway, the eventual cost in litigation to cover the injuries sustained as the result could vastly outstrip the costs to maintain them in the first place.

So yes, under these circumstances, the long over-due adjustment for inflation did result in the tax on gasoline going up by 23-cents a gallon. 

FACT #3:  President Ronald Reagan doubled the federal tax on gasoline because, as a conservative, he understood that a user tax (like the gas tax) is the fairest form of taxation.  Ronald Reagan, the greatest Republican President of the last century, the father of the modern conservative movement.

FACT #4:  President Donald Trump is right.  America's infrastructure is a disgrace and New Jersey's transportation infrastructure is among the worst. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report in 2016 and we've taken snapshots directly from it:

Now that is what the professionals -- the best in their field -- had to say. 

Today, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, America is on the cusp of a huge boom in federal spending on infrastructure.  Twenty states are in the process of raising their tax on gasoline so that they have the matching funds available to participate in the federal projects coming our way.  New Jersey is, for once, ahead of many of the others. 

President Trump's plan is to spend a trillion dollars creating over a hundred thousand new jobs and billions in related economic activity.

Some, like the fellow who posted the negative comments above, already have nice, comfortable jobs with the state, a nice pension and benefits.  But others are not as fortunate.  President Trump's plan is going to mean the chance at a future for them.

Steve Lonegan defends President Trump

Donald Trump is getting the Reagan treatment

By Steve Lonegan

Shortly after taking office in January 1981, Ronald Reagan's national security adviser found himself accused of taking a bribe from a foreign government. That man was Richard Allen, a native of Collingswood.  The investigation was “leaked” to the press. President Reagan called the whole thing an act of political sabotage. In the end, Allen resigned but was later cleared.

Sound familiar? Welcome to being a conservative Republican in a country dominated by a liberal media.

In 1981, thousands of protesters marched in a movement that came to call itself the “Days of Resistance.” The New York Times reported that among the group’s concerns were the “equal rights for racial minorities, women and homosexuals, nuclear disarmament, abortion rights, sterilization abuse, unemployment, cuts in Federal social programs and disparate treatment of refugees and undocumented aliens.”

This was followed by even larger anti-Reagan marches in September 1981 and June 1982.

Nothing new here. either. This is the standard leftist response to conservative leadership.

And as for Donald Trump’s first days on the job? Domestic policy, foreign policy, Cabinet appointments and tax cuts … what’s not to like?

After eight years of a gray economy – eight years of the media celebrating every little downtick of unemployment, while trying to ignore losses in workforce participation, upsurges in underemployment and a grinding foreclosure rate – working America, business America, is excited and hopeful about the future.

Look at the stock market.

Investor confidence is up and business is looking toward a boom. Trump has moved quickly to get to work on infrastructure – like the Keystone pipeline project – even as liberal naysayers attempt to delay it and pour cold water on the blue-collar workers who will benefit from employment the project will create.

What is it with these liberals? What is inside their heads and how must they view a world in which building a wall is impossible? We are the nation that built the Erie Canal with picks and shovels! We built the Panama Canal, too, railroads coast to coast, the Empire State Building and the interstate highway system.  We sent a man to the moon and brought him safely home. Now they want us to believe we cannot bring manufacturing jobs back to America. They want us to give up and go down without a fight.

That is why there are large numbers of people who support the president. They want to believe that we, as a nation, still have it. They want to believe that if we decide to do a simple thing – like secure our borders against terrorism, illegal drugs and human trafficking – that we can accomplish it. That having defeated slavery once, 150 years ago, that we can defeat this new slavery called human trafficking. That we are still as good men and women as our grandparents were.

For all the dark appraisals of the situation in which we find ourselves, the appeal of Donald Trump is essentially an appeal to America’s inner optimism. That we can figure out a way to move forward – to make America great again.

The liberal elites in this country would prefer it if Americans behaved like content consumers of the products, culture and ideas they fed them. Optimism is an emotion that leads to growth and emancipation, and for the elites, this is dangerous thinking.

It is important to remember that Trump has been in office one month, during which time he has challenged policies thought unchangeable and spoken frankly about what was formerly unmentionable.

Yes, the Washington establishment has pushed back. Its members want the intractable to remain so. Their world is a “Catch-22” world, because in a “Catch-22” world, change is impossible and only the status quo endlessly remains.

It’s been a month and it has taken the whole of the establishment just to deal with the burst of effusive, optimistic energy that is Donald Trump. Even with an adversarial media and all the rest, it has not stopped him or driven him out or turned him from his course. And that is because of the support Trump gains from a broad group of forgotten Americans who are forgotten no longer.

And as his first month passes, remember that at least 47 months – and more likely, 95 – remain.

Steve Lonegan, Republican, is a former mayor of Bogota, former state director of Americans for Prosperity and was a national surrogate spokesman for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign.

This column was originally published in the Record of Bergen County.

Skylands group backs Phoebus' pro-transgender bill

Something calling itself the Skylands Patriot tea party group put out a bizarre and rambling attack last evening on Governor Christie and by extension, President Trump.  Why?  Apparently the Governor and the President are too conservative for them on social issues.

We understand that a minority of tea party members are more libertine than libertarian, and that the Occupy Movement is probably where they really belong.  For our part, we applaud the positions of Governor Christie and President Trump on values issues like support for the Right-to-Life and the Second Amendment.   

The Skylands group launched their attack in response to news coverage about Assemblyperson Gail Phoebus' vote to establish a Transgender Equality Task Force.  In a vote on Monday, Phoebus put herself on record as supporting A-4567.  This legislation is sponsored by liberal Democrats Valerie Huttle, Tim Eustace, and Nancy Pinkin.  Here's what it would do (taken directly from the official OLS Bill Statement):

This bill, as amended, establishes the Transgender Equality Task Force, which is charged with assessing the legal and societal barriers to equality for transgender individuals in the State, and providing recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor on how to ensure equality and improve the lives of transgender individuals, with particular attention to the following areas: healthcare, long term care, education, higher education, housing, employment, and criminal justice.

     The bill provides that the task force shall consist of 17 members as follows: a representative of the Department of Banking and Insurance whose duties or expertise includes insurance and banking services and policies as applied to transgender individuals; a representative of the Department of Human Services whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by minority populations to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Department of Health whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by minority populations to clinically appropriate healthcare services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of healthcare programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Department of Education whose duties or expertise includes protecting the rights of minority students or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of educational programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education whose duties or expertise includes protecting the rights of minority students in the higher education system or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of higher educational programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Division of Civil Rights in the Department of Law and Public Safety whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the delivery of the division’s programs, policies, or initiatives; and a representative of the Department of Children and Families whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives with regard to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth; a representative of the Department of Corrections whose duties or expertise includes protecting the safety of minority populations or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Department of Labor and Workforce Development whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by minority populations to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives; two public members to be appointed by the Speaker of the General Assembly, one of whom shall be a physician who specializes in transgender health issues, and one of whom shall be a transgender individual; two public members to be appointed by the President of the Senate, one of whom shall be a  parent or guardian of a transgender individual, and one of whom shall be an attorney specializing in transgender rights; one public member to be appointed by the Governor, who shall be a representative of a social service agency that provides services and supports to transgender individuals; a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union; a representative of  Garden State Equality; and a representative of The Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey.

     The bill provides that the task force is to organize as soon as practicable following the appointment of its members, but not later than the 30th day following the appointment of its members, and that the task force is to select a chairperson from among its members.  The bill permits the task force to hold meetings at the times and places it may designate, and provides that a majority of the authorized members of the task force shall constitute a quorum. The bill also provides that the task force may conduct business without a quorum, but may only vote on a recommendation when a quorum is present. Pursuant to the bill, the task force is entitled to receive assistance and services from any State, county, or municipal department, board, commission, or agency, as it may require, and as may be available to it for its purposes, and The Division on Civil Rights in the Department of Law and Public Safety is to provide professional and clerical staff to the task force, as necessary to effectuate the purposes of the bill.   

     The bill requires that the task force prepare and submit a written report to the Governor and the Legislature, outlining its recommendations for advancing transgender equality in the State, not later than six months after its initial meeting. 

A-4567 ensures that the opinions of people with traditional or religious points of view are totally shut out -- along with the views of eminent researchers, medical professionals, scientists, psychiatrists, therapists, and experts in the field of child psychology.  This legislation is designed, in advance, to achieve an intended radical, far-left outcome. 

So get ready to pay more in health care costs after those transgender mandates are recommended and then voted into law by the Democrats who control both chambers of the Legislature.  Get ready to pay higher insurance premiums.

Here's Phoebus' vote (SOURCE:  New Jersey Legislature):

A4567 Aca (1R) Establishes Transgender Equality Task Force. 
2nd Reading in the Assembly

Vainieri Huttle, Valerie © - Yes	Tucker, Cleopatra G. (V) - Yes	Howarth, Joe - Yes
Jones, Patricia Egan - Yes	McKnight, Angela V. - Yes	Phoebus, Gail - Yes

Sadly, we can expect more of this from Phoebus.  This is what happens when a legislator who ran as a conservative falls under the spell of liberal lawyers who donate to Barack Obama.  What you get are votes worthy of Barack Obama.