Dear Editor:
We have an election coming up in November and there is just one question the people of Parsippany need to have answered – Is Jamie Barberio a real Republican or is he just a RINO (Republican In Name Only)?
The May 17-19 Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll found that 53% of Republicans believe Trump, their party’s nominee, is the “true president” now, compared to 3% of Democrats and 25% of all Americans. During a longwinded speech in Arizona on Saturday, July 24, the twice impeached, one term former guy who never won the popular vote in two elections lashed out at the “RINOs” who he believes are “worse than Democrats.” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said “If you were silent or complicit in what happened in the 2020 election, resign and go re-run as a Democrat. Get the heck out of the Republican Party.” Does Jamie believe that Joe Biden is President or does Jamie support the former guy and that the election was stolen? Is Jamie a real Republican, or just a RINO?
According to Miles Taylor — a Republican who served as chief of staff at the DHS until 2019 before leaving in disgust — should the GOP take over the House, current House minority leader Kevin McCarthy will likely be Donald Trump’s puppet if he is handed the gavel by his party. “The number one national security threat I’ve ever seen in my life to this country’s democracy is the party that I’m in, the Republican Party,” Taylor warned. “If my party retakes the House of Representatives in the next cycle, it’s going to become a haunted house. And the ghoul and the specter haunting that house is going to be Donald Trump.” Does Jamie support the former guy, is he going to go to Bedminster and swear fealty like real members of the GOP or is he a RINO?
“Those who served in the GOP have a greater burden to tell the truth about what their party has become,” Nicolle Wallace, who served as the White House Communications Director during the presidency of George W. Bush wrote “Those who know that the voter suppression laws masquerading as election integrity measures are solutions in search of problems have a duty to sound the alarm. The story of our times is understanding how one of the two major political parties became addicted to the same disinformation and anti-democratic practices it once rebuked in foreign countries and why its base has so eagerly embraced this disastrous pivot.” I think we know Jamie supports disinformation based on his term in office and allowing political parasite Johnny I. to bleed the Town as the Township Attorney. Is Jamie a real Republican, or just a RINO?
The Republican Party used to be pro-business, small government, and low taxes, now the Republican Party is pro-authoritarian, supports gerrymandering and voter suppression, and waging culture wars. The Republican Party did not even have a party platform in 2020, no need since the only thing that mattered was subservience and loyalty to the former guy. Where is Jamie on these issues? Based on past performance in office we know he is pro-authoritarian, but does he support these other GOP issues or is he just a RINO?
Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution and a resident scholar at UC Berkeley, is widely regarded by members of both parties as a leading expert on Congress and democracy wrote of the GOP “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.” Is Jamie a real Republican, ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, or just a RINO?
CBS News-YouGov polling was conducted in mid-May. Two-thirds said it was “important” for Republicans to be “loyal to Donald Trump now.” The same share said they did not believe President Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. If you were consulting for the party, respondents were asked, would you focus on developing a message and “popular policies and ideas” to win over more voters? Or would you prioritize changes to the voting rules in states and districts? A whopping 47 percent chose the latter option. In other words, nearly half of those who still identify as Republicans appear to have given up on a key premise of democracy: that you earn the right to govern by proposing ideas that appeal to a majority of the public. They’d prefer to short-circuit that process and, instead, make it harder for their opponents to vote. Is Jamie a real Republican and makes it harder for his opponents to vote and have a say in government, or is he just a RINO?
Former Vice President Dick Cheney (R-WY) is “deeply troubled” by what he’s watching his Republican Party become, his daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), revealed during a speech to the Aspen Institute. When war criminal Dick Cheney is “deeply troubled” about the Republican Party you know it’s bad. Dr. Frankenstein is “deeply troubled” by the monster he helped create. Is Jamie a real Republican, or just a “deeply troubled” RINO?
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in DOE v. Reed (No. 09-559) “Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.” The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the 1974 case of The New York Times v. Sullivan, the court wrote that the “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” This article falls under that rubric. As a registered Unaffiliated voter “I’m just asking questions” like TV dinner heir Tucker McNear Swanson Carlson does every night.
Brian Tappen
Parsippany
