Commentary

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s announcement that she would not be running for reelection didn’t come as a surprise, but what I am about to write may come as a surprise to my readers.

“Sadly, I doubt there will be many around the state who will miss her,” wrote Laurie Roberts, the bleeding-heart liberal columnist of the Arizona Republic, but I will.

I’m reminded of how she drew the ire of progressives when she, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, refused to weaken the 60-vote threshold in order to codify abortion or voting rights legislation.  She believed strongly in the institution of the Senate.

Then there was her vote against the $15 minimum wage three years ago when she went to the floor of the Senate and cast her vote with a dramatic thumbs-down motion, reminiscent of the late Sen. John McCain’s 2017 thumbs-down vote on the Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare.

It was in December of 2022, when the Schumer gang was rejoicing over the run-off victory of Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, that Sinema decided to announce that she was quitting the party.  Quite a turnaround for someone who began her career on the far left.

“I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

Yes, she is kinda quirky, in her actions and her dress, and I didn’t always agree with her, but I appreciated her taking a stand when she strongly believed in something no matter if it wasn’t along the party line. 

Looking back, it was a lot like my love-hate relationship with McCain.

I was disappointed in her reason for quitting.  “Compromise is a dirty word. We’ve arrived at a crossroad, and we chose anger and division,” she said, adding “I believe I my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now.”

That’s where I part ways with Sinema.

Regular readers may recall my piece, “Words Having No Place in the GOP Vocabulary: ‘Compromise,’ ‘Common Ground,’ and ‘Consensus.’   In it I mocked the phrase often used  between members of opposite parties – reaching across the aisle to find common ground.  I asked, “what half of the socialist’s new green deal are you willing to accept.”

Over the years, Pew Research has learned that the majority of likely voters prefer politicians who stick to their principles without compromising.

Former President Ronald Reagan said it succinctly … “We win, they lose.”

Haley’s DC Win

Nikki Haley’s win in Washington DC wasn’t surprising.  With more than 300,000 people employed by the federal government in what has become known as The Swamp, they are aware of former President Trump’s statements on draining it.

Republicans make up just five percent of DC’s registered voters.

They Love Trump

Wall Street Journal staffer Natalie Andrews ventured into areas of North Carolina – Raleigh, Pikeville, Greensboro and Goldsboro – to talk with residents about the presidential election and found that even with former President Trump’s legal troubles, they are more likely to back him because they view him as unfairly targeted by his political enemies on both sides.

Trump took the North Carolina primary with 73.9 percent while Nikki Haley received 23.3 percent.

Journalism at its Worst

The left-leaning Arizona Republic, with its affiliation with USA Today Network, is again using its news pages in addition to its opinion pages to go after Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake.  Below a four-column banner headline in at least a 48 pt font typeface reading, “Lake paid $15K to talk to extremists,” the paper attributes the story to a questionable organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The SPLC is a leftist group that has developed a list of organizations they deem “hate” organizations and use intimidation on them for financial benefit.  Most news outlets believe the SPLC has thoroughly disqualified itself as an arbiter of justice, but the story on Lake appears different.

The author of the hit piece on Lake, Ronald J. Hansen, like many reporters in journalism today, failed to do his research on the SPLC.  Had he done so, he would have found an August 18, 2019 op-ed published by USA Today, written by Jessica Prol Smith, “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate-based scam that nearly caused me to be murdered.”

Incidentally, Lake was criticized for identifying her benefactor as  the NE Tarant County Tea Party, as it was originally organized, not by its current name, True Texas Project, labeled by the SPLC as an extremist, anti-government group.

The State of the Union Address

I saved space here for my comments on President Biden’s address to the American people on the state of the union, but looking at my notes, I simply didn’t  know where to begin.

However, as I headed for my keyboard, I heard a remark by Fox’s Brit Hume, someone who has probably covered more of these sessions than he cares to remember:

“What I saw was an angry old man.”

I cannot improve on that commentary.

May God continue to bless the United States of America