Texas Gov Rich Perry and Dwayne Horner. Oct 2014 via facebook
Dwayne Horner, campaign manager for Leigh-Anne Bellew’s 2013 Bayshore Tea Party backed primary campaign against State Senator Joe Kyrillos, received an early Christmas present earlier this month when he was admitted into the Pre-Trial Intervention (PTI) Program.
The 45 year old resident of Little Elm, Texas woke up thousands of Monmouth County voters with a 4 am robo call on June 4, 2013 the morning of the primary election. The call purported to be from the campaign of Kyrillos and his running mates Assembly members Amy Handlin and Declan O’Scanlon, informing Repbulican voters that the still had four hours to vote. The calls were caller ID spoofed to falsely indicate that they came from a phone number owned by the Monmouth County Republican Organization.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, holds a news conference in Washington September 9, 2014. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative Republicans on Wednesday resisted a plan to avert a budget fight over President Barack Obama’s immigration order, raising the likelihood that the spending struggle in Congress could last right up to the Dec. 11 deadline for a government shutdown. Tea Party lawmakers stood firm against House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner’s plan… Read the rest of this entry »
Four New Jersey Tea Party groups and a Southern California Tea Party group joined forces today in warning national Republicans not to nominate a moderate for president in 2016. In their joint statement released this morning, the Bayshore Tea Party Group, the East Jersey Tea Party Group, the NJ TEA Party Caucus and the Ventura County Tea Party from California claimed credit for the 2008 and 2012 electoral victories on President Barack Obama and promised more of the same if a moderate or liberal Republican is nominated in 2016.
In the event a moderate or liberal republican is nominated by the GOP in 2016, the Tea Party groups that joined together in this statement, have pledged to refuse any support for that nominee and urge all concerned Americans who believe in liberty, prosperity, smaller government and fiscal responsibility, to join them in their action. Other groups throughout the nation are expected to join within the weeks and months to come.
A moderate Republican will result in the continuation of lower Conservative Republican voter turnout that began in the late 1990’s and was a significant contributor to Republican Presidential loses in 2008 and 2012.
Bayshore Tea Party Group Co-founder Barbara Gonzalez said the groups have polled their members and found that the majority will not support a Republican nominee who does not pass their litmus tests. Read the rest of this entry »
If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.
~Ronald Reagan, July 1, 1975
By Tommy DeSeno
Self-identified Tea Party groups are supporting primary candidates against Republican incumbents Senator Joe Kyrillos, Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, Monmouth Freeholder Director Tom Arnone, Freeholder Deputy Director Serena DiMaso and Monmouth Sheriff Shaun Golden.
Normally I’d say to the challengers nothing more than, “Hey it’s a free country so have at it,” but to call America a “free country” now is becoming more cliché than reality, isn’t it? Between Democrat Obama’s view that he has a right to kill American citizens without due process of law and Republican John Roberts ruling that I can be “taxed” on ObamaCare for not buying it, it is becoming increasingly hard to know who to trust in matters of American freedom.
When people ask me nowadays if I’d like to see a third party in politics, I tell them I’d settle for a second one. The Democrats and Republicans are becoming that much alike.
So let me start by saying to Tea Party folks that I understand your frustration. I too feel the need to have political ideology inform political judgment rather than concerns over electoral identity.
The problem, my friends, is the “Tea Party” was never intended to be a third political party, and the local folks in Monmouth County are treating it like it is. There seems to be a need to serve a full slate of candidates without regard to whether the Republican in question should be challenged, and that makes you look more election driven than ideology driven.
We The Peopleof New Jersey do not support the Tea Party or Second Amendment movements, according to an Marist/NBC poll released this morning.
72% of the 1080 self identified New Jersey registered voters who responded to the poll said “No” when asked if they considered themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement. 19% said “Yes” and 9% were unsure.
The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 % and only questioned 22% of the amount of people that Leigh-Ann Bellew’s campaign surveyed, just in the 13th legislative district, two weeks ago.
Bellew’s campaign said that 83% or their respondents favor Tea Party candidates in the 13th. Campaign manager Dwayne Harris would not get into the specifics of the poll, like the margin of error or how many phone calls they had to make to reach 5000 people.
67% of registered voters think New Jersey needs stricter gun laws, per the Marist/NBC poll. 25% think New Jersey’s current gun laws should not be changed. 6% said New Jersey’s gun laws should be less strict. Harris wouldn’t say if the Bellew campaign polled the gun question.
27% of New Jersey voters consider themselves liberal. 32% consider themselves conservative and 40% consider themselves moderate, according to the Marist/NBC poll.
“Conservative Victory Project” will support “the most conservative candidates who can win”
With designs on winning control of the U.S. Senate in 2014, a new SuperPac financed by the biggest donors in the Republican Party has been formed to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from they types of primary challenges that resulted in the candidacies Todd Akin, Richard Murdock and Christine O’Donnell, according to an article in The New York Times.
Akin of Missouri, Murdock of Indiana and O’Donnell of Delaware each defeated establishment Republican candidates in Senate Republican primaries and went on to lose general elections that Republicans were expected to win after making public statements considered too far-right and out of the mainstream. Akin and Murdock lost in 2012. O’Donnell lost in 2010.
“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.”D
2014 Senate races in Iowa and Georgia will be the initial focus of the Conservative Victory Project. Senators Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa and Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia have announced their retirements, creating wide open races for those seats.
Preventing the Senate nomination of Iowa Congressman Steve King is an early objective of the project. Last week Harper Polling published a survey indicating that King in favored over the more moderate Republican Congressman Tom Latham in both a multi-candidate and head to head Republican primary for Harkin’s seat. The same survey indicated that Latham would defeat the Democratic front runner, Congressman Bruce Braley, in the general election.
“We’re concerned about Steve King’s Todd Akin problem,” Mr. Law said. “This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he’s said are going to be hung around his neck.”
Mr. King has compiled a record of incendiary statements during his time in Congress, including comparing illegal immigrants to dogs and likening Capitol Hill maintenance workers to “Stasi troops” after they were ordered to install environmentally friendly light bulbs. But he rejected the suggestion that his voting record or previous remarks would keep him from winning if he decided to run for the Senate.
King earned the support of Governor Chris Christie in his 2010 and 2012 reelection races by coming to the former U.S. Attorney’s defense during congressional hearings in 2009 that were designed by Democrats to derail Christie’s gubernatorial campaign against Jon Corzine. However, King voted against the Hurricane Sandy Relief Bill last month. Christie declined to say if he would support King in the future at a Sandy related press conference.
Death threats, charges of racism and the disapproval of his neighbors couldn’t get Bill Skuby to remove a photo altered to depict President Obama as a witch doctor from the window display of his high end mens clothing store in Spring Lake.
Click on photo for full view
Skuby removed the photo, “for now” he says, that has generated strong reactions, both pro and con, from his window display yesterday. He said respect for the office of President of the United States and the bullying that his bi-racial granddaughter has experienced since the controversy has emerged moved him to remove the photo that has generated nationwide attention. He said he will decide whether to put the controversial photo back into the display on Monday.
Skuby has been using one of his windows for edgy advertising for years. His Halloween display mocked President Obama last year too. This year he added the witch doctor photo over the words Obama Care with the C in Care being a Soviet hammer and sickle and a black hat with F.Y.B.O. embroidered in white on the front and S.L.N.J. Tea Party embroidered on the back. The hats are for sale for $25 and Skuby says the proceeds are going to charity.
This year Skuby’s display is making an impact beyond the borders of the tony town on the Irish Rivera.
Spring Lake resident Barbara Parnell walked past the display on Monday and found it to be “overtly racist.” Parnell called the clothing manufacturers who supply Skuby’s store to complain. She told them that the press had been alerted. “I plead the 5th amendment,” Purnell said when asked directly if she alerted the press. Later during a phone interview she said that one of the people quoted in the Asbury Park Press’s initial article about the display, not her, alerted the media to the display that she said “does not represent the Spring Lake business community.”
While Skuby seemed to be enjoying and cashing in on the publicity on Tuesday and during radio interviews on Wednesday morning, when MMM visited his store on Wednesday afternoon the ugly phone calls and emails from all over the country as well as the negative reaction of his fellow business owners on Third Ave were taking a toll on him and his wife Gail.
“90% percent of the reaction has been positive and supportive, but the 10% has been over the top,” said Skuby, “I’ve gotten six death threats and someone threatened to destroy the store if the display is not removed. I’m resigning from the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Improvement District, putting my house on the market and moving my business out of town when my lease expires at the end of the year.”
During a phone interview on Thursday, Skuby said that about half of the negative responses he received were not about race, but about respect for the office of the presidency. “That’s what got me to take it down. I’m not sure I will keep it out of the window, but I see their point.”
