Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Dean Riesen and Steve Twist.
As we are now in high political season, we propose a thought experiment before too many decisions are frozen in amber too early on. For Republicans and Independents, and even Democrats whose fond memories of the party run back to the ideals of the 1960s: How extreme is it to support a strengthened and secured U.S. border to keep dangerous people and products from flowing into the country?
A few more questions to satisfy the experiment: How ideal would it be for the United States to be energy independent? Who among any of us does not want to see our homeless population housed, free of addiction, and treated of their mental health issues? Who among us does not think that for the $900 billion Americans spend on elementary and secondary education, our scores and achievement levels should be much higher? Who here thinks the drug poisoning problem—at historically record highs—cannot be addressed and reversed? Who among us thinks our deficits and government spending priorities are keeping us on the track of economic prosperity and financial health?
Nearly any candidate that shares the obvious answers to the foregoing questions would be the kind of candidate nearly every Republican, Independent, and commonsense Democrat would take seriously and support. Especially against someone who answers each of those questions wrongly.
Now make the candidate who got the answers right a possible United States Senator in a nearly evenly divided United States Senate where the right answers to those questions have been frustrated and opposed by the modern Democratic Party.
The candidate who gets the answers to the commonsense questions above right is Kari Lake. While we did not support her in the primary in 2022, we have zero problem supporting her for the Senate seat she is running for today, here, in Arizona.
For those who disagree with some of her previous quips and misstatements, we urge thinking about any candidate who never uttered misstatements or mistaken views here and there. That candidate does not exist.
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But, what you will find in Kari Lake is someone running hard against a representative and supporter of the values of today’s Democratic Party.
And that party has a Governor in Arizona that has called Republicans neo-Nazis. It is a party that turns a blind eye and deaf ear toward rioting and elevated to Vice President someone who encouraged such rioting and helped bail out the rioters. It is a party that nominates and defends Justices to the Supreme Court who will not answer the question “What is a woman?” It is a party that supports efforts to encourage children to physically change their biological sex and supports concealing those efforts from their parents.
Today’s Democratic Party is a party that believes 1776 was not our founding date and a party that believes people should be judged for the most sublime positions, privileges, and immunities based on their most crude characteristics, like their race, rather than their most refined and human characteristics, like their brains and their morality.
It is a party that supports the legalization of dangerous drugs and a party that thinks it just fine to teach 5-year-olds age-inappropriate lessons and behaviors. It is a party that believes it OK for men to compete in women’s sports and for men to enter and use women’s bathrooms and showers and locker rooms at every age.
Today’s Democratic Party is a party that shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars to the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world while it thinks we should create another official carbon copy of Iran or Syria in the Middle East, while, at the same time, stripping the rights and power of the United States’ greatest ally in the Middle East.
Today’s Democratic Party is a party that wants to secure other nations’ borders with weapons and taxpayer dollars but does not want to protect its own border. It is a party that wants to strip First and Second Amendment rights from law-abiding Americans but wants to elevate the rights of violent criminals above those of their victims.
Finally, as we view possible scenarios that could include a Democrat in the White House, a small Democrat majority in the House of Representatives, and a Senator Ruben Gallego as part of a one-seat majority in the Senate, the following could be enacted within six months: 1) Elimination of the filibuster, 2) Appointment to the Supreme Court of four left-wing Justices, 3) Admission of Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. as states, giving the Democrats a lock on the U.S. Senate with four additional Democrat senators, and, 4) An open U. S. border with unlimited immigration, and citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. This platform is what is “extreme,” by any definition.
We can rest on our own self-important codes of personal distaste for a candidate that stands athwart all this and abstain supporting her, or we can get over statements made in the past that, to borrow from Thomas Jefferson, “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,” and get serious about defeating a much greater threat than one to our own moral superiorities; the greatest of threats to the greatest of nations. Ours. If one cares about something greater than their own self-interest, and if that “something” is this country, we ask you to support Kari Lake, as we are. Her opponent, after all, answers wrongly all the questions we raise above and supports the nightmare agenda we raise here. A vote against Kari Lake, just as a decision not to vote for or support her, is a vote for all that. Those who take their Republican Party, and this country, seriously, cannot allow that to happen.
Seth Leibsohn is a radio host and author, Dean Riesen is the Chairman of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Steve Twist is a lawyer in Scottsdale.
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