Our Strongest Tool is Voting - Message from Charlotte County Republican Party Chair

The most effective tool we have to keep our state RED is voting. As we move closer to the elections of 2022, I encourage you to make sure you are registered to vote - Republican - and that your voting information is up-to-date. Go to https://www.soecharlottecountyfl.gov/. to review and make sure your name, address and party registration is up-to-date. Remember unless a primary race is opened, you will only be able to vote in Republican primaries if you are registered as a Republican.

In addition to the election of two county commissioners and two airport commissioners, school board races are on the primary ballot, as are Punta Gorda city council members. So you want to make sure you vote in this primary.

Early Voting: August 8

Primary Election Date: August 23

Currently filed local candidates can be found at the Supervisor of Elections Announced Candidate Pages

I also encourage you to sign up to get a vote-by-mail ballot just in case anything prevents you from voting in person. You can still vote in person if you can. Your vote is critical in both the upcoming primary and general election when our Governor will need your support to keep Florida free.

Gene Murtha, Chair, Republican Party of Charlotte County

Stop False Leftist Branding

 

Most of us know by now that we can’t trust most of our press.   The so-called “Associated Press” should be called  “Pravda West”.  There is no more reporting of facts.  Most if not all so-called  “news” is reported through a leftist filter.  The political left has cleverly branded a law that prohibits teachers from having conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K to 3 the “ Don’t Say Gay” bill.  

What does this bill actually say. One section says schools generally “may not discourage or prohibit parental notification of and involvement in critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.” Parents also can’t be blocked from “education and health records created, maintained, or used by the school.”

Another section says: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.”

So why isn’t this bill being called “the stand-up for parent rights” or “don’t harm our kids”   “we are the parents” bill or something that correctly labels it for what it is.  Instead we Republicans repeat the false branding that the left has given it.  (Fox News constantly does it too. ) Just like when the left started calling the protest and break-in by some over zealous and fringe members of the protest an “insurrection.” Lookup the word insurrection - seriously were these people led by the guy in the Chewbacca with horns  outfit capable of overthrowing our government?  

We have to stop perpetuating  the left’s political branding and quickly condemn  it and change it when it arises. We have to strongly use our own labels.  “Let ‘s go Brandon” was very effective.  We need more of this. 

Words Matter - The Left’s Use of False Narratives

 Left wing progressives continue to use inflated, false branding  in their goal to move the country further and further towards a socialist regime. Using the term “racist” for anyone who disagrees with their extremist views is one example.  Another is calling the January 6 protestors “insurgents.” Yes, they were disruptive, yes, lawbreaking was involved.  But Words have to have meaning, and the continuous mislabeling of the U.S. Capitol breach as an “insurrection” is an example of how a false narrative can gain currency and cause dangerous injustice. 

The latest attempt at a false narrative Is the calling HB1557 the “don’t say gay” law.   The bill supports the right of parents to be involved in decisions regarding their children's well-being and to limit discussion of gender and sexuality issues in classrooms.  No matter how many times they call Florida’s HB1557  "don't say gay" it does not change the fact that there is a huge difference between acceptance of adult gay couples and the attempt to normalize the idea of young children changing their gender. 

Words matter. I hear Republicans and even so-called conservative news broadcasters use these terms created by the left.   Republicans need to stop mimicking this language — as long as we do, they win.  It’s the “Parents Rights” law, nothing else.  

How to get Rid of RINOs

How can you get rid of RINOS? Support strong candidates running them in upcoming primaries. Here is one that needs your help.  

Constitutional attorney Harriet Hageman is the candidate running to unseat Liz Cheyney of her congressional seat representing Wyoming. Hageman has deep roots in the state and grew up on a ranch in Wyoming where she and her siblings had to move cows and fix fences, while Cheyney has spent most of her life in Virginia and bought a home in Wyoming in 2012, so she could run for the Senate  (dropped out of this race) and in 2016 run for the US Congress. She is a hawkish Bush-era Republican who  later supported the 2nd impeachment of Donald Trump and has been one of the RINO members of the Democrat’s January 6th Commission. 

It is important to note here that Cheney who has no real connection to this state is the only US House Representative for  Wyoming. While she is a so-called Conservative Republican, she has not been deeply engaged in policies that would support the State.  She has been busy politicking with Democrats like Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile Bush-era RINOs and Democrats are funding her campaign. Money is piling up in Cheney’s re-election fund — more than $7 million last year. It’s roughly 10 times as much as her Trump-backed primary challenger Harriet Hageman drew. And it’s so much cash from so many unexpected places that seasoned campaign operatives aren’t sure she can even spend it all on a House race in Wyoming.

Hageman  has been been sounding the alarm on Biden’s "30 x 30" initiative, also known as "America the Beautiful," which aims to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters by 2030.  She argues it’s a "land grab," a threat to Wyoming and an attempt by Democrats to hasten the decline of rural America.  She says “ The federal government under Joe Biden and radical Democrats are intent on taking over and federalizing our private property rights under the auspices or claim of combating climate change.” She champions  the people of Wyoming in rejecting burdensome and onerous government overreach. 

To contribute to Hageman’s caampaign go to https://www.hagemanforwyoming.com

Biden’s War on Oil and Gas Production Fuels Putin

Vladimir Putin realizes what we all know, which is that a good chunk of allies in Europe are highly dependent on Russian oil and natural gas. 

Two years ago, the U.S. was the world’s largest oil and gas producer, making the U.S. self-sufficient in energy and a major exporter. Mr. Biden’s war on oil and gas production has helped enable Putin.  Putin realized that reliance on Russian petroleum and natural gas would make it difficult for the West to put economic pressure on him.  Moreover, the rising price of his major export was providing the capital to wage an invasion.  

Given Biden’s election promises and left flank push for eliminating use of fossil fuel, Biden is now caught between an angry electorate watching  oil and gas prices rise even higher after months of rising costs and the cry for cutting off Russian oil imports.  The dynamic gives Putin important leverage in his invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's invasion has sent oil prices soaring to their highest levels in more than a decade. They've also crushed hopes of a strong global rebound from the coronavirus crisis.

Ukraine and Biden – A Story of Failure and Corruption

In 2014 when Russia annexed  the Crimea and went on to back Russian separatists in the Ukraine’s east, then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pressed President Barack Obama to take action, and fast, to make Moscow “pay in blood and money” for its aggression.  Fortunately President Obama , a Biden aide told the New York Times, was having none of it.

Biden continued to press  to increase lethal aid, backing a push to ship FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev.  The president flatly rejected the idea and dispatched Biden to the region as an emissary, cautioning him “about not overpromising to the Ukrainian government,” Biden wrote  in a memoir.

Biden began pressing the Ukraine’s leaders to tackle the rampant corruption that made their country a risky bet for international lenders — and pushing reform of Ukraine’s cronyism-ridden energy industry. “You have to be whiter than snow, or the whole world will abandon you,” Mr. Biden told the country’s newly elected president, Petro O. Poroshenko, during an early 2014 phone call, according to a New York Times article. 

Just as these efforts were happening Biden’s son Hunter joined the board of a Ukrainian gas company that was the subject of multiple corruption investigations, a position that paid him as much as $50,000 a month which in the view of some Obama administration officials, including the ambassador to Kiev — threatened to undermine Mr. Biden’s agenda.

A look back at what the former vice president actually did in Ukraine reveals that his work in Ukraine did not accomplish much nor did it  “fundamentally change the overall institutional corruption,” said Edward C. Chow, an expert on geopolitics and energy policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “And having his son doing what he did was a distraction that undermined his message.”

In 2015 Biden, while he was pushing for stronger anti-corruption moves in Ukraine, would not even discuss steps that could make all questions vanish: asking his son to quit the Burisma board, as editorial boards and Ukraine experts were suggesting. 

And this is the guy, the one who failed miserably in the region and still has his son’s suspicious involvement there in his shadow, who we have at the helm during a crisis that could push the country into a war with Russia over the Ukraine.

Democrats Now Take Aim at Voter Integrity

Because of Joe Manchin’s refusal to go along with their disastrous Build Back Better  bill, better labeled Bring us Back Broke, Democrats have shifted gears and are pushing forward with their radical election legislation.  They often scare their base by they falsely claiming that Republicans are trying to dilute the minority vote and return to an era of Jim Crow laws.  They market these election bills as “protecting voting rights.”  What they truly are our bills to protect Democrats seats in Congress and keep Democrats in power. The bill currently proposed  would exponentially degrade election security and raise the potential for fraud. 

This bill needs to take the same path as the BBB bill into the trash can of history.  We need to encourage our Governor and other elected officials to fight this.