It’s Not Up To The Republicans…

This start-of-the-year article isn’t nearly as pessimistic as it’s going to sound, but hang with me.

As I was sorting through the news stories about the feckless Kevin McCarthy’s yearnings to be his party’s House speaker, and other political stuff, I reflected on a lunchtime conversation I had with an old friend over the holidays.

We usually talk about cars, and only cars. So it was unusual when we veered into politics as the plates were cleared.

He’s generally right of center, and usually a positive person. But he seems down about the short-term in this country, mainly because (and you hear this a lot) the great majority of us have no voice in the arena, and the shrill, hysterical voices of the extremes are deafening.

Actually, we have a voice, but we’re not raising it…yet. I couldn’t disagree with his analysis.

I did offer my take: every day, with every new over-reach, every new power grab, every new tone-deaf policy that puts our people last and special interests first, every new race-baiter, reality-denier, gender-inventer…every new outrage brings a few more normal, apolitical people into the arena. Not just one kind of people, but people who have, personally, had enough wokeness shoved down their throats.

You saw it, dramatically, with the exponential increased interest in school boards and curricula since 2020. There’s more where that came from.

Back to McCarthy. I realized, contrary to how I’m probably supposed to react as a talk show host, that I don’t give an ‘F’ about whether he is speaker. Or someone else. It won’t matter.

It’s not up to the Republicans to restore sanity.

It’s up to us.

Here’s the optimism: sane people are coming in, coming back and coming up. Little by little, every day, the people we need (Kevin’s not one of them) are entering the arena.

Not as Republicans or Democrats or red or blue. Just call them “normals”.