The Race to the Glue Factory

This last few weeks have been quite revealing. The controlled opposition nature of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement has been distilled into a clear liquid. The only problem with that liquid is that it’s poison to conservative activists and the prospect of reigning in an out of control bureaucratic state. All a garbage Republican politico has to do now is paint some MAGA slop over their doorways and the angel of political accountability will pass them over. 

In a world where Congressmen, like Chip Roy and Bob Good, are seen as bad people for not kissing the ring, people like Elise Stefanik (Should be D, NY) are seen as leaders. This can’t be allowed to continue if we wish to see any sort of actual American revival. 

It’s now easy to see why the electoral cancer that is Donald Trump has gained traction over a competent and effective leader, like Ron DeSantis. The vast majority of Americans don’t want to be citizens. They want to be zoo animals or pets, for lack of a better description. Throw them some food and give them a few toys and they’re happy. Covid proved this to me. People don’t understand that the cheese in the trap is there for reason. 

On the political right of today, few are interested in doing hard things, like running a campaign on issues and policy points or actually answering questions from voters (paging Nikki Haley). Heaven help us if we want a competent ballot chasing operation like the Dems have. Trump has enough name ID to get himself and a few establishment wing nuts over the line in primaries, but when it comes to general election outcomes, the GOP is a disaster because of the stink that is transferred from the former president to anyone he’s associated with. Ask Kari Lake what the Governor’s Mansion in Arizona is like, if you don’t believe me. Just because you win a primary doesn’t make you a good politician. It means you found enough people to buy into your male bovine excrement to fill in a bubble for you in a low turnout election.

With no plan on how to run a competent presidential campaign in the face of 91 criminal indictments, I fear that the down ballot consequences of this shortest primary cycle in history will be disastrous. The Republican National Committee is essentially broke, while the DNC is flush with cash and a readymade slew of opposition ads in the can. All they have to do is have someone read Trump’s Truth Social feed on TV and any Democrat with a pulse will beat him. The GOP also has no ballot chasing enterprise in the works. Organizations, like Toilet Paper Turning Point USA say they’re going to step in, but I don’t expect people used to grifting to be able to run a competent ground game. The DNC is well seasoned in areas where the GOP is nonexistent.

We can likely forget holding the US House. With a multitude of resignations and retirement announcements, the GOP House majority is cooked. A toothless new Speaker is doing them no favors, either. We have to concentrate on keeping the few great members of the House in their seats. I think of three, specifically. Chip Roy, of Texas, must keep his seat. His voice is the most important one in DC. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, must be defended at all costs. He has a Trumpcult nut running against him in the primary. I urge everyone to go to his website and pitch in a few bucks, as I have already done. The last one is the new chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Bob Good, of southwest Virginia. Trump’s merry band of circus freaks have stood up a primary challenge to him. We need to help him retain that seat. After these, you do you on supporting individual congresscritters (as Chip Roy calls them). We need these three voices in the US House. 

In a year where the Senate map should be favorable for Republicans, I can’t see any outcome better than a 50/50 draw. The only sure pick up I see is in West Virginia. Sadly, the likely winner of that race is very likely to the left of the Democrat vacating the seat. Ohio and Montana should be easy pickups, but with the top of the ticket being a mess and the proven over performance of Dems in suburban areas, I wouldn’t bank on any other GOP pickup. One notable senator who is in trouble is Ted Cruz, of Texas. He is within the margin for error of both of his serious Democrat challengers. The Senate is irredeemably broken and a 50/50 split is actually closer to a 95/5 left wing majority. I will keep an eye on Michigan if Justin Amash chooses to run. I have no Senate race to vote on in my state, so I have no dog in this fight. 

While all of the above may seem like I’m in doom and gloom mode, I can say that I’m at peace with this election cycle. While I have no one to vote for this cycle at the top of the ticket, this makes it 16 years without a general election presidential vote for me, I see glimmers of hope at the state level. Texas has passed a few good reforms and it looks like Dade Phelan’s political future is on life support. Ron DeSantis, back in Tallahassee, has chosen to step right back in as the leader he’s always been. Iowa is seeing forward progress with this legislative session. Kim Reynolds is stepping up to defend sanity on several social issues, including working to break the gender cult in Iowa.

On the national electoral front, the 2028 presidential election starts the moment the race is called this November, especially if one of the two octogenarians is still taking the oath of office in January fo 2025. I’m not so sure that the Dems won’t replace Biden with someone who can walk in a straight line and read off of a prompter, but that is more likely to happen after his very likely reelection. The more the race is about Trump’s personality, the better for the Dems. 

Many people in the political realm call what I just wrote about a horse race analysis. In this case, the horses are on their way to the glue factory. I just pray the nation isn’t in tow. 

Why I Chose to Support Ron DeSantis

 It is 60 days until the Iowa Caucus as of the writing of this piece. I haven’t blogged much in the past few years. I’ve been more contemplative in my approach to life. I’m still the firebrand activist when I need to be, but my heart has softened to the plight of the people the government treats as cogs in the system. 

I chose to jump back into the political fight last year, before the Iowa legislative primaries. I was pleasantly surprised by our governor, Kim Reynolds, and her choice to get off the sidelines and support primaries against a number of bad Iowa Republicans. I was part of several of those primaries on the ground organizing front. 

After that victory was won, I had thought the political process had started to find the N on the compass row. I was wrong. When Donald Trump chose to take swipes at the successful governor of Florida, I knew we were in for a mess. When the calendar turned to 2023, I chose to get back into the Iowa caucus organizing process. I met with and talked to several candidates. One stood out. That Florida governor…

In March, I went to the book tour event Ron DeSantis held in Davenport, IA. I listened. I digested what he was saying. It was policy rich and principled in a way that I hadn’t heard from anyone else even thinking about running. After the event, I greeted him and got a card from a staffer. I sent an email to that staffer that ended up being the start of a journey that has brought me to this point. 

I had heard that Governor DeSantis and his people were hard to get ahold of. I didn’t really expect anything from the email I sent, to be honest. I was wrong. A member of this staff called me a week after I sent that email. We had a long phone conversation about Iowa and about the political climate here in the state. That person, I won’t call her name, is now a friend. She kept in touch with me. We still exchange text messages and emails and she knows she can always call or text me if she needs prayer.

Fast forward to the campaign season and I have, through a multitude of public and private meetings, been honored to get to know Ron and Casey DeSantis. 

Ron DeSantis is focused, principled, and kind, but with a resolve I haven’t seen in any candidate for president. He conducts himself in a manner that places him above reproach, morally. He is a good husband to Casey. The way he talks about his wife and kids is the way any man should talk about his family. He deeply loves his wife and children. You can tell his little boy is the apple of his eye and his two daughters have their daddy wrapped around their little fingers. America needs more examples of a man doing great things while also being a good family man.

Casey…well…Casey DeSantis is a gem of a human. She’s a political activist at heart. She is truly her husband’s biggest supporter and his most important sounding board. For that, I am grateful. She’s a great wife and mother. She and Ron are meant for one another. I’m thankful that she’s someone I can call a friend. It would be the honor of a lifetime to be able to call her the First Lady of the United States. 

One of the great honors of the whole campaign season was hosting the DeSantis family at my church in Washington, Iowa on October 8th, 2023. I was glad we were able to be a blessing to them that morning and I thank Ron and Casey for their outreach to my church. 

There are many others in both the Never Back Down PAC supporting the governor and his campaign staff that I can now count as friends. As a volunteer county chair, I talk to someone in this fight most days of the week. 

I’m not so sure that our country deserves a man like Ron DeSantis in the White House. We’ve overseen the murder of 65 million babies since 1973, an ongoing crime that continues apace, even since the Dobbs ruling of 2022. We’ve seen the rise of the gender identity cult, seeking to mutilate the minds and bodies of young people across the country. We’ve seen the degradation of the natural family. We’ve seen the destruction of all cultural institutions, including most local churches. Mass immigration of people not seeking to be citizens is a massive problem. Inflation, medical tyranny, a bureaucracy seeking to control our lives…I could go on and on. 

One thing gives me hope. God says that as long as there is a remnant that haven’t bowed the knee to idols, He can work through those people. I believe we do have a remnant. That’s all it takes. 

I want to ask everyone who reads this to pray for Ron, Casey, Madison, Mason, and Mamie DeSantis. They surely need the guidance and protection of God in this season. Also, pray for his staff and everyone across the country who has devoted themselves to working to see Ron become our next president. Pray for needed generational change. Pray for competent and principled leadership. Pray for our nation to turn away from vain pursuits. 

My personal prayer is specifically for a space of grace from God whereby we might be able to see a revival in the civic realm of people taking their citizenship seriously and ultimately, a revival in local, New Testament churches across the nation where the Gospel will be preeminent once again. 

Lastly, I ask and pray that anyone who reads this will join me in this effort. Find me on Twitter/X @bigredmatt1011

What do you believe?

This post is meant to challenge you to examine what you believe, in a political sense.

A Survey of Beliefs

Question 1: Do you believe that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are the rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? 

Follow up: Where do those rights come from? 

Question 2: What should the role of government in your life be?

Follow up: What role does government play in your life now?

Question 3: What economic system best suits you?

Follow up: What economic system do we live under now?

Question 4: What about our country do you appreciate?

Follow up: What don't you appreciate?

Question 5: Do you attend religious services regularly?

Follow up: Explain why you answered the way you did?

Question 6: Do you believe that the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land?

Follow up: Explain? Should the Constitution be the supreme law of the land?

Question 7: Should an Article 5 Convention of the States be called to propose new Amendments to reign in the federal leviathan?

Follow up: Do you know what an Article 5 Convention is?

Question 8: Do you support federal congressional term limits?

Follow up: Explain your answer.

Final Question: Why do you believe what you believe?

Print these out and answer them or copy and paste them into a document, answer them and send them to the email address linked at the end of this blog post. You will find my answers to the above questions below.

 My Answers

1. I believe that our rights are not derived from any statute or from any other man made decree but come from God, who created us, our Creator, and as those rights are derived from the benevolence of a Supreme Being, they can no longer be taken away by man than can the air we breathe. When man acts to limit our God given rights, we are being subjected to the will of man and that is an affront to a Holy God. Civil government is ordained in the bible but it must not serve to limit God or His wishes for His people. Once government becomes oppressive of our natural rights, we must act to throw off such government. 

2. Government's current role is vast and sweeping, and as such, it forms a statist system that seeks to substitute its will for the consent of the governed. Many people are seeking a ruler to vanquish their perceived iniquities. Many want government to solve their problems. It can never do that because government is just a group of people and when we give that group of people the power to solve our problems, the inherent nature of the people comes to the forefront and government grows out of being a useful servant and becomes the master. Government's role should be to provide for our defense against enemies foreign and domestic. Execute the laws as outlined by the Constitution. Wage war against our enemies and negotiate the peace once we win. That's about it.

3. The economic system that suits me best is a free market system where people are free to buy and sell what they wish, with a small network of regulations(decided at the local and state level) and the only thing the federal government should do is keep states from imposing tariffs on one another. Our current system is a quasi Marxist system where the government, through regulation and force, imposes the will of a few moneyed donors and lobbyists on the rest of the country. There should be no federal regulatory state. I don't even think that most state regulations need to exist. If I want to buy my milk from my friends who happen to own a dairy before that milk is sent to a factory to be processed, why should the government care. I would be buying the milk with the foreknowledge that the milk had not been processed. It should be none of the government's business. No subsidies for any good or service should be provided. All businesses should pay one level tax rate and the only break should be a deduction for capital investment.

4. I appreciate our religious liberty, our freedom of speech, assembly, press and our ability to address our representatives for a redress of our grievances. I appreciate that I, as a Christian, am free to preach the Gospel, if I so choose(or at least I was appreciative of that). I appreciate that our country was founded on an idea that man should be free because our Constitution limited what government could do to usurp our God given rights.

I don't appreciate what we've become. We've become a country of selfish people who think that the government should solve their own pet problems. We've become hostile toward truth. We've become hostile toward our fellow man. We treat government as a charity, all the while forgetting that compelling someone into charity(taxation) is just institutionalized theft. We must give back those responsibilities to groups that actually care about the souls of people, not just their votes every two or four years.

5. This one has made the biggest difference in my life. I attend church services 3 times per week, if I can. I am so blessed to be in a bible believing, bible preaching church. A church shouldn't be a museum of saints, it should be a hospital for sinners. I had moved away from the church because I was repelled at what mainstream American churches had become. Not until I was asked to come to my current church did I reacquaint myself with the value of a body of believers supporting one another and keeping one another accountable to the words and teachings of God through the Bible.

6. I do believe the Constitution of the United States is the Supreme Law of the land and should be used as the measuring stick for all civil and criminal statutes. The Constitution must be the chains that bind the mischief of government. Our courts should heed the words written in our Constitution and subsequent amendments as the basis of all law under their jurisdiction. In order for that to happen, words must mean what words mean or we cease being a nation of laws and we become a nation of men. That is a recipe for tyranny. We see the slide toward tyranny right now. 

7. An Article 5 Convention of States should must be called. There is a movement under way in several states to do just that. We must reign in the federal government. Congress and the Courts have failed in their responsibility to hold the line on budget issues, on Constitutional issues and on issues surrounding the defense of our country. The only way to bind government is to reacquaint them with the citizenry they are supposed to be subordinate to. As such, a Convention of States must be called to propose several amendments, including a balanced budget amendment, a Congressional pay and benefits restructuring amendment, an amendment to limit the number of years spent in Congress(see below), an amendment to pull the Supreme Court back into compliance with the original intent of the founders and an amendment to make the Supreme Court subject to its own term limits(I propose one 20 year term, unless a term would expire during the last year of a lame duck presidency). Even ratifying just a few of these proposed amendments would go a great distance toward binding the hands of government so that they may no longer do mischief against the American people.

8. I think Congressional term limits are the single most important legislative reform that an Article 5 Convention must push through. We CANNOT and MUST NOT(sorry for yelling) allow elected representatives to keep making careers out of being in the House of Representatives or Senate. Our representatives were intended to be of the people, not above the people. Don't get me wrong, I want the best and brightest to run and make up our government, but they must do that with a servant's heart and the knowledge that their time in DC is limited. We currently have Senators in Washington, DC who have been in the Senate for over 30 years!(I don't use exclamation points often, and when I do, I mean it.) This cannot be allowed to continue. My proposal(feel free to send me your own, either by commenting or emailing me) is for term limits of a total of 12 years in both houses of Congress. 6 terms in the House. 2 terms in the Senate or any combination where the total doesn't exceed 12 years as an elected legislator in our nation's government. 12 years is three presidential terms. No more time in Washington is needed. 

To answer the final question, I believe what I believe because I'm a Christian Constitutionalist and I'm an American. My overriding belief is in the virgin birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. I know I couldn't enter heaven without calling on Jesus to save me and to be born again in my belief in His grace. And for all that God has bestowed on me, I am thankful. 

Rather than the trite line that many speeches are closed with, I close with this; God, have mercy on America. We, as a nation and a people, have turned away from your Word and from You. Please, have mercy on Your remnant. Amen.

Email me with longer responses or comment below. Share this post with your friends and use this as a tool for discussion. We need to keep dialogue alive. 

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