Three cheers for the 3 R’s - Ron, Ron and Rand

I finally get to use my political science degree and do some political analysis ….

We can be confident Sen. Ron Johnson did not get the support of Pfizer.

My college degree was actually in political science. (Yes, I became a journalist without taking a journalism class). Before I earned that piece of paper, I probably qualified as a “political junkie.”

This anecdote about my past reveals people can change as I’ve now tuned out many “political” stories. That is, I’ve become one of those people who thinks it really doesn’t matter a great deal who wins or loses some national election … because I think there’s no striking difference in the politicians of either party.

Well, let me revise and extend those remarks.  There is, of course, a difference. On the issues I care about, the Democratic Party is as awful as our nation’s mainstream journalists - 99.9 percent of whom are probably Democrats.

I think politics still matter not because I expect people like Mitch McConnell and Lyndsay Graham to save the country, but because I think the country my children will grow up in might be less worse if the Democrats aren’t in a position to do everything they can to further destroy it.

Since I do have that political science diploma and since I’ve never really used it for anything, I decided to offer a few thoughts on our recent mid-term elections and why I still pull for at least a few politicians.

More specifically, I wanted to add my three cheers to the fact that three of my favorite politicians  (the three Republican R’s - Ron DeSantis, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul) all won their races.

Sen. Ron Johnson

I’d never even heard of Sen. Johnson until I found his name in stories about several panel discussions he hosted that featured dozens of whistleblowers who were reporting grave concerns with the Covid “vaccines.”

Here I should note that I didn’t find these articles in The Washington Post or the New York Times. I found them via links from the “alternative press” … before these stories were censored or de-platformed.

I couldn’t believe it. An actual U.S. senator was trying to highlight the fact these “vaccines” might be very dangerous. This senator didn’t do this with one of those two-minute speeches that C-Span runs. He and his staff went to a tremendous amount of work to: A) find all these people; B) invite them to Washington; C) Provide for their accommodations; D) Find a venue for the panel discussion; E) And then let them tell their powerful, important and ignored stories.

His staff also produced press releases highlighting who was going to speak and on what topics. The staff then sent this press release to all media who cover federal policies and important national stories. That is, staffers for Sen. Johnson tried to get as much attention as possible for this event.

In a sane and just world, organizing such an event would not have required any courage and would have been covered by every reporter within 60 miles of Washington D.C. But this is not the type world we now live in. So the now-several “news-breaking” panels Sen. Johnson organized made zero national news.

Still, Sen. Johnson made the effort. Furthermore, Sen. Johnson has made countless statements in Senate hearings, interviews and in scores of letters written to public health officials, demanding answers to important unanswered questions.

Amazingly, his letters have largely been ignored.  To use common parlance, his concerns have been “blown off” by employees at the agencies that are supposed to be supervised by the U.S. House and Senate.

The reason for this is that the Democrats controlled the U.S. House, Senate and the presidency. However, if the Republicans do take back control of the Senate, this could change. As the head of a key Senate Committee, Sen. Johnson could compel these “public servants” to actually answer questions and provide key documents to his Committee.

I even made a political donation to Sen. Johnson’s campaign because I knew so much money was pouring into the campaign of his opponent. If you want to know who to support in politics, simply identify the organizations you think are the largest villains in our society. Then find out who this organization is supporting. Then do all you can to get the other candidate elected.

While Sen. Johnson won his race by a slim margin (about 1 percent of the vote), his victory was noteworthy because he was outspent by such a wide margin and all the major newspapers in his state were trying to defeat him.

This tells me that voters ARE willing to reward a politician who is willing to stand up for the truth. A politician who believes the draconian and harmful responses to Covid should not be whitewashed … actually won. This is a significant sign of hope that sanity and common sense still exists.

Gov. Ron DeSantis

I knew Gov. DeSantis would win his re-election campaign, but I was overjoyed to see he won in a landslide (by 20 percentage points). Indeed, his margin of victory was much greater than President Trump’s margin of victory in the same state two years ago.

Here we might have the biggest political lesson of recent decades: If you reject and indeed fight some preposterous political narrative (Covid is a terrible threat to everyone and we have to turn society upside down to fight this threat), you will be rewarded by voters, many of whom have actually not drunk the kool aid.

The new narrative regarding DeSantis is that he’s now perhaps the front-runner to be the Republican nominee for president in two years. This is probably true, but why didn’t all the political experts “get” this two years ago when DeSantis moved onto our political radar by being the most prominent critic of the lockdown policies?

I live in south Alabama 70 miles north of the Florida border and I certainly picked up on this two years ago. Plenty of my friends own property in these beach communities. Because of this, I knew that DeSantis was already being viewed as a political rock star.

Because of DeSantis, Florida was to the 50 U.S. states what Sweden was to the 195 global nations. Even people in Red State Alabama wanted to go to neighboring Florida to enjoy a long weekend of normalcy and sanity.

As was the case with Sen. Johnson, it took Covid to make me aware of this shining light of national politics.

I first took note of Gov. DeSantis when I found a story on the Internet about Gov. DeSantis hosting his own Covid panel. This panel featured “experts” who didn’t support the Covid narrative. Instead these key scientists who created the “Great Barrington Declaration” were fierce critics of the government’s response.

In an act of political audacity, DeSantis invited these scientists to a heavily-publicized panel discussion which the governor organized (YouTube of course later pulled the video of this event).

It was upon reading transcripts of this event that I realized that DeSantis is not only politically brave, he’s also highly intelligent. It was clear he’d done his Covid homework and fully understood both the real science and the policy implications that should flow from this science.

DeSantis reminds me of RFK, Jr. or Steve Kirsch, two other prominent critics of the Covid narrative. You better not engage in any real public debate with these people, because if you do, you are going to be embarrassed.

This, I thought, is what our country needs - a politician who knows his stuff and isn’t going to back down from a debate. If false narratives are ever going to be exposed, this is the type person we need to achieve this vital result.

I’ve always thought it’s not as hard to get elected president as most people probably think. All you really have to do is possess some basic principles, some self-confidence and intelligence and enough backbone to actually “lead” and not just “follow” the pack. If you display these qualities, you are going to stand out from the sorry, group-thinking pack. Which is exactly what happened to DeSantis.

In short, there are still enough voters in America who can identify when real leadership occurs. And there are legions of new DeSantis fans in states besides Florida. One silver lining of the Covid madness might be that it propelled onto the national political stage a leader who might actually make a difference over the next four to 10 years.

Sen. Rand Paul

I also knew Sen. Paul would win and I include him on my list for two reasons.

One, I’m a huge admirer of Sen. Paul’s father, Ron Paul, one of my few political heroes and a bigger contrarian than I am.

But the main reason we should all support Sen. Paul is that he’s been the only member of Congress (or at least the Senate) who doesn’t believe a word that comes out of the mouth of Anthony Fauci, “America’s doctor.”

As Fauci is the embodiment of everything wrong with Washington D.C (and our nation) anyone who regularly challenges such a person is to be commended and supported. Like Sen. Johnson, one suspects that Sen. Paul is champing at the bit to get Fauci (and others) in front of Senate Hearings chaired by people like themselves.

Of course, most of our politicians (even most Republicans) remain a part of the problem and thus won’t be part of any significant solutions.

Even in 2023 under Republican leadership of Congress, one suspects Big Pharma will still do the things Big Pharma’s been doing for years. Nobody (who matters in Congress) is talking about abolishing the CDC, NIH, NIAID or even the corrupt and captured FDA.  The world would freeze from Global Cooling before any type of real Covid tribunal was held that prosecuted those responsible for “crimes against humanity.”

Still, as jaded as I have become about politicians, government policies do matter in our lives (for a reminder of this just think back to March 15, 2020). Because these three key politicians got re-elected, future events might not be as bad as they otherwise would have been.

These two senators and one governor (who very possibly will be our next president) simply need many more reinforcements. Maybe in the election of 2024 they - and we the people - will get them.