Please check out this excellent article from yesterday's Deseret News yesterday reporting that former Salt Lake County Councilman Steve Harmsen has officially joined the race for GOP Chairman:
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705294651,00.html
I recently had the privilege of meeting with Steve at the home of former Congressman Merrill Cook and am proud to say that I have decided to support Steve for Utah Republican Party Chairman! Steve is a very impressive individual, extremely successful business owner, a solid conservative and proven Republican leader. In his run for Chairman, he is backed by a growing number of conservatives including former Congressman Merrill Cook, former URA President Larry Meyers, former State Rep. Mike Thompson, Grassroots Director Don Guyman, Rep. Margaret Dayton and myself among others.
Let me tell you a little bit more about Steve and why I have decided to do everything I can to support his candidacy. Steve ran a brief campaign for state party chairman last time around in 2007. He is also a former State Party finance chairman. At this point, he is the only conservative in the running . I grilled him on a number of social, fiscal and party issues of importance to myself and many other conservatives and was very pleased with his responses.
Steve told me he was running on a platform to revitalize the GOP and better harness technology to improve and amplify our efforts to elect our Republican candidates to public office. More importantly, he told me that he felt it was important that the next chairman do a lot more to open up the party to conservative groups as well and make the party more decentralized and more responsive to its members to build our GOP “big tent” to the right instead of to the left as party leaders have traditionally attempted to do.
In addition, Steve told me that he is running on a platform to help the party where it is weakest to help the GOP take back control of Salt Lake County where the GOP has a nominal advantage in voter registration, but where it has suffered some unnecessary setbacks in the last election due to early voting and the Democrat County Clerk’s practice of putting the Democrats first on the ballot which has been proven to provide a 5% voting advantage to whoever gets their name placed first among other things, practices that Steve pledged he would fight to reverse.
As you may know Dave Hansen and Tim Bridgewater are running as the two establishment candidates for Chairman leaving Steve as the only conservative candidate in the running. Steve is the only candidate in the race who can be depended on to support conservative principles. Steve is running because he does not believe that our next State Party Chairman should be chosen by our elected public officials but believes they should be chosen by the grassroots Republican Party members who took the time to get elected as state delegates without whom we could not win elections. Steve believes that if he can win the support of fellow conservatives, the party establishment candidates--Dave Hansen and former McCain presidential primary campaign regional coordinator Tim Bridgewater will divide the RINO vote and he can beat them in a three-way race and I agree! Steve is clearly not just running to get elected to lead the party, but is running on a platform of making a difference and increasing our majority statewide and helping good conservative Republican candidates get elected to public office.
Steve already has the support of a growing number of Republican leaders in and out of office, but needs your help to win and return our state party to its conservative grassroots. I urge anyone who has not already become a member of our Steve Harmsen for Utah Republican Party Chairman Facebook group (see link below) to do so now and join our efforts to elect a strong conservative, Steve Harmsen, as our next state GOP Chairman so that he can lead our party to victory in the all-important 2010 election and help us take back control of the Salt Lake County Council and increase our majority in the State legislature!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=78583963031
Friday, April 3, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Searching for the Next Ronald Reagan
I just listened to Newt Gingrich’s CPAC speech and I have to admit I was impressed. Gingrich called for opposition to any federal government stimulus based on spending and criticized the Bush-Obama multi-trillion dollar bailouts of 2008 as well as the Obama socialist stimulus package of last month. He said there are really too parties in this country—one is the party of big government and the other is the party of smaller government and said that over the last several years the GOP had become part of the party of ever bigger government. He said the conservative movement is bigger than the Republican Party and that conservatives need to reach out to Democrats as well as independents to unite against Obama’s attempts to transform our country into a one-party socialist republic. If it weren’t for the fact that Gingrich were an adulterer and thus fails the social conservative’s family values test, I think he would be a real contender for the conservative Republican choice for President.
I will hand it to Romney that he is an excellent speaker having given one of the best speeches of the convention, very telegenic and fairly charismatic. The problem is that anyone who supported the socialist $8.5 trillion bailout really needs to be eliminated from contention for the GOP presidential nomination as it is imperative that we nominate a fiscal conservative if we hope to defeat Obama in 2012. Both Romney and Palin are big government conservatives that supported the Bush-Obama bailout though Palin is wonderful on the life issue. In his CPAC speech this weekend, Romney touted his socialized health care plan and said he supports measures designed to fight non-existant global warming which are anathema to conservatives.
Ron Paul will be too old and while Huckabee is as solid of a fiscal conservative and opponent of the bailouts as Gingrich, too many people think he is a bigot. Meanwhile, Pawlenty and Jindal just do not impress. It seems like we need someone new to enter the presidential race as the conservative champion perhaps staunch conservative leaders--Gov. Sanford (R-SC), Sen. DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) (the most conservative member of the US Senate) or Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). I find it interesting that the most conservative Governor in the country and the most conservative Senators in the United States Senate hail from the same two states. I guess my message is we here in Utah, one of the most conservative states in the country, can and will do better by electing new leaders in the mold of Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Rob Bishop to high office in the near future.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19433.html
I will hand it to Romney that he is an excellent speaker having given one of the best speeches of the convention, very telegenic and fairly charismatic. The problem is that anyone who supported the socialist $8.5 trillion bailout really needs to be eliminated from contention for the GOP presidential nomination as it is imperative that we nominate a fiscal conservative if we hope to defeat Obama in 2012. Both Romney and Palin are big government conservatives that supported the Bush-Obama bailout though Palin is wonderful on the life issue. In his CPAC speech this weekend, Romney touted his socialized health care plan and said he supports measures designed to fight non-existant global warming which are anathema to conservatives.
Ron Paul will be too old and while Huckabee is as solid of a fiscal conservative and opponent of the bailouts as Gingrich, too many people think he is a bigot. Meanwhile, Pawlenty and Jindal just do not impress. It seems like we need someone new to enter the presidential race as the conservative champion perhaps staunch conservative leaders--Gov. Sanford (R-SC), Sen. DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) (the most conservative member of the US Senate) or Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). I find it interesting that the most conservative Governor in the country and the most conservative Senators in the United States Senate hail from the same two states. I guess my message is we here in Utah, one of the most conservative states in the country, can and will do better by electing new leaders in the mold of Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Rob Bishop to high office in the near future.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19433.html
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Obamamania Infects Republicans
I couldn’t believe all the Republicans who at last night’s presidential address fell all over themselves to pat Barack Obama on the back as in the case of Senator Hatch, shake his hand or even in Senator Coburn’s case to give him a big hug (I had no idea that Coburn and Obama were such good friends). It was truly embarrassing.
I did not see one principled conservative Republican sitting on his hands or at least standing up and not applauding though I can pretty much guarantee I know at least one who didn’t. They all gave him a standing ovation as soon as he entered the room. Even Senator Shelby was anxious to talk to Obama and probably apologize for his recent remark that he didn’t know if Obama was born in the US or not and wasn’t sure if Obama was even eligible to serve as our President. Don’t they realize that his Marxist policies on social issues, the economy and national security not only threaten to collapse our economy but may well ultimately result in the destruction of our country as Alan Keyes recently warned? If they do, how can they cheer on the man who history will note is primarily responsible for that?
They ought to show it by their actions and not fall over themselves to applaud Obama merely because he has a 63% approval rating in an attempt to show their bi-partisanship to their constituents. What will it take to get them to take courage? They should have followed Justice Alito’s lead which was to stand politely and not applaud and to shake Obama’s hand with a kind of tortured smile but then look immediately away showing himself uninterested in aggrandizing himself to Obama. That’s the kind of conservative leader who leads by example that I am looking for. If only we had more Samuel Alito’s in Congress.
I would not have applauded Obama when he entered the room had I been in that hallowed chamber. I would, however, have applauded the parts of his speech that I agreed with what few there were. Obama is far and away the most radical President ever elected in our history. He makes the Clinton’s look positively conservative in comparison. I will repeat what I said before, we need to hope and pray not for Obama’s success but as Rush Limbaugh stated for his failure for if he succeeds in implementing all of his socialist policies and decimates our military might, America may not survive very far into the next decade, but if he fails there is still hope for America’s future and the restoration of our God-given constitutional republic.
Obama is predicting that we will have a $1.5 trillion deficit up from the $1.2 trillion deficit that Bush left him, but I have been predicting it is going to be at least $1.65 trillion and probably closer to $2 trillion given his unprecedented spending spree robbing from our children and grandchildren to bail people out of their irresponsible decisions now. Just as I predicted Obama is trying to pass all his most radical socialist legislation including the carbon tax, socialized health care, a new more draconian national gun ban than we have ever before seen, gays in the military, etc. this year and next knowing as one Fox News analyst stated that he will never be more popular and have more support than right now. It is going to be all downhill from here. When the American people find out the true size of the deficit later this year, Obama’s poll numbers are doing to take a drubbing. I am predicting he tanks 25 points in the polls by Election Day 2010 due in large part to the near depression we will be in at that point due in large part to his socialist policies, thus according the Republicans a one-time chance to retake the House of Reps and begin to restore our system of checks and balances which is so badly needed at this time of one party rule in our nation’s Capitol.
Obama has promised to half the deficit to $530 by 2013 when he may or may not still be in office. That way when he runs for re-election he won’t have to worry about keeping that promise. Considering that the deficit would only be $500 billion without Bush’s $700 billion bailout package and Obama’s $1.2 trillion (with interest) socialist spending bill, doing nothing would probably allow him to reduce the deficit to well below that level, but with all of his additional socialist initiatives, it should prove quite a challenge.
One good thing I heard from RNC Chairman Michael Steele when asked whether the party would seek to oust the Gang of Three Republican Senate defectors without whom Obama’s$1.2 trillion depression stimulus bill could not be passed, he said “all options are on the table.” I believe we should strip them of all of their seniority in response. Well at least Steele appears to be a fiscal conservative if not a social conservative.
At a time when America has never been more indebted, we learned from John McCain yesterday that King Barack is spending $11.2 billion on his own private helicopter fleet each one costing $400 million and equipped with an onboard kitchen to ensure he and his buddies eat in style on the way to Air Force One. What a hypocrite…
I did not see one principled conservative Republican sitting on his hands or at least standing up and not applauding though I can pretty much guarantee I know at least one who didn’t. They all gave him a standing ovation as soon as he entered the room. Even Senator Shelby was anxious to talk to Obama and probably apologize for his recent remark that he didn’t know if Obama was born in the US or not and wasn’t sure if Obama was even eligible to serve as our President. Don’t they realize that his Marxist policies on social issues, the economy and national security not only threaten to collapse our economy but may well ultimately result in the destruction of our country as Alan Keyes recently warned? If they do, how can they cheer on the man who history will note is primarily responsible for that?
They ought to show it by their actions and not fall over themselves to applaud Obama merely because he has a 63% approval rating in an attempt to show their bi-partisanship to their constituents. What will it take to get them to take courage? They should have followed Justice Alito’s lead which was to stand politely and not applaud and to shake Obama’s hand with a kind of tortured smile but then look immediately away showing himself uninterested in aggrandizing himself to Obama. That’s the kind of conservative leader who leads by example that I am looking for. If only we had more Samuel Alito’s in Congress.
I would not have applauded Obama when he entered the room had I been in that hallowed chamber. I would, however, have applauded the parts of his speech that I agreed with what few there were. Obama is far and away the most radical President ever elected in our history. He makes the Clinton’s look positively conservative in comparison. I will repeat what I said before, we need to hope and pray not for Obama’s success but as Rush Limbaugh stated for his failure for if he succeeds in implementing all of his socialist policies and decimates our military might, America may not survive very far into the next decade, but if he fails there is still hope for America’s future and the restoration of our God-given constitutional republic.
Obama is predicting that we will have a $1.5 trillion deficit up from the $1.2 trillion deficit that Bush left him, but I have been predicting it is going to be at least $1.65 trillion and probably closer to $2 trillion given his unprecedented spending spree robbing from our children and grandchildren to bail people out of their irresponsible decisions now. Just as I predicted Obama is trying to pass all his most radical socialist legislation including the carbon tax, socialized health care, a new more draconian national gun ban than we have ever before seen, gays in the military, etc. this year and next knowing as one Fox News analyst stated that he will never be more popular and have more support than right now. It is going to be all downhill from here. When the American people find out the true size of the deficit later this year, Obama’s poll numbers are doing to take a drubbing. I am predicting he tanks 25 points in the polls by Election Day 2010 due in large part to the near depression we will be in at that point due in large part to his socialist policies, thus according the Republicans a one-time chance to retake the House of Reps and begin to restore our system of checks and balances which is so badly needed at this time of one party rule in our nation’s Capitol.
Obama has promised to half the deficit to $530 by 2013 when he may or may not still be in office. That way when he runs for re-election he won’t have to worry about keeping that promise. Considering that the deficit would only be $500 billion without Bush’s $700 billion bailout package and Obama’s $1.2 trillion (with interest) socialist spending bill, doing nothing would probably allow him to reduce the deficit to well below that level, but with all of his additional socialist initiatives, it should prove quite a challenge.
One good thing I heard from RNC Chairman Michael Steele when asked whether the party would seek to oust the Gang of Three Republican Senate defectors without whom Obama’s$1.2 trillion depression stimulus bill could not be passed, he said “all options are on the table.” I believe we should strip them of all of their seniority in response. Well at least Steele appears to be a fiscal conservative if not a social conservative.
At a time when America has never been more indebted, we learned from John McCain yesterday that King Barack is spending $11.2 billion on his own private helicopter fleet each one costing $400 million and equipped with an onboard kitchen to ensure he and his buddies eat in style on the way to Air Force One. What a hypocrite…
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Utah Legislators Considering a Tax Increase on Utah's Working Families
The Saturday before last, I attended a Town Meeting in West Jordan with four of our state representatives. Rep. Bird, Rep. Harper, Rep. Mascaro and Rep. Newbold. The town meeting went very well and the legislators did a great job of answering our questions. However, I was very dismayed to learn that some of them were giving serious consideration to increasing taxes on Utah's working families who are hurting the most in order to balance the budget rather than pursue a more fiscally responsible and fiscally conservative path of just cutting spending by whatever is necessary in order to balance the budget. What is worse, this drive to raise the food tax by 3 percent is being spearheaded by a Republican, Rep. Kay McIff.
Gratefully, Gov. Huntsman is standing on the side of Utah's taxpayers in refusing to sign a tax increase on groceries which is a regressive tax that would most adversely affect the poorest among us and it is unlikely that the State House and Senate would be able to override his veto. The Governor is absolutely right in calling for the wholesale abolition of the tax on unprepared food. I sympathize with our legislators who are siding with the Dems in calling for a tax increase because I know how difficult it is to implement spending cuts, but it would be much preferable to implement the proposed 15% across the board spending cut with an exemption for Department of Public Safety to include police and fire departments, homeland security and prisons to ensure that the public safety is maintained.
The legislators also discussed increasing the gas tax, but I would oppose doing that as well as the gas tax is also a regressive tax which hurts Utah's lowest income families the most. I did hear one comment from one of the attendees that they would support these tax increases on food and gas as it would force illegal aliens in the state to pay them and contribute more of their fair share, but that does not justify hurting our low-income families when we can avoid doing so. A less objectionable proposal was submitted by Senate President Waddoups to increase motor vehicle registration fees rather than increase taxes. Raising taxes in the middle of a serious recession is incredibly short-sighted in my opinion. As I noted during the meeting, we should be talking about cutting taxes to stimulate economic growth and job creation, not raising them.
In other news, the Deseret News reports that a surprising majority--59% of Utah's citizens approve of Obama's job performance in the latest poll, but only 39% support his fiscally irresponsible, budget-busting $1.2 trillion "stimulus" bill which the US Senate voted to approve this morning.
Gratefully, Gov. Huntsman is standing on the side of Utah's taxpayers in refusing to sign a tax increase on groceries which is a regressive tax that would most adversely affect the poorest among us and it is unlikely that the State House and Senate would be able to override his veto. The Governor is absolutely right in calling for the wholesale abolition of the tax on unprepared food. I sympathize with our legislators who are siding with the Dems in calling for a tax increase because I know how difficult it is to implement spending cuts, but it would be much preferable to implement the proposed 15% across the board spending cut with an exemption for Department of Public Safety to include police and fire departments, homeland security and prisons to ensure that the public safety is maintained.
The legislators also discussed increasing the gas tax, but I would oppose doing that as well as the gas tax is also a regressive tax which hurts Utah's lowest income families the most. I did hear one comment from one of the attendees that they would support these tax increases on food and gas as it would force illegal aliens in the state to pay them and contribute more of their fair share, but that does not justify hurting our low-income families when we can avoid doing so. A less objectionable proposal was submitted by Senate President Waddoups to increase motor vehicle registration fees rather than increase taxes. Raising taxes in the middle of a serious recession is incredibly short-sighted in my opinion. As I noted during the meeting, we should be talking about cutting taxes to stimulate economic growth and job creation, not raising them.
In other news, the Deseret News reports that a surprising majority--59% of Utah's citizens approve of Obama's job performance in the latest poll, but only 39% support his fiscally irresponsible, budget-busting $1.2 trillion "stimulus" bill which the US Senate voted to approve this morning.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
DUV-PAC Supporting former State Rep. Morgan Philpot for State GOP Vice-Chairman
I met with former State Rep. Morgan Philpot and other conservative stalwarts at the Capitol cafeteria yesterday to discuss his State Republican Party Vice-Chairman run and Holly Richardson's run for Utah County GOP Vice-Chairperson. Very exciting! We also discussed which candidates conservatives should support for other state and county GOP posts. Also had a nice visit with departing GOP State Chairman Stan Lockhart who will undoubtedly be remembered as a chairman who tried to reach out to conservatives in the party.
DUV-PAC Joins Utah Coalition for Traditional Families
February 11th—Today the Defend Utah Values PAC was proud to join with the Utah Coalition for Traditional Families in opposition to the far left’s assault on traditional marriage in Utah. Other groups in the coalition include Utah Eagle Forum, the Sutherland Institute and the Utah Republican Assembly. The coalition joined with a number of conservative Republican leaders like State Senate President Mike Waddoups and State Rep. Carl Wimmer in holding a press conference at the Capitol earlier this afternoon against the gay lobby's Equality Utah legislation which includes a gay civic union and gay adoption bill. I believe it is vitally important that we make our voice heard on this disturbing legislation to let Utah citizens and policymakers that we oppose it.
Here is a link to an article about the press conference:
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11681319
Here is a link to an article about the press conference:
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11681319
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