Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

In Cheyenne after a bitch of a day. We’re up in House Revenue at 7:30.  Short night, long day.  The spirit is still willing, but the flesh weakens.

My review of “Hail Caesar” is up at AT.

Nothing persuades a cultist.   God only knows what kind of Justice Trump would appoint, but it doesn’t matter.  With Trump’s people nothing  matters.  He’s their guy.  Except, in this case, the NRA has a powerful message to those who aren’t full bore cultists.  The Heller decision was the best thing the NRA has seen since, well, forever.  It cannot be jeapordized by a careless pick for the Court.  A lot of Trump people are hard core on the Second Amendment.  Maybe the NRA can get through to these people.  It’s sure as hell not part of the establishment.

Senate President Phil Nicholas is the key to Wyoming.  I’m going to camp out in his office tomorrow until he sees me.

I’m  more convinced than ever 2016 is a blowout year for Republicans, which means if we don’t get to 34 this year it will happen in 2017. But if we get there this year, in my not so humble opinion, it will be an issue in the fall campaign.  Every Republican candidate needs to understand that.  It makes so much sense, politically, that we’ll start getting help from these guys.  They’re all tied up in their nomination fight, but when a winner emerges, it will be very much in his interest that we succeed.

If we get over the top this year, it’s going to be because we finally got some help.

At this point in a campaign everybody has ideas for ads.  This is mine.

On the radio a woman a Christian woman says the following:  “I am a proud Christian woman, a wife and mother, and the fact that Donald Trump is obviously not a religious man doesn’t bother me.  What does is that he claims to be a practicing Christian.  He brags in his books about all the married women he’s slept with, and yet says that, even though he’s a  Christian, he’s never sought God’s forgiveness because he’s never done any thing wrong.  This means either he doesn’t feel adultery is wrong, or is not honest about his faith.  Either way, he’s not a man I could ever vote for.”

This was inspired by a focus group I saw on MSNBC’s “With All Due Respect”.  These were South Carolinians who were undecided, and they said they didn’t mind that Trump was not a man of faith, but they really wouldn’t like him lying about it.  When they were shown Trump dropping the “f” bomb last week in New Hampshire they were horrified.  It looks as though Trump has the solid support of around a third of the Republican electorate.  If these people can’t be pried from Trump, the goal has to be to stop him from growing.  His character flaws may be what do him in.

Babbie and I spent five days in Charleston last spring, and all the people, black and white, were polite and friendly.  They were all pretty much Christian, of course, but that didn’t come up.  I don’t think these people are going to like Donald Trump, once they get to know a little more about him.

Babbie, son Brendan and I saw “Hail Caesar” last night and I wrote a review for American Thinker, which may be up tomorrow.  My sons and I are fanatical Coen brothers fans, and we weren’t disappointed.  Classic Coen, and that’s saying something.

I just heard about Scalia.  This is terrible news, on a number of fronts.  We won’t win another high profile 5-4 decision until he’s replaced.  And if we don’t win, and Hillary gets to name the replacement, there goes all the Heller decision second amendment rights.  The stakes on this election just went up, and they were already sky high.  The fact that Trump has talked about putting his liberal sister on to the Court doesn’t sound so funny anymore.  A new line of attack on Trump just opened up.

Scalia was a great guy, and a damn good justice.  But what we really want is another Clarence Thomas, and I think Cruz should say so.

I’ve got to say I feel a little vindicated already.  Almost two and a half years ago, on this blog, I said 2016 was going to be wipeout of historic proportions.   I felt a turning of the tide in October of 2013, and ever since the tide has strengthened, to where it’s now  becoming obvious.  Back then I thought the tide would be so strong that it would take us to an Article V Convention.  That’s when I joined the Task Force.

And that tide is still running strong.

Rep.Raul Labrador is one of the leaders of the hard core House Freedom Caucus, and he’s apparently causing us trouble in Boise.  Typical runaway nonsense.  Labrador was supporting Paul, and I have little doubt that he’s now on the Cruz team.  We need to tell Rep. Labrador that Rand Paul testified before the Kentucky Senate in favor of our bill, and that Ted Cruz not only supports us but signed a pledge to do so.  What does Labrador understand about the Constitution that Cruz and Paul don’t?  We’ll have a cc on Idaho with legislative leadership tomorrow.

We got out of committee, 8-7, in the Virginia House, and are up for a floor vote Monday or Tuesday.  At the moment our whip count is a few votes short.  Delegate LeMunyon expects to get to the magic number of 51, but we’ll see.  We’re going to try to get Admiral Owen, former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs, call some Virginia legislators to explain the necessity of a BBA to national security.

Kasich gave a speech to the Charleston, South Carolina Chamber, and told them to tell their state legislature to pass our bill.  John Kasich has certainly done his part.  We’ve got an event in the Capitol on the 24th, and Fruth will go and spend a couple days with John Steinberger trying to figure things out.  The South Carolina legislature is a bizarre institution.

The West Virginia legislature just overrode the Governor’s veto of their right to work law.  Actually, in West Virginia the Governor has only a symbolic veto, since one can  be overridden by a simple majority.  Senate President Bill Cole is leading a political and economic revolution.  He says if it comes to the Senate it will pass.  We’re up in a House subcommittee next week.

Sen Chris Kapenga in Wisconsin walked away from our bill in a dispute over the proper way to conduct the Amendment Convention.  So we’re out of luck this year.  If we can get a special session, the votes will be there.

I’ve been thinking about the politics of calling a special session.  Actually, from a Governor’s standpoint, they’re quite good.  This holds true for all of them in our target states.  They’re all Republicans , except Virginia, West Virginia and Montana.  So let’s say we’re three short.  In a joint announcement, Governors Walker, Ducey and Haley call their legislatures in to special session, all for the same purpose:  our bill.  They justify the expense by explaining the role of Article V in our federalist system, and the absolutely urgent need to put some restraints on Congress’s out of control spending.

Those are good politics.  Especially if it’s done in conjunction with the Republican Presidential nominee.  It’s good politics for him, too.

No, not good. Gold.

Unless we get Loucks’ vote in the Wyoming House Revenue Committee we’re probably dead this session.  We’d have to convince Gov. Mead to call a special session, or have the legislature call itself back.  Difficult.

He gave us a vote to get out of committee last year, but voted against us on the floor.  Bill and I both testified in front of him last year, and he asked us why couldn’t we get Congress to propose a BBA. I recounted the thirty-five year history of attempting to get one through Congress, beginning with Reagan, and including periods when we had the House, the Senate, and both the House and Senate.  I told him we’d been trying for 35 years.  What I should have said, and didn’t, is that if we sit around and wait for Congress to fix our problems we’ll go bankrupt within the decade.  Congress is the problem, for Pete’s sake.

I just found out the hearing has been postponed until Monday, so I will be able to make it.  Fruth called this morning and asked me to appear at an 8:00 a.m. hearing in Cheyenne tomorrow morning.  All the flights were booked, so I wasn’t going to make it.  But NFIB’s Tony Gagliardi was able to secure a continuance.  His wife needed him tomorrow, and the Chairman extended him a professional courtesy.  Having lobbyists is good.

So it’s back into the world of the Wyoming legislature.  Good people.  Like last year’s sponsor, Tyler Lindholm of Sundance.  He’s lineman and a small rancher with a growing young family.  About 6′ 8″, 190 lbs.  First time I met him he was wearing a big white cowboy hat.  We got along just fine.  So it’s off to Cheyenne on Sunday. It gets cold in Wyoming in the winter.  But not like Alaska.

I’ve been thinking about Bernie Sanders and Barry Goldwater.  When I hear Bernie talk about starting a political revolution it’s sort of like what we did with Goldwater in ’64.  We took over a party.  We didn’t win the election.  In fact, most of us knew damn well we weren’t going to win the election, just like the Democrats are not going to win this one, no matter who they nominate.  The point was to take over the party.  We did that, and Ted Cruz is doing that today, though, of course, he’s also going to win the election.  So all this talk about electability should fall on deaf ears. Those Sanders kids are not going to be denied.  When they were at the victory party in Des Moines, and Hillary came on to ball room TV, they all spontaneously broke into a chant, “She’s a liar!”  You think Hilary is going to turn those kids around?

The point is that Bernie may very well win the nomination, and if he does he’ll run like Goldwater ran, not so much to win as to set forth a set of political principles on which he stood.  The stars are aligning, I’m telling you.

I’ll never forget Everett Dirksen’s nomination speech in the Cow Palace.  I snuck in somehow.  “The Peddler’s Grandson” is what he called it, talking about Barry’s grandfather, an immigrant Jew, who peddled goods to the Indians across Arizona.  It was a great speech, delivered by a great man.

One of Everett’s sayings was, “I am a man of principle, and one of my principles is compromise.”

My article “Five Seats at the Final Table” is up at AT.  Looking at the comments, I’m led to believe that resistance to Trump is gathering steam.  People are starting to take him seriously, and are getting annoyed at the juvenile antics of the cultists.  People like me, who’ve been waiting for the second installment of the Reagan revolution for 30 years, are not going to allow this hijacking of our movement to take place.  Populism unmoored from the Constitution is a threat to traditional American liberty.  The campaigns of his rivals aren’t going to take him down.  Outfits like Our Principles Pac are set up to do the job.  We all need to pitch in.

Hillary is hillarious.  She’s blaming her staff for her troubles.  Everyone agrees her messaging is off.  But no one has any idea what the message should be.  The logical extension of Obamaism is socialism.  That’s where the Democrats have been heading since FDR.  The Clintons believe in socialist-lite, for prudential reasons.  But passion beats prudence, and incrementalism is for weaklings.

It’s not that Hillary doesn’t have a message.  It’s the non-socialist Democratic Party that lacks a story.  What will Joe Biden’s message be if he gets in?  Stay the course?

This is all part of the historic opportunity that 2016 presents.  We can’t blow this one.