What do Sen. Rand Paul, Newsmax’s Sebastian Gorka, Blexit’s Candace Owens, and country star John Rich have in common?
For that matter, what do former first daughter Ivanka Trump, former Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and fifth-richest person in the world Larry Ellison have in common?
I’ll explain, but first allow me to remind you all of what Winston Churchill had to say about democracy: “… democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time …”
In his book “Two Cheers for Democracy,” the great novelist E.M. Forster (“A Passage to India,” etc.) gave it, needless to say, two cheers—“one because it admits variety, and two because it admits criticism.”
Speaking of which, one group that is undoubtedly getting a ton of criticism as I write—in fact, I have seen some of it passed around in supposedly confidential, if there ever were such a thing, text messages—is the Tennessee Republican Party’s state executive committee (SEC).
The SEC is the group empowered by the state Republican Party to make the final determination of who can, according to established party rules, appear on the Tennessee ballot as a Republican. The Democrats have their equivalent. The Republican committee includes representatives chosen by party members across the state.
A decision made on April 19 concerns the newly redistricted (in favor of Republicans) 5th Tennessee Congressional District that had become the most publicized of all 435 congressional races.
This was because of two potential candidates with national profiles, both having appeared frequently on the Fox News network and other cable outlets—former Mike Pompeo spokesperson Morgan Ortagus and music video director Robby Starbuck (sometimes Robert Starbuck Newsom and sometimes Robert Newsom, depending on the document or venue).
Ortagus was famously given her endorsement by one Donald J. Trump.
As announced by state Republican Chair Scott Golden, Ortagus and Starbuck both were removed from the ballot by an overwhelming vote (13-3) by the SEC on April 19.
It’s possible, though I am told it would be a long shot, that they will sue to be reinstated.
There’s more—a lot more—but not to make you wait for why I led with those fancy names, Paul, Gorka, Owens, and Rich (among others) rather actively supported Starbuck. In fact, Sen. Paul was said to have been phoning members of the committee at the time of the decision.
Ivanka, Grenell, Pompeo, and Ellison (also among others) backed Ortagus. Grenell had at first supported Starbuck but switched. Ellison went so far as to donate $1 million to an Ortagus PAC, which would have made her congressional campaign probably the most well-heeled in the country.
It also may explain why Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee remained silent on legislation overwhelmingly passed by the state legislature that made it a requirement to be a resident of the state for three years in order to run, just as it already is for other offices. Lee, whose allegiance to the state’s taxpayers isn’t always clear, was signaling his disapproval.
The argument against Ortagus and Starbuck (and a lesser-known figure, Baxter Lee, who also was eliminated) comes down basically to issues of carpetbagging and, to be polite, candor. Neither has lived in Tennessee for long; Ortagus just for months. And, though a wealthy woman with a child, she never deigned to put down roots, to buy a place, curiously renting apartments, switching with the redistricting, as if all were a temporary and stepping stone.
With Starbuck, his residency was longer and he, or some entity of mysterious provenance, an LLC, did buy a house, but his timeline was unclear, as were a number of things about Robby.
I have read here in the comments that some say that the SEC is part of the Deep State and this is some kind of plot against the voters. I wish it were, because I believe there is a plot against the voters, but not in this case. In fairness to the committee, most are lifelong constitutional conservatives who found themselves in an unfortunate situation they didn’t ask for. They had good reasons to do what they did, including the timeline.
I was attracted to Starbuck because he was charismatic and said all the right things on the issues from education to immigration. He continued to do that, especially on education, being particularly concerned, with his wife, about the hyper-sexualization of young children in our schools, a noble cause indeed, in speeches across the state.
I also appear every Thursday at 7 a.m. on the Tennessee Star Report talk radio with Michael Patrick Leahy. He and his reporter Aaron Gulbrandson have done some extensive coverage of this campaign, leading the charge on what they perceive to be carpetbagging on the part of Starbuck and Ortagus.
No one wants more Hillary Clinton-like situations as when the former first lady and presidential candidate-to-be barged into New York state and immediately became its senator.
It was on Leahy’s show that Starbuck first lied about having voted in Tennessee GOP primaries—a logical requirement for being a congressional candidate in the party. It was also a peculiar lie to tell since voting attendance is a public record easily attainable in minutes.
Falsus in uno falsus in omnibus, as they said in English jurisprudence. Robby wasn’t false in everything, but he was false in a lot. He’s all over Tennessee talk radio at this moment, accusing everybody of everything and claiming elections here are like Cuba, as he did on Twitter. (Some of Robby’s family came from that communist country.) They may be bad, as they are in practically every American state, but our elections are certainly not like Cuba.
But if you’re interested in the full case against both candidates, I suggest reading the somewhat snarky but well-researched and elegantly written blog sonsofrockytop.com.
Regarding Robby, some of their content is NSFW. (If you don’t recognize that acronym, I suggest you skip it.)
In 2017, Starbuck directed a video entitled “Enormous” by the gangsta rapper Gucci Mane. It shouldn’t be difficult to guess what personal equipment Gucci was referring to in his title given the first few lines of lyrics while watching the near-nude young woman on the screen: “It’s enormous (yeah)/Throw this bag on you, give this cash to you/ It’s enormous (enormous, yeah)/Aw yeah, aw yeah, aw yeah.”
Now I’m not a prude, but if you’re running for office under the mantle of taking sexual education out of the second grade, this isn’t a good look, to say the least. The video now has over 4 million views on YouTube. How many of those were children?
It would be highly dangerous for the Republican Party were Starbuck to have been nominated. The redistricted 5th is only slightly Republican-leaning. All a Democratic candidate would have to do would be point out Starbuck’s obvious hypocrisy with this video (and others that were hidden) and the election would be swung, the redistricting rendered worthless.
On another matter, whether Starbuck, as he claimed, endorsed Trump “in 2015,” the sonsofrockytop have this to say:
“STARBUCK’s claim his [Hollywood] career was ‘blacklisted’ because of his support for President Trump, who he says he ‘endorsed’ in 2015. STARBUCK has never provided any third-party independent contemporaneous evidence of his claims of support for Trump before 2019. In fact, an FEC search of contributions to Trump going back to 2015 show zero contributions to President Trump by either Robby Starbuck or Robert Newsom identified as Robby Starbuck, etc.
“Ortagus recently had her first fundraiser in Washington, D.C., headlined by anti-Trumper D.C. operatives, including a State Department political employee who called for Trump’s resignation on January 7th of last year and who was immediately fired by Trump.”
“Ortagus worked for Jeb Bush in 2016, where she was a designated surrogate, regularly dispatched to the media to call President Trump “disgusting and immature” and “not worthy” of support.” (These quotes are backed up by videos at the link.)
“Immediately before coming to Nashville last year, Ortagus teamed up in a failed business venture with self-described ‘BFF’ Samantha Vinograd. Vinograd is a notorious CNN press hack and Obama administration official who repeatedly called President Trump ‘Hitler’ in her CNN on-air appearances.”
“According to very high-placed sources within the Trump organization: Ward Baker [Tennessee’s Karl Rove in the short version] accompanied Ortagus to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Ivanka Trump. (Ivanka’s husband and Ortagus’s husband are good friends. Both Ortagus and Ivanka converted to the Jewish faith of their husbands, so there is that commonality.) Once at Mar-a-Lago, Ivanka ushered in Ortagus to an unscheduled meeting with her father, telling him that Pompeo recommended her. Impulsively, Trump endorsed her on the spot. Multiple senior aides to Trump were ‘blindsided’ by the end-around move made by Ivanka.
“It also enraged Donald Trump Jr. who was furious at his sister’s breach of the long-established protocol for receiving Trump’s endorsement and Don Jr. let multiple people know of his anger. By then, the deed was done and any change of course by President Trump would be seized upon by the media. Trump was stuck with Ortagus.”
Impulsively is the operative word here. We all do a lot of that. It’s what the internet did to us and is what I called, during my blogger days, “the politics of the last five minutes.”
Trump has been too impulsive in many of his selections, as have all the celebrities mentioned at the top of this article. They didn’t do their homework.
We should all do it. They should all recant what they have said. (Senator Paul—whom I admire—I’m talking to you.)
Meanwhile, Churchill and Forster remain vindicated.
