Don Huffman is an icon among Virginia Republicans. Our annual “Republican Advance” is named for this former long-time chairman. Every so often, Don will send me an interesting article, as he did with this article by Jack Wheeler.

Don relates that Jack Wheeler was the author of Reagan’s strategy to break the back of the Soviet Union with the star wars race and to expose their inner weakness. For years he wrote an extremely interesting, well structured, and informative weekly intelligence update. He is a true patriot with a no-nonsense approach to everything. Here is Jack’s article:

The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit.  No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no [manhood], nothing but abstract, empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.

He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya. Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.

What he isn’t, not a genetic drop of, is ‘African-American,’ the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn’t a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it. Fact is that Arab slave traders sold more African slaves to ship captains than any other source.

Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves; he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.

It’s something Hillary doesn’t understand – how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obama-mania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.

Thus Obama has become the white liberals’ Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it, no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it.

The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed In Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum, I believe it because it is absurd.

Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.  He is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American

And yet he got elected, not once but twice. Thanks to those who did not think it was important to vote for freedom and those who were willing to give up their freedoms for entitlements.

Remember you don’t have to be on a southern plantation to be a slave, if you are dependent on government entitlements you just have a different slave owner

My only comment on Wheeler’s article is this question: How many of the “voting majority of Americans” whom Wheeler believes “remain Christian” do so as anything more than a title or a Sunday morning activity? Until American Christians start acting like New Testament Christians our country is doomed to more Obamas, Clintons, and Pelosis. What Wheeler said is true. The real question is what are we going to do about it.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. I will be at the Advance in Norfolk on December 14 and 15 since we have a State Central Committee meeting there on Friday afternoon.

Politics never stops in the Old Dominion. We’ve just finished a federal election, we have a special election on December 18 to elect Ronnie Campbell to replace Ben Cline as the delegate from the 24^thHouse District, and now we have to start the process of electing delegates and state senators.

Most people don’t pay attention to the political process until they look to see whom each party has selected to run in the November election. But that’s just bad citizenship. Good citizenship – and good government – begins with the nominating process for each party’s candidates. To have a real say in changing the government and the way it works, you have to do more than just decide between the choices that are given to you by someone else. Get involved in the process of nominating the candidates for whom you will be able to vote.

Now that the Incumbent Protection Act has been struck down by the U.S. District Court, it is much more important for citizens to become involved in the nominating process. The “process” depends on the office for which the candidate is running. For a city or county office such as Commonwealth’s Attorney, supervisor, or Sheriff, the local unit will determine the method of nomination. For Congress, the Congressional District Committee makes the call, and for a statewide office, the State Central Committee decides.

However, when it comes to members of the General Assembly, we have what are called “Legislative District Committees” (LDC) that determine the method of nomination. Most delegate districts and all state senate districts cross unit boundaries – and that’s where it gets slightly complicated. Each member of an LDC is either the chair of a unit or the chair’s designee. Each member votes in proportion to the percentage of Republicans from the unit who voted in the last general election for that district. In the case of House of Delegates (HoD) District 11, which sits entirely within the City of Roanoke, Roanoke City Chairman Charlie Nave is a committee of one. In HoD District 23 Amherst County has 10.4% of the vote on the LDC, Bedford County has 32.2% of the vote, and Lynchburg has 57.3% of the vote. That means that the Lynchburg chair or his designee has the majority vote. Of Virginia’s 100 HoD districts, 72 include a unit that has a majority of the voting strength in the district.

But in 28 districts no one unit has a majority. In HoD District 20, for example, Augusta County has 40.5% of the vote, Highland County has 4.44%, Nelson County has 10.88%, Staunton has 22.89%, and Waynesboro has 21.29%.

Each LDC is supposed to meet before the end of December to elect a chairman. In 72 HoD districts the chair will be whomever the majority unit chairman wants it to be. Both Senate and House LDCs can choose between a primary, a convention, a mass meeting, or a party canvass (firehouse primary). If the LDC decides to nominate by a primary, the LDC chairman must notify the State Board of Elections no later than February 26. If the LDC selects a different method, that nominating event must occur between April 25 and June 11.

This timetable will hold firm for all state senate districts. However, the Federal District Court for the Eastern Region of Virginia has decided that eleven HoD districts in the state were gerrymandered to provide an unfair advantage to the Republican Party and plans to redraw district lines in the Second, Third, and Fourth Congressional Districts along with those parts of the First and Seventh Districts that are in the Richmond area. The complicating factor is that the decision has been appealed to the US Supreme Court (USSC) and the case won’t be heard until early 2019. Unless the USSC agrees with every single item in the District Court’s decision, any changes in the district lines made prior to the USSC decision could be altered again. This would create untold confusion as to which unit is in which district, what percentage of the vote on the LDC they get, how much paperwork is still valid, and whether a candidate who filed to run in one district suddenly finds herself in a different district.

As a result, Speaker of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox has asked the U.S. District Court to delay the date of primaries or other nomination methods for House of Delegate seats until September 10, and to move all the preliminary dates for HoD nominations back by a similar three months.

Until we know what the courts decide we don’t know when everything will happen, but we do know it will happen. So once the method of nominationis decided, be prepared to be involved in the nominating process. Let your unit chair know your preference and be involved in the process of nomination and in the campaigns of the candidates. We can’t hold our elected officials accountable unless we have been an important part of their successful campaigns.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

An article this past week in one of the “Advertising Age” newsletters spoke with thinly veiled sarcasm about Hasbro’s new Monopoly for Millennials board game. It’s a real game. Wal-Mart lists it on their website (although it’s out of stock). Instead of the traditional car, locomotive, and top hat of the original game, the pieces players move around the board are cameras, sunglasses, and a hashtag, among other items without which millennials would not know how to exist.

But the New York Post calls the game “insulting.” The insult is printed right on the front of the box. A caption reads “Forget real estate. You can’t afford it anyway.” In this version of the game, you don’t win money to buy homes, hotels, utilities, or railroads. Instead you collect “experience points” for landing on “3-Day Music Festival,” “Vegan Bistro,” or “Couch Surfing.” After all, memories “last forever.

The only reason I mention this game is to show how very differently millennials see the world than do we baby boomers. Our parents had to do whatever they had to do in order to survive the Great Depression. Then they did what they had to do to win the deadliest war in human history. That’s how they became “The Greatest Generation.”

We boomers had it easier than our parents. Because of the sacrifices they made, we had far more opportunities than they did. And we took advantage of those opportunities. Some of us built careers, grew families, and are reaching the point where we can sit back and in our latter years enjoy the fruits of our lifelong labors. Others of our boomer generation engaged in the philosophy and practice of free sex, free drugs, and free everything else. Then those people became college professors and taught those same philosophies to our “brightest and best.”

If you notice the polls, the majority of college educated millennials support liberal candidates. The majority of non-college educated millennials support conservatives. I think the correlation indicates a cause and effect. The college-educated millennials are being brain-washed by those we pay to educate them. And the end result of this liberal education is that these “sophomores” (comes from the Latin for “wise fools”) are taught that people who get up on their hind legs and pay the price to make something of themselves should have to provide free stuff to those who sit on their duffs and whine about how selfish the “rich folks” are.

Not all millennials fit the stereotype. There are a number of hard working, career and family oriented, and educated individuals in that generation. But they are not the majority. The majority will get a job, maybe. Those who have jobs will often quit so that they can “travel.” I watch a vblog of a man who lost his commercial pilot’s license due to a medical issue. He dealt with that setback by creating a business in which he sails various boats and catamarans around the Pacific Ocean. However, he and his partner took on two short-term crewmembers. One is a woman who earned a Psychology degree, but since she doesn’t want to do anything with her degree, she has decided to travel. The other is a nurse who also wanted to take a break from life and travel. I guess they want their “experience points” because “memories are forever.”

Now to my point: we can’t try to reach Millennials the same way we would reach out to Baby Boomers because the two generations don’t have the same frames of reference. Millennials don’t identify with the same goals and moral codes that persuade us. We can’t just ask them to vote for conservative candidates because of our “shared values.” We don’t share the same values. To get them to vote for conservative candidates, we have to first change their frame of reference from the socialist lies they have been taught. We need to convince them of the truth about their country and their liberty. And unless we reach Millennials with the truths that counter the socialist propaganda they’ve been fed, their generation will elect only socialists.

We have to reach them where THEY are, not where WE are. We can’t afford to ignore them, we can’t afford to discount them, and we can’t afford to not reach them – not if we want our children to continue to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities that this country has afforded Americans for the past two centuries.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. I don’t plan on writing an email next week since I will be spending the holidays with family. May I suggest that rather than being generically thankful for the three minutes prior to Thanksgiving Day dinner that we each take time every day this next week to thank God for specific blessings that He has provided us in America. As the old song suggests, it’s good for the soul to “Count Your Blessings, Name Them One by One.”

As chief election official at one of Lynchburg’s precincts, I do a lot of paperwork after we close the polls. My whole team has to stay until I get all the right forms, materials, marked and unmarked ballots, and other reports into the correct envelope or box. After my team members had finished taking down signs and packing away the equipment, they talked among themselves while I finished my job. One of them (a Democrat) momentarily distracted me from what I was doing when he loudly commented, “Virginia isn’t purple anymore. It’s now blue.”

Think about the results of this past election. We did have eight Republican congressmen from Virginia. Now we have five. Barbara Comstock lost in the 10^th  District, Dave Brat lost in the 7^th, and Scott Taylor lost in the 2^nd. I hated to see Brat lose. He has been a hard worker who has voted as a conservative should vote right down the line. He lost by less than two percent of the vote. He might have won if Republicans who still support Eric Cantor (whom Brat defeated in a bitter primary several years ago) had gotten behind him. On the other hand, some conservative Republicans were glad to see Scott Taylor lose because they believe many of his positions on social issues are not in keeping with conservative values. Many of those same conservatives are happy Comstock lost. They believe she was more concerned about keeping herself elected than about moving the country in the right direction.

I have great respect for Brat because during his tenure in office he voted in the way that was best for the people he represented rather than in the way that was best for his own political career. He can know that he did his best for Virginia while he was in a position to do it. He didn’t water down his principles by considering what was best for his own election totals.

That brings to mind a statement one of my State Central Committee colleagues made at an SCC meeting earlier this year. We had before us a motion to adopt a resolution that had already been adopted by the Republican National Committee. The resolution supports the rights of parents to control their own children’s education. The issue had support from both Democrat and Republican voters. This particular colleague opposed our adoption of the resolution because, he said, we should not be telling our legislators how to vote. Rather, he said, we need to give them the freedom to vote in the way that would best position them to get reelected.

It almost sounds like a reasonable argument – for about a half a second. My SCC colleague, who is intelligent and well-spoken, seems to believe that we elect Republicans whose only job then is to get reelected. That is not how a representative government is supposed to work. We are SUPPOSED to tell our representatives how to vote. After all, we elect them to REPRESENT us. That is why our federal government and most state legislatures each have a House of REPRESENTATIVES. Virginia has a House of Delegates, but that just means we delegate certain individuals to speak for us in the General Assembly. And logic says you send someone to speak for you who will accurately speak what you want spoken. So of course we should tell them how to vote.

Dave Brat did an excellent job of voting in support of Republican principles and in support of that which was best for his constituents. He can be proud of that record.

And to those who remind me that he lost and can no longer vote that way, I remind you that other people lost who never voted right in the first place. But Brat, along with others who voted right, has the satisfaction of knowing they did their job well and with honor.

Think how much better off we would be today if more members of the U.S. House had voted like Dave Brat. We would have permanent tax cuts, we would have built “the wall,” and we would have cleaned up the deep state bureaucrats who continue to hinder President Trump’s agenda.

Until we get this dichotomy straightened out within the Republican Party, we will continue to see Republican infighting taking up time and energy that we should be investing in defeating Democrats, turning Virginia red again, and educating young people (Wall Street Journal data says 64% of voters under age 24 supported left-wing candidates and their policies).

Let’s elect legislators who will leave a legacy of courageous service rather than a trail of self-serving votes.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The schizophrenic Democratic Party has flip-flopped yet again and now demands that President Trump adhere to the Constitution, but only because our President interprets the Fourteenth Amendment differently than they do. Adopted in 1868 following the Civil War, the Amendment was designed to grant citizenship rights to former slaves (Sections 1 and 2) and deny those rights to people who after swearing allegiance to the United States (military officers and members of Congress) took part in an insurrection against the United States (Section 3). Nor would the U.S. government pay any debts incurred by any insurrectionist – such as the Confederate government (Section 4). Section 5 gives Congress the power to pass legislation to enforce this Amendment.

Section 1 of the Amendment reads:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The specific phrase in question is “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The Democrats say that “subject to the jurisdiction” means that anyone who is on our soil has to obey our laws and is therefore subject to our jurisdiction. President Trump appears to be saying that individuals who are in our country illegally are under the jurisdiction of the country in which they held citizenship prior to entering the U.S.

Robert’s Rules of Order (p 588) says that when an ambiguity in the bylaws exists it should be resolved in keeping with the intention of the society at the time it was passed. Granted, the courts are not governed by Robert’s Rules, but Jacob Howard, one of the U.S. Senators who drafted the amendment, said, “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.” Senator Howard went on to state, “Indians born within the limits of the United States and who maintain their tribal relations, are not, in the sense of this amendment, born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Then-Senator Lyman Trumbull said, “The provision is, that ‘all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens. That means, “subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.” He also said, “What do we mean by subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”

President Trump, referring back to the intent of the authors, can logically interpret the Amendment the way he does. And since Congress won’t do its duty under Section 5 of the Amendment and fix our horrible immigration mess, President Trump is forcing the issue. I guarantee that his executive order will end up before the Supreme Court.

The court has ruled on this before. In 1884, the Supreme Court ruled that a Native American born under the jurisdiction of a Native American tribe could not unilaterally make himself a United States citizen, since “no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent.” In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that Wong Kim Ark, a child born in the United States to legal resident Chinese immigrants, was included in the birthright citizenship provided by the Fourteenth Amendment. (Note that the parents were LEGAL residents and not persons who snuck across the border for the sole purpose of providing their newborn with 85 years of government benefits.)

Mike Huckabee, in his opinion piece “Legal Pros and Cons of Trump’s ‘Birthright’ Executive Order,” explains even more of the issues involved.

Trump-critics will say that the Amendment has to be taken as “ratified.” I agree. But I also agree that that particular phrase can legitimately be interpreted two different ways. I’m glad Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch will be two of the justices responsible for interpreting it.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Two amendments to the Virginia Constitution appear on the November ballot. Both amendments involve tax exemptions for real estate. The Republican Party of Virginia has not taken a position on either amendment, so I urge you to click here to learn about the proposed amendments before you enter the voting booth.