Corey Stewart won the Sixth District… by 735 votes out of over 36,500 votes cast. Six localities went for Ed Gillespie: Bath, Botetourt, and Roanoke Counties; Lynchburg and Roanoke Cities, and the Rockbridge Area (which includes Rockbridge County, Buena Vista, and Lexington). The other 11 entities went for Stewart, although the difference in Bedford County was only 18 votes out of 3,328 votes cast. The more important statistic, though, is that Ed Gillespie won more votes statewide than any other Republican gubernatorial candidate. That makes him our nominee.

I know many people who were passionate about Stewart and truly wanted him to be our nominee. I understand that. I get it. I wanted Senator Ted Cruz to be our Republican candidate for President. But we got Donald Trump. It took me a few days to get over the heartache of that loss and finally wrap my head around the need to support Trump. Trump was not my first choice, but at last November’s election, he was my only choice.

So to ardent Stewart supporters, go ahead and grieve. Take a couple of days to deal with your disappointment. I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But then I ask you to recognize one very important point. Ed Gillespie is much, much closer to the social and political beliefs we conservative Republicans hold than Ralph Northam will ever be.

In the heat of the campaign, there were some robo-calls going out that made untrue claims about Ed. I’ve talked to Ed at length on several occasions, and I’ve asked him some point-blank questions. He gave me honest answers, and I liked most of what he had to say. I don’t agree with every position he holds, but he is so much closer to what we conservatives want than is Ralph Northam that we really don’t have any choice in who we support.

Back in 2013, a huge number of Bill Bolling’s supporters refused to support or even vote for Ken Cuccinelli because their feelings were hurt. The margin of Cuccinelli’s defeat in November was so narrow that if the Bolling supporters had come out to support and vote for Republican principles (instead of focusing on the identity of the standard bearer) we would have a Republican governor instead of Governor McAwful. What I’ve read on Facebook the past few days tells me we are headed that way again People need to look at what we gain with Ed and what we lose with Ralph. We need to just get over ourselves and look at the bigger picture.

In order to win back the governor’s mansion, we have to win the Sixth by the largest Republican margin in history. That means that everyone has to get on the ball and get out the votes we need to offset northern Virginia and Tidewater. I’ve said it before – during the Trump campaign – if you find you can’t support a particular candidate, then at least support the Party platform that represents our commonly held beliefs.

I will be so glad when we Republicans finally get it into our heads that we have to stop fighting other Republicans if we are ever going to defeat Democrats!

One thing we can all do is to identify people who share our same beliefs, but who are not associated with the Republican Party. Invite those people to events such as First Fridays or Second Saturdays. Former Rockingham chairwoman Donna Moser has organized and led First Fridays in the Harrisonburg area for a number of years. On the first Friday of each month, people come together to eat lunch and hear a speaker. Donna invites all manner of interesting, conservative speakers, and she has quite a number of people who support her activities and attend her events.

Another similar event is Second Saturdays in the Waynesboro-Staunton area. Waynesboro chairman Ken Adams heads up this Saturday breakfast meeting. Both of these events are designed to allow like-minded voters to get together in a friendly, informative setting.

If everybody does something – whether it’s phone banking, fund raising, door-to-door canvassing, or just bringing like-minded people to these monthly events – we can deny the Dems another four years in the governor’s mansion. The last four years have been bad enough. We don’t want a repeat for the next four.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Everyone needs to continue the level of effort shown in the primary campaigns. We can’t afford to take a break from our campaign efforts. The Democrats put staffers in the field months ago. It’s up to us to counter that with steady work from now to November – whether we spend a great amount of time or a little – if we ALL don’t do the work, it won’t get done. And that will put the bad guys back in the Governor’s Mansion.

I write all my own emails, and have done so every week for nearly a year and a half. However, I found some really interesting information put out by the Virginia Republican Alliance (VRA). The VRA encourages their readers to forward their emails to “friends and colleagues.” I trust that you, my friends and colleagues, will find this information as intriguing as I have.

Trump’s Russian Connection and Other Crimes

Remember when Donald Trump was business partners with the Russian government and his company got $53 million from the Russian government investment fund called Rusnano that was started by Vladimir Putin and is referred to as “Putin’s Child”? Oh wait. That wasn’t Trump. It was John Podesta [Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, Counselor to President Barak Obama, and Presidential Campaign Chairman for Hillary Clinton].

Remember when Donald Trump received $500 thousand for a speech in Moscow and that was paid for by Renaissance Capital, a company tied to Russian Intelligence Agencies? Oh wait. That was Bill Clinton.

Remember when Donald Trump approved the sale of 20 per cent of U.S. uranium to the Russians while he was Secretary of State, which gave control of it to Rosatom, the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation? Oh wait. That was Hillary Clinton.

Remember when Donald Trump lied about that [uranium sale] and said he wasn’t a part of approving the deal that gave the Russians 1/5 of our uranium, but then his emails were leaked showing he did lie about it? Oh wait. That was Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.

Remember when Donald Trump got 145 million dollars from shareholders of the uranium company sold to the Russians? Oh wait. That was Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

Remember when Donald Trump accepted millions in donations from Russian Oligarchs like the chairman of a company that is part of the Russian Nuclear Research Cluster, the wife of the mayor of Moscow, and a close pal of Putin? Oh wait. That was the Clinton Foundation.

Remember when Donald Trump failed to disclose all those donations before becoming the Secretary of State, and it was only found out when a journalist went through Canadian tax records? Oh wait. That was Hillary Clinton.

Remember when Donald Trump told Mitt Romney that the 80s called and it wanted its Russian policy back. The Cold War is over? Oh wait. That was President Obama.

Man… Trump’s ties to Russia are disgusting!

Just as a final thought, I’m sure that the reason the main stream media never blew this up all over the airwaves is that they couldn’t figure out how to properly identify verifiable sources, they didn’t want to spread “rumors” – unsubstantiated or otherwise, but most importantly, it didn’t fit their own preferred narrative. Except that if Donald Trump HAD done all that the Clinton camp has done, we would not hear the end of it until Trump was six-feet under – if then. But since it WAS the Clintons… crickets.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. The Virginia Republican Alliance was formed on 4 July 2012 to provide assistance and information to voters and to keep voters informed about issues that are vital to the future of our country. Their email address is VaRepAll@VirginiaRA.com.

P.P.S. If you don’t vote in the primary on Tuesday, you have no right to complain about the quality or identity of our Republican nominees. And regardless of who wins the Republican state and local primaries, support them in the fall.

After Kathy Griffin was smashed with criticism for her disgusting photo with a “blood-covered” likeness of Donald Trump’s head, she “apologized” by calling it “comedy that crossed the line.” Comedy? Try stupidity. Griffin’s “comedy” was so awful CNN fired her from their huge New Year’s Eve program, which she co-hosted with Anderson Cooper for ten years. Cooper said he was “appalled” by the picture and called it “clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.” Squatty Potty, which designs bathroom products, terminated its endorsement agreement with Griffin using phrases like “shocked and disappointed,” “deeply inappropriate,” and “contrary to the core values our company stands for.” A theater in New Jersey and a casino in New Mexico have cancelled performances scheduled for later this year, and the USO has dropped her from their list of entertainers. [Actor Jim Carrey defended her, but that’s a different story.]

I’m mildly surprised that CNN took any action. The media are so anxious to make our President look bad they seem to grasp at anything negative that someone can make up about him. Apparently they do think it’s possible to go too far. So maybe there is hope for them to recover their journalistic ethics.

I believe the media has deluded themselves. They honestly believe that the majority of Americans want to get rid of President Trump, and that just is not so. Their problem is they work in a little bubble of people who think as they do, and they live in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, which are arguably the most liberal cities in America. But most real people have determined that Donald Trump was elected legally and officially. He IS our President – like it or not – so let him get on with running the country.

The media thought surely enough people are so disgusted that Trump won, they will come out in droves to elect Democrats to thwart his efforts in Congress. They expected a Democrat to win the special election in Kansas. Oops. Sorry. That reliably Republican state stayed that way.

They thought surely Democrat Rob Quist would win the special election to fill Montana’s seat in Congress. They just knew that voters would turn against GOP candidate Greg Gianforte when, on the night before the election, he “body-slammed” a pushy journalist named Ben Jacobs, who according to Gianforte’s campaign barged into a private interview and began asking badgering question with his recorder in Gianforte’s face. Nope. Gianforte won handily.

Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center thinks that while Gianforte’s actions were certainly inappropriate, there are a lot of Americans who would love to reach through their TVs every so often and do the same thing. [Do NOT try this at home. Body-slamming a liberal might seem like fun, but it is decidedly illegal.] Gainor also says that the media keep looking for “evidence that America is rejecting Donald Trump – and they keep not finding it.”

The media keeps trying to give the public reasons to hate President Trump by running unsubstantiated stories from “unnamed sources.” In some instances I think it’s biased reporting. In other cases I think the media just want so badly for the stories to be true that they run with them without properly verifying their truthfulness. But verifying sources is about the first thing we taught in Journalism 101. Today’s “so called” journalists would flunk my classes with stories this far fetched.

We call journalists “gatekeepers” because they control what “news” is given to the public. Because they have obviously lost their objectivity, we can no longer trust them with the keys to the information gate. Be wary. Consult other sources. You have a lot of credible news sources available to you on the Internet. Read more than one. The stories we have been getting from the main stream media about our President are unsubstantiated that I can paraphrase and contradict legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s signature signoff. “And that’s probably NOT the way it is.”

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Check out our website. I just put up a video that Dr. Carol Swain did for Prager University that YouTube has restricted on their site. And go to our Facebook page to see a post about how to protest YouTube’s unfair practice of limiting who can view Prager University’s conservative-viewpoint videos on their site.

Memorial Day starts the summer vacation season, and Labor Day ends it. At least, that seems to be the general approach most Americans take to those holidays. We celebrate both days – both three-day weekends, actually – with barbeques, reunions, and other fun activities. Some people, not a large enough percentage, remember that Labor Day is actually a day to honor and celebrate the working “stiff” who built the businesses that make our country so strong economically. And while a number of people think of Memorial Day as a day to honor loved ones who have died, it is actually more than that.

“Decoration Day” was first celebrated in 1868 as a day to decorate with flags and flowers the graves of Union Army soldiers who died during the civil war. Southerners began a similar tradition for their Civil War soldiers, and the two were eventually merged into Memorial Day – a federal holiday to celebrate the lives of people who died while serving in our armed forces. As Labor Day celebrates the people who gave us economic strength, Memorial Day celebrates the lives of the people who gave us military strength.

During World War 2, my dad served in the Coast Guard. He was a quartermaster petty officer who provided supplies to keep Coast Guard cutters on patrol. He was one of only three people – up to that time – to make a perfect grade in the state of Florida on the math portion of the officer candidate test. As a result he was invited to attend officer candidate school. World War 2 ended before he completed the school. Since he didn’t want to make a career of the military, he mustered out and returned to Oklahoma to become one of those people we celebrate on Labor Day.

Some might think that Coast Guardsmen were not in harms way during the War, but they fail to remember that the Coast Guard was one of the primary forces set against the German U-Boats that created havoc with our east coast shipping. It was a desperate battle until the cities along the eastern seaboard finally got it into their heads that all their signs and streetlights and store lights were silhouetting our ships so that the U-Boats could see them and attack them. Between the finally enforced blackout regulations and the hard-won experience our patrol craft gained from their successes and failures, we were finally able to make it too dangerous for U-Boats to approach our coast.

Few people realize that many members of the Coast Guard piloted the landing craft that took Marines into the beaches under deadly and accurate enemy fire. My dad’s older brother, Cliff, joined the Coast Guard and became a machinist on a tanker in the Pacific that was tasked with keeping our battleships fueled. I think of service on a tanker as a more dangerous posting than any World War 2 naval assignment other than submarines – which lost almost a third of their number during the war.

My Uncle Virgil served on one of the 83-foot Coast Guard cutters that ran anti-submarine patrols on the east coast. After the war, he joined the Army and became a paratrooper.

My Uncle J B was a Marine Lieutenant during the War.

One of my dad’s brothers did not serve in the military – even though he desperately wanted to. He had been in a terrible farming accident when he was a boy. Even though the doctor managed to save my uncle’s legs so that he could walk, my uncle wasn’t able to pass the military physical.

Each of the boys in my dad’s family did as much as they could to preserve our freedoms during the War. Then they did as much as they could to develop the economic strength of our country following the War.

My 96-year-old dad is the only one of the brothers still living. He lives with my sister in Minnesota. The others are all buried in Oklahoma where they were born and raised. I can’t get out to Oklahoma this weekend to “decorate” their graves. Instead, I decided to use this email to “decorate” their memories.

I might even barbeque some steaks in their honor.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. This weekend, celebrate the veterans in your family, living or dead. Put a flag or a flower on their graves. Or if your veteran is still alive, put a flag or a flower on his or her lapel.