The State Central Committee (SCC) of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) met for our quarterly meeting on Friday, December 6, at the Homestead. RPV Chairman Jack Wilson, in apparent response to some sharp criticism of the RPV leadership, was very careful to emphasize that even though Executive Director John Findlay is leaving at the end of the year, Jack had not offered the job to anyone nor would he make that decision on his own. Jack will appoint a nationwide search committee to find the right person with the right skills to lead Virginia back to its conservative roots.

In apparent response to real anger within the Party about lack of candidates in the General Assembly races this fall, Jack assured SCC members that in 2020 we will have a Republican candidate in every Congressional district in Virginia. He also noted that the RPV will establish financial accounts now for every district that does not have an incumbent running, so that each Republican candidate who wins nomination will have a “nest egg” of funds to jump start their campaigns.

There were some subtle differences in how the meeting progressed that gives me hope that the conservative, grassroots members of the SCC are developing a rapport with a group of SCC members who have not traditionally been our allies. It appears that the SCC is no longer a “two faction” committee. The faction of the SCC that had the majority on all votes (not the side I’m on) has apparently split (loosely) into two groups. One of those groups is still hardcore Establishment. The other faction is more pragmatic and bucks the Establishment leadership when they think the leaders are wrong – which has happened several times this year.

The “new” faction joined with the conservative faction on several votes at this meeting just as they have done on other issues during the last couple of meetings. And this new three-faction situation appears to have caused the Establishment element of the SCC to be more conciliatory and cooperative. This seemed evident to me during the presentation of the several Party Plan amendments we debated.

A couple of amendments were housekeeping changes. We added a definition (Article II) of a legal signature. When multiple signatures are required on Party documents (such as an appeal or a petition to remove an officer) those signatures must now be either handwritten (in ink) or an electronic signature consistent with the Code of Virginia (Section 59.1-479). It also clarifies that a copy of the original signatures may be provided to the “defendant” rather than the actual signatures. We also changed wording (Article VI, F) that no longer comports with Virginia law.

As an outgrowth of last spring’s District 97 debacle, we added a paragraph (VIII, A, 11) that says simply “Once a call has been published, the method of nomination may not be changed.” During discussion someone pointed out that certain calls were not required to be published, so we also added a line to require publishing of all calls.

Due to questions this year concerning appeals, we clarified language in Article X, B and C. Also, in X, B, 5 & 6, we have changed the time frames for various steps in the process from 14 and 30 days to a consistent 21 days.

The final amendment also grew out of the District 97 issues. The Party Plan (I, B) now requires that anyone who is appointed to a committee that deals with rules governing any official committee (such as a Legislative District Committee) must be a member of a unit committee or an RPV auxiliary committee (CRs, YRs, VFRW). If a chair designates an individual to represent the chair as a proxy or to serve on a committee appointed by the chair, that individual must be a member of an official committee or auxiliary. This proscription does not apply to individuals elected to office by a convention or other nominating meeting.

Finally, we approved a call for RPV’s mandatory quadrennial convention. The state convention will be May 1-2, 2020, at Liberty University’s Vines Center in Lynchburg. We will elect the RPV chairman, elect delegates and alternates to the National Convention in August, and select our National Committeeman and Committeewoman.

I came away from the SCC meeting encouraged. Hopefully, the events at the meeting indicate that the state party is finally getting into a frame of mind in which the Party can actually get important work done – successfully.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Last week, for the first time in nearly a decade, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a gun rights case. A local shooting sports club is challenging New York City’s handgun regulations. The regulation in question refused to allow residents to take their lawfully owned and registered handguns anywhere outside their homes unless they were going directly to any one of seven gun ranges within the city limits. Residents could not take their guns to a range outside the city or to any other location, including a second home. It was against the law to stop at Starbucks or any other place on their way to the range. The City declared for six years that the law was constitutional, but when the Supreme Court announced last January that they would hear the case, New York City changed the law in an effort to keep the Court from hearing it, declaring that the issue was moot.

Justice Ginsburg said that New York City had given the shooting club everything that they wanted, so there was nothing left to adjudicate. Justice Sotomayor said that New York City has basically “thrown in the towel.” But Chief Justice Roberts in a 2007 opinion said that a case does not become moot just because a defendant voluntarily stopped the action that caused the original litigation. It has to be “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.”

The shooting club wants the Court to declare “that the transportation ban is and was unconstitutional.” Without that declaration, there is no reason why the City cannot come back in a different judicial environment and reinstitute their unconstitutional regulations.

But if by some chance a majority of the justices decide this case is moot, there are several other cases in the wings. One of those is Worman v. Healey. That case challenges Massachusetts’ ban on firearms and magazines that are commonly used in more than forty states. Gun grabbers don’t want the Supreme Court to rule on that law because that would invalidate a large number of laws that the Democrats in Virginia’s General Assembly have promised to pass in the upcoming session. Those laws would be impermissible if the Massachusetts ban is ruled unconstitutional.

Another element of the New York City case that the General Assembly should consider is that a broad spectrum of justices questioned whether the law improved public safety. These included Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Alito. The lawyer for New York City allowed that the law “could be repealed without a negative impact on public safety.” The gun control laws that Virginia’s Democrat legislators plan to pass will not only have no positive impact on public safety, they will have a negative impact because they will reduce the public’s ability to defend ourselves.

Another thing the General Assembly should consider is the huge increase in state expenditures when they have to defend themselves from the constitutional challenges that are guaranteed to arise in both federal and state courts. There is also the huge cost to the states because twenty-eight local governments all over the Commonwealth have become Second Amendment Sanctuaries, and their local law enforcement agencies will not help the state enforce laws that are blatantly unconstitutional. Nearly sixty other localities are considering such ordinances.

And in a move that could start a trend, the Tazewell County Board of Supervisors not only unanimously passed a Second Amendment Sanctuary law last week, they also unanimously passed a resolution that promoted “the order of militia within the county.” Attorney and County Administrator Eric Young said, “Our position is that Article I, Section 13, of the Constitution of Virginia reserves the right to ‘order’ militia to the localities. Therefore, counties, not the state, determine what types of arms may be carried in their territory and by whom. So, we are ‘ordering’ the militia by making sure everyone can own a weapon.”

The long and the short of it though is that the liberals don’t want the Supreme Court to rule on guns right now, because they know their favorite laws will be declared unconstitutional. They also want to impeach President Trump so that he won’t be able to place another conservative justice on the court when the ailing Ruth Ginsburg finally steps down. If the Supreme Court does stand up and do its job as the Constitution requires, and if we keep approving such people to fill judicial vacancies in all federal courts, then the only recourse for gun grabbers will be to cry in their beer. And that’s why gun controllers don’t want the Supreme Court actually ruling on the constitutionality of gun laws.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee met at the Rockingham County Administration Building on Saturday, November 23, 2019, for our regular quarterly meeting. The meeting went smoothly and followed the published agenda. I gave a report on a bill that we received a year after the 2018 convention. Before we paid it, we wanted to know 1) whether we actually owed it and 2) why we were receiving the invoice a year late. The bill was from Scantron with whom we had contracted for electronic balloting services for the convention. I checked signed work orders against invoices paid, and we had not paid this bill. Then after further research, we discovered that Scantron was using our former address. The District’s mailing address was changed so abruptly after the convention that the invoice they mailed didn’t get to us before the change. Even though we filed a change of address form with the post office, the invoice got lost in the transition. Since I had been in charge of balloting, Scantron finally reached out to me a year after the event. Since we had already closed the books on the convention and since the Committee only meets quarterly, it took us a bit of time to sort through it all. But the bill is paid and all is good.

We heard from four of our successful delegate candidates, Tony Wilt, Ronnie Campbell, Wendell Walker, and Chris Runion, about their campaigns and about what they face in the next iteration of the General Assembly

Since Republicans will be nominating our candidate for U.S. Senate via primary, seven announced candidates are on the campaign trail. Three of them spoke at our meeting and gave us their website addresses for us to share with other Republican voters. The three were Alissa Baldwin < https://www.alissabaldwin.com/>, Daniel Gade <https://www.gadeforvirginia.com>, and Thomas Speciale < https://thomasspeciale.com/>. John Warner is beatable with the right candidate. We in the Sixth will have a great deal to do with whether a statewide candidate can garner enough votes to overcome the Democrats’ advantage in the Urban Crescent. If we want to win in 2020, we need to start paying attention to the candidates and the campaign NOW.

Then Noah Allen, President Trump’s campaign chief for the Sixth District, gave us some insights as to what we can start doing even now to make Virginia red in the 2020 election.

The final order of business – and the longest – was a discussion of the call we need to create in order to have our required quadrennial convention to elect a new district chair, three State Central Committee members (such as myself) to represent the district in statewide matters, three delegates and three alternates to the Republican national convention to nominate President Trump for reelection, and a constitutionally mandated elector to vote for President Trump in the electoral college when Virginia gives a majority vote to him (rather than one of the clowns you see on the Democrat debate stage – if you can stomach looking at all). Discussion of the call took a while, but it was civil – although at times high spirited – and the convention call committee got a sense of what the District Committee wanted to have in the call. The call committee will take that information and bring a final proposed call to the District Committee at our next meeting, which is at this writing is scheduled for December 14 in Waynesboro.

Then we went home.

A lot of us also went “home home” this week to celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday during which families traditionally gather and share a meal with family and friends and otherwise have a wonderful time. But too many people think of this holiday only as Happy Turkey Day – even though most turkeys aren’t particularly happy about the day.

We have forgotten our history. Thanksgiving Day has always been declared a day to give thanks to God for the blessings He has given to our country. It isn’t a day just to be thankful. (How many homes began their traditional meal by letting each one seated at the table list something for which they are thankful?) Being thankful is not the same as giving thanks to God. There is a distinct difference between being fortunate and being blessed. Being fortunate means you were lucky and happened to get something that you wanted through happenstance. Being blessed means that God was good to you and purposefully gave you something that He intended for your good. Often we don’t see the blessing right away because we wanted something else. But in time we see that what God gave us was far better than what we were trying to get for ourselves. That means God in His wisdom loved us enough to give us more and better than we would ever imagine for ourselves. We don’t have to wait for a special day to thank God for his goodness. We can make every day a Thanks Giving Day.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

A friend mentioned to me that one of the witnesses at Congress’s impeachment farce said in testimony this week that the Russians didn’t care who won the 2016 Presidential election because they have our whole country right where they want us – moving from Step 2 to Step 3 of Karl Marx’s four steps for taking over a country.

The first step is Agitation. We’ve all read about the Antifa riots, and we all remember protesters chanting “Not my President.” Cars were smashed, buildings were trashed, peaceful citizens have been hounded out of restaurants, and conservative speakers have been attacked on college campuses. All of this is designed to unsettle the country.

The second step is Demoralization. This includes destroying both the morale and the morality of a nation. These subverters have done a pretty thorough job of demoralizing Christians and pushing Christianity into the shadows of society. Atheist Christopher Hitchens once stated that religion “poisons everything.” He believed that “these cobwebbed superstitions could be blasted away by the refreshing winds of reason and the Enlightenment [so that] a fundamentally better society would rise from the ashes….” It seems – on the surface – to have worked. All too many Christians have been cowed by this type of rhetoric and have allowed themselves to be muted and the Good News of their faith to be shoved out of sight in America today.

Marx’s third step is Destabilization and Crisis. We have an immigration crisis, our urban areas are becoming war zones, we have a joke of a government that spends more time trying to unseat a legally elected President than on the business of the country. Our infrastructure has issues. Our medical system is in disarray. Our education system is a disaster. And if things continue this way, people will be willing to accept any solution – which leads us to step four.

Step four is Normalization. In this step, people will accept whatever it takes to “make the pain go away.” And that’s when we lose our liberty, our economy, our country as we have known it.

We can try to use politics to halt this surge to insanity, but you can see how well that worked in Virginia when the eastern half of the state turned the General Assembly over to a bunch of socialists who are determined to destroy our freedoms in the name of  “progress.” It isn’t progress to descend into the depths of human degradation, and that is where our society will go with the “progressive” bills that have already been filed for next year’s session.

This brings us back to the abdication of influence by Christians who decided that sitting in their safe spaces, their churches and retreat centers, is more comfortable than is fighting on the battlefield in the war against evil. They ignore the words of Jesus, Whom they claim to serve: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Christians have shuttered their light so that far too few can see it. That is why so many college students have flocked to Socialism. Christians have failed to show them the better alternative.

Even atheists are realizing how far our society has fallen since Christian influence has ebbed. Public speaker, radio host, and author Jonathon Van Maren writes: “In a truly secular society, in which men and women live their lives beneath empty heavens and expect to be recycled rather than resurrected, there is no solid moral foundation for good and evil. Anti-theists like Christopher Hitchens mocked and reviled the idea that mankind needed God to know right from wrong, but scarcely two generations into our great secularization, we no longer even know male from female.” Van Maren continues, “…[O]ne does not need to find Christianity believable to realize that it is necessary.” He also references an argument among atheists as to “whether a society based on Enlightenment values is even possible without Christianity.”  He further notes that so-called “Christian atheist” Douglas Murray “believes that in the absence of the secularists’ ability to hammer out ethics on fundamental issues such as the Sanctity of Life, we may be forced to recognize that returning to faith is the best option available to us. There is a very real possibility that our modern concept of human rights, based as it is on a Judeo-Christian foundation, may very well outlive Christianity by only a few short years.” Van Maren adds, “Without the Christian underpinnings of our society, it will be up to us to decide what is right and wrong, and as our current culture wars clearly illustrate, our civilization will tear itself apart before it regains consensus.”

We don’t need political solutions or anti-theistic Enlightenment. We need Christians to put the light of God’s Good News back where people can see it so they can guide our culture back to sanity. There is no hope for our country unless and until Christians put aside their ease and begin again to follow Jesus Christ – Whom they claim as their Lord – back into the battle between good and evil. Even atheists can see that.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Last week’s column generated a lot of response from my readers. The one question more of them asked than any other was “What do we do now?” For starters, don’t give up. There are things YOU can do that will help us gain back the House of Delegates and the governor’s mansion in two years. That will halt the madness that our looney liberal legislature will bring to Virginia during the next two years. More importantly, what you do in the next eleven months will determine whether Virginia goes for Trump next year. But it will require more than moaning and wringing our hands. It requires people to have the courage to do things that might be outside of their comfort zones.

Step one in our fight against liberal lunacy is to find conservative minded people who are not registered to vote and get them registered. In 2012 the “Obama for America” (OBA) campaign registered 1.8 million new voters in person, not counting the ones who downloaded a form on-line. In Florida, OBA collected 316,176 registration forms. Obama won Florida by 74,309 votes. In Colorado OBA collected 156,860 registration forms. Obama won Colorado by 137,948 votes. In Nevada OBA collected 95,973 registration forms. Obama won by 67,806 votes. The Democrats collected enough new voters in those three states to turn those 44 electoral votes from Republican to Democrat. If 44 electoral votes had gone the other way in 2016, we would have President Hillary instead of President Trump.

And this wasn’t just a one and done exercise. Democrats have been pursuing new registrations for over a decade. In 2008 they registered 161,634 voters in North Carolina. Obama won North Carolina by only 13,692. They registered 73,818 voters in Indiana. Obama won Indiana by 25,836 votes. Our candidates have to build a massive groundswell of support to overcome such targeted registration tactics. That is the only way President Trump won in 2016 since Republicans have been doing a very poor job of registering conservative voters.

In Virginia in 2017 the RPV gubernatorial campaign war room was confident on election day that Ed Gillespie was going to win because they projected 40,000 more voters for Ed than Terry McAuliffe the gotten in the previous election. But due to the huge registration efforts of the Democrats, Ralph Northam had even more votes than that. The key to winning statewide elections is to register every conservative minded adult citizen in the Commonwealth.

The Trump Campaign has a chart showing the percentage of registered voters in each county. The Democratic strongholds of NOVA, Richmond, and Tidewater are pretty much saturated with close to 100 percent registration. A few localities even have more registered voters than they have voting age citizens – but that’s the topic for a different column. There are some Republican neighborhoods in those areas that we need to hit, but most of the “Urban Crescent” has been “harvested.” The rest of the state has much lower percentages of registered voters. The Sixth District localities with the greatest percentages are Bath and Roanoke Counties. But Rockbridge county has among the lowest percentages of registered voter in the state followed by Amherst, Augusta, and Page Counties as well as Harrisonburg. Bedford, Botetourt, and Highland Counties plus Staunton and Waynesboro have middling percentages, but Shenandoah and Warren Counties plus Lynchburg and Roanoke City need to up their game.

All this is to say that we have plenty of work to do that WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the next election – if we do more than just talk about it. Individuals should talk with their neighbors and family members and co-workers and anyone else they know who is conservative, find out if they have registered to vote, and get them registered if they haven’t. It is not hard, and it is not controversial. Units and small groups of people should sponsor registration tables at gun shows, gun stores, evangelical churches and anywhere else conservatives are likely to gather.

Be prepared. The state requires that anyone who plans to collect more than 25 voter registration forms must take a 20-minute on-line instruction course on how to register people correctly. It’s easy. I’ve done it.

We can moan or we can show the courage to take this very important step and implement a campaign to catch and beat the Democrats at the polls. This is step one. The Trump campaign is pushing hard for us to do this, and they want us to tell them how many new people we have registered. We must register conservatives or give up on our state. And we need to start now and keep working if we ever hope to gain enough ground to win.

There is a second and much different step, but I will tell you about it next week. But you can begin action on this first step without waiting – that is if you really do care about taking Virginia back from the looney liberals.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.