Has the Tea Party lost its Mind?

This is not a question for the leftist liberal or anti-tea party Democrat to ignorantly answer. Instead, this is a question that goes out to those supposed Tea Party activists and conservatives that feel Newt Gingrich is the best option to take on President Obama in 2012.

Gingrich? Seriously? The man that nearly 20 years ago helped orchestrate the Republican takeover of Congress and the Contract with America, but for inexplicable reasons went off the reservation routinely over a decade later? The man that refuses to call global warming for what it is: junk science? The man that griped about TARP as a FOX News Analyst, then later admitted he would have voted for the provision had he been in Congress? The man with an immigration “amnesty” policy that mirrors John McCain. The man that in 2010, endorsed liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava over Doug Hoffman?  The man that just a few months ago, referred to Paul Ryan’s efforts to balance the budget as “right-wing social engineering”? The man that has failed to commit to marriage or faith? Are you serious?

We apparently live in a world now where every Presidential contest will be viewed and decided in a format like American Idol, where performance is the only thing that matters, while message gets relegated to the sidelines. We saw this with candidate in Obama in 2008.

Newt Gingrich’s rise has been due to a combination of factors. Most notably has been the self-destruction of every other Anti-Romney candidate in what has been a volatile cycle in the polls. The largest factor, however, has been Gingrich’s performance in the debates where he consistently uses a formula of talking “above the fray”, refusing to attack or challenge the record of the others on stage, while attacking whomever the MSM moderator was at the time, much to the delight of conservatives.

But, as Michele Bachmann recently pointed out, there’s a big difference between being able to “speak the language of conservatism and comparing it to a candidate’s actual record”.  This Reagan philosophy is more commonly known as the “Trust, but Verify” doctrine.  The doctrine, in particular, gets to the root of Mitt Romney’s problem with the Tea Party…..they don’t trust him.  It explains precisely why Herman Cain did so well in the polls after Sarah Palin opted to sit out…..the Tea Party felt it could trust him.

But Cain is gone, a victim of unrelenting attacks from the MSM regarding baseless allegations that diverted him off message, ultimately forcing him to suspend his campaign. With Cain’s departure, the Tea Party and grassroots conservatives needed another place to go, and fast, with the Iowa Caucuses just a month away.

It has become clear through regular polling that Mitt Romney will never be able to break his plateau of 20-25% support, and that the votes are there for a challenger to Romney to walk away with the nomination. Knowing this, the Tea Party and grassroots conservatives should take advantage of their position and nominate the most conservative candidate who can win, not just the primaries, but also the General Election against President Obama.

For some ludicrous reason, Gingrich is seen as either the best or only Anti-Romney candidate who can win. The numbers, however, don’t support this conclusion.

The main selling factor of a Gingrich nomination has been his anticipated performance in a debate against President Obama. However, there is no guarantee Gingrich would perform the way many would expect, as evidenced by a debate the former Speaker engaged in with 2004 Presidential Candidate John Kerry on climate change.  Because of not just one, but multiple missteps outside mainstream conservatism, Gingrich lacks the “Trust” factor.  For a Tea Party activist or grassroots conservative to ignore this fact is extremely disappointing. I don’t believe Gingrich 2012 was quite what the Tea Party or grassroots conservatives envisioned or is what they worked for when taking back Congress in 2010. It’s actually kind of a slap in the face.

As for the numbers argument, it’s clear that the Anti-Romney candidate has the advantage in the race for delegates. If that is the case, then why won’t the Tea Party or grassroots strongly get behind the most conservative candidate…..Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, or Rick Perry?

Because out of emotion, these folks have said “they can’t win”, “they’re unelectable”, to which I reply: BS.

I don’t understand why no one bothers to look at an Electoral Map anymore before making such ignorant remarks. The truth of the matter is that ANY, that’s ANY GOP Candidate will start with the same Electoral Map base, regardless of who the nominee is. I have asked countless times of Gingrich bandwagon supporters to please tell me which of the “McCain States” from 2008, a Bachmann or Santorum would fail to carry. The answer is 0. McCain set the low bar for GOP Presidential Elections. And yet he still managed to carry a sizeable chunk of traditional Red States. Of the 22 states McCain won, only 3 (MT, MO, GA) were victories of less than 8%. If McCain carried them, then it does not matter if the nominee is Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, Perry or even Romney. The GOP nominee is virtually assured 170 Electoral Votes.

In 2008, we learned our lesson what happens when you try to run a moderate in what was conservative reliable states of IN, NC, and VA. The Democratic Party is in shambles in NC, a state Obama barely won, while Tim Kaine doesn’t want to be seen anywhere near Obama in VA, where Republicans swept all state-wide offices in 2009. The perfect storm allowed Obama to carry these 3 red states in 2008, but all signs point to them returning to the red column in 2012. It does not matter whom the nominee is, but history has shown that the more conservative the candidate in these states, the bigger the blowout. So Bachmann, Santorum, and Perry would easily win here.

That brings us to FL, a must win for Republicans, who are poised to pick it back up in 2012. The convention is in Tampa. Rubio and West are getting consideration for VP regardless of whom the nominee is. But the biggest lesson of all comes from 2010, when a Tea Party favorite, in a 3-way race that included a RINO and a liberal, nearly took a majority of votes. Clearly, as evidenced by McCain’s loss in 2008 and Rubio’s win in 2010, the FL GOP electorate is much more conservative than first glance. I argue that Bachmann, Santorum, and Perry would be in a stronger position to win FL than Gingrich, who reminds me more of Charlie Crist. Think hard Tea Party: You’re saying that it’s better to run a less-than-conservative candidate because you think they have a better chance at winning? The facts are in 2008 and 2010 to say the contrary. Ignore them at your own risk.

These four states get ANY, that’s ANY GOP nominee to 248 Electoral votes. Doesn’t matter if it’s Bachmann, Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, or Romney. They all get at least 248 Electoral Votes. That means to win the Election, all of them will be looking at OH and 1 other toss-up state (NH, PA, MI, WI, IA, CO, NM, NV) to claim the 270 majority.

Mathematically, ANY, that’s ANY GOP nominee, will be following this strategy and will have the advantage. If this is the case, then it should make sense to nominate the most conservative candidate, because mathematically, they have just as good a chance as winning as does a Gingrich or Romney.

So why is the Tea Party and the Grassroots settling for less? Is it fear? It is laziness? In 2010, the Tea Party marched to the beat of their own drum. It doesn’t seem that is the case for 2012.

2012 is not just about winning, it’s about fundamentally changing Washington so that the failed socialist utopia Democrats have tried to instill on us is halted before it is too late. We may not get another chance. We cannot take the risk of giving this task over to someone who lacks the trust that they will follow conservative principles.

For this reason, Newt Gingrich should be removed from consideration of Tea Party or grassroots conservative support.  Allowing Gingrich to carry the Tea Party banner is a slap in the face.

No Pastel Colors…..Trust but Verify….Conservatives MUST stick to their principles to assure not just victory, but fundamental change in 2012. This doesn’t necessitate perfection, but it does require objectively evaluating the Republican candidates and their stances on the issues, and supporting the most conservative candidate with a proven track record that can indeed defeat President Obama next year. That person should be Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, or Rick Perry. To settle for anything less is unacceptable.

Latest Update on the Politico Hitjob on Herman Cain

From the Huffpost AP, looks like I was onto something about the Mitt Romney/Chris Christie Connection to all this.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/herman-cain-accuser-sexual-harassment-allegations_n_1096787.html


Looks like they may be waiting for the "right" time to possible go after Herman should he rise in the polls again.


And now, based on the information I listed below, they have changed the link to the BIO page to remove all mention of her association to the National Restaurant Association. Now that seems highly suspicious. Here is the cached link, as the older link in the first post will show the new BIO with the NRA information removed.


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:niz3gope_qcJ:www.ppag.com/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_k2%26view%3Ditem%26id%3D19:lornaohara%26Itemid%3D178+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


So now my question is when will the other potential side of the story involving Larry Forth's departure from the NRA be reported. Guess we will have to wait and see.

Continuing the Job Politico Refuses to Do

First off, I want to apologize to people for the cruddy blog layout. As you can tell, I am NOT a professional blogger or scoop-type journalist, and I have no intention of robbing other videos or articles to post meaningless gibberish unless I intend to make a point. For this reason, I pull the following articles and videos as my reference points.

I also would like to say that the following is what I believe the evidence I’ve uncovered supports, but I make no guarantee as to the certainty of the theory. Instead, I leave it to you the reader to look at all the information I did and come to your own conclusion. If you think I’m full of it, that’s okay, maybe I am. If you think I’m right though, well that’s okay too.

Finally, a word of caution.  Please do not go and harass the names identified here as a possible source of Cain’s accusations.  Leave that to the professional conservative media to go down that alley as they are better staffed and equipped to handle such things. The only reason I created this blog, was that the information was ignored when sent to Rush, Levin, and Drudge, most likely because they get 10,000+ emails a day and I’m a nobody…nothing personal, that’s just how it is. They can’t evaluate every message they get, they’ve got to rely on the staff. Plus too, I may have stumbled upon a simple coincidence. I might just be talking out of my butt. Wouldn't be the first time, probably won't be the last.

With that said, let’s get onto the substance.

Last Thursday, I was reviewing the articles written by the Politico concerning the unidentified women that had accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment. It seems like our good friends Jonathan Martin took a certain joy in leading the public on charges based on “anonymous” sources. They provided what they thought were generic descriptions about the complaintants which would protect their identities. As of today, Karen Kraushaar, has come forward, while the New Jersey accuser (who is the subject of this post) has not.

For those that need a refresher, here’s a link to the Politico article and a restatement of the descriptions:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67581.html

Around 30 at the time of the incident

Was a “longer-term” employee

Worked in the Government Affairs Office

Managed the Political Action Committee

Left the NRA in May 1998

Now works in New Jersey for a Lobbying Firm

Was “Not getting along with her bosses at the time”

This seemed pretty general stuff indeed. However, I quickly noticed that all the general comments had something in common. That is, the types of information it presented was something that would be found on a RESUME! And surely, many professionals post their resume information on both LinkedIn and Monster, so I wondered if the New Jersey accuser had done the same thing.

At first, I didn’t find anything. That’s when I went back to Google and performed a specific search including the following search terms:

“RESUME” + “1998” + “NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION” + “NEW JERSEY” + “GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS”

I wasn’t sure if I’d find anything, but try it yourself. The 6^th or 7^th search yielded the following link and preview:

Princeton Public Affairs Group, Inc. - Dale Florio - Trenton, NJ 08608

www.ecarnegietech.com/.../27323553-princeton-public-affairs-group...Cached

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

Trenton NJ - Princeton Public Affairs Group, Inc.

New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities .... If interested please email your resume to. Download David Smith's VCARD David A. .... his unanimous appointment by the Passaic County Freeholder Board in 1998. ... Lorna began her career in government affairs at The National Restaurant Association. ...

Aha! I quickly caught a hold of the last sentence. This made me perform a search for Princeton Public Affairs Group, looking for an individual name Lorna, whose biography was linked on the right hand side and I eventually ended up here:

http://www.ppag.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=19:lornaohara&Itemid=178

Wow. Based on the Second paragraph of her Bio, she seems to match everything. However, she looked kind of young and the Bio page didn’t have any links to dates, so now that I had a name, I went back to LinkedIn and found her. Her education ran from 1986-1991. I also looked at Zaba-Search and discovered she was born in 1968, which would have put her around 30 at the time of the incident. Assuming she joined the NRA in 1991-92 time-frame, served four years before taking over the PAC, it appears she would be in the position that the Politico article is talking about.

http://www.zabasearch.com/query1_zaba.php?sname=LORNA%20O\\\'HARA&state=ALL&ref=&se=&doby=&city=&name_style=1&tm=&tmr=

Now, again, this could all be one really, really, strange coincidence. You would think at worst, if she is not the Cain accuser in question, that she would at least have some insight into who is, or would could be a possible source to Politico. But how many other NJ lobbyists who managed the NRA PAC are there? She is the only one I could find.

Again, I am not accusing her of being Cain’s accuser. I am simply pointing out that there seems to be quite a bit coincidences between what was described in the Politico article, and her background.

Of course, I didn’t stop there, though. In the age of social media, I wanted to see if she had any Facebook / Twitter / Myspace profiles. Now that I had a name to work with, a simple Google search turned up the following Twitter Accounts:

http://twitter.com/#!/DarcyOHara

http://twitter.com/LornaDarcy

You will notice that she uses her middle name. This is because her and her mother have the same name, but different initials. On a side note, her parents donated $1000 each to Bill Bradley’s failed 2000 Presidential campaign (according to Newsmeat), but we’ll come back to that in a moment)

The first Twitter account seems to be a personal recreation one. Make what you will of the 2 ABC contact followers. It hasn’t been used in a few months.

The second Twitter account, however, shows up in Google search results, but Twitter shows that it no longer exists, meaning that it was recently deleted. I personally believe the 2^nd Twitter account was her main account, but she deleted it when the press started hounding her. Unfortunately, Twitter does not cache it’s deleted pages, so I was unable to view the previous deleted account using the Internet Archive / Wayback machine.

So, onto Facebook. Here too, it appears she had a Facebook account, but deleted it. Here’s what I did. At Google, type in the phrase: “Lorna O’Hara Likes this”. Now, only pay attention to the Facebook results that pop up for the group page of Princeton Public Affairs Group or the Cape May Group. You will see from the Google search that at one time, she commented and “liked” things, but when you go to click on the Facebook link, you will she her comments and likes have disappeared, as it appears that account was deleted. Again, I tried using the Internet Archive / Wayback machine to see if I could view a cached page of it, but could not. But the fact the results still show up in Google leads me to believe that both the Twitter and Facebook accounts were recently deleted. Go ahead, try it yourself and see if you get the same results as me.

Okay, break, did you get all this? Does it make sense? Again, I’m going to keep repeating that for whatever reason, this indeed may still be one gigantic coincidence and I’m chasing a dead horse. It’s out there now and I leave it to you to decide whether we have a positive ID or not.

Now, as you know, that’s not the entire end of this story. If it turns out that she is indeed the accuser, if she didn’t talk to Politico, who did? From here on out, this is speculation, but I am throwing it out there because it needs to be looked at:

I want you to go back to Princeton Public Affairs Group’s homepage and check out the Bio for Mr. Brad Brewster, one of the Senior Partners:

http://www.ppag.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=11&Itemid=178

In particular, notice the last paragraph concerning his association with Mitt Romney. Now I know this says 2008, but just last month, after Chris Christie announced he wasn’t running and endorsed Romney, Brewster did the same again:

http://aboutmittromney.com/state/new.htm#NewJersey

Now, if the woman reported the incident to her employer concerning what happened at the NRA, how possible is it that Brewster was the one she reported to? He apparently has the DC contacts and the media credentials to get it out there, though I did not find a direct link between him and anything Politico-related. But it’s something that had to be looked at.

There was a potential motive, as a Christie supporter, and then a Romney one after Christie endorsed Romney. Perhaps there was a retaliatory strike against Cain for comments he made about Chris Christie on October 2^nd.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/02/herman-cain-chris-christie-2012_n_991026.html

Again, this is speculation, but I believe it’s something that will need to be looked further into, especially if the New Jersey accuser was identified here.

Where does that bring us? Back to the Cracker Barrel article. I actually found this before I discovered any of the other information listed above. Here it is in case you haven’t seen it:

http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=201676&c=7

The key item from this article is that Forth managed Political Affairs from Jan 1997 – April 1998. Now I may be generalizing Political Affairs / Government Affairs, but I am assuming that the offices are one and the same, and I believe that the NJ Accuser worked for Mr. Forth. Now, look at when Mr. Forth left, April 1998, the same month the alleged harassment took place. It seems the accuser wanted Mr. Forth’s job, but was denied it. Could this be a source of the why she cried harassment. I think the following CNN article may offer some veracity to this theory:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/08/friend-of-cain-accuser-recounts-allegations/

Again, this just may be another coincidence?

However, look what Forth was accused of doing at the Cracker Barrel PAC. Who’s to say he didn’t try the same thing while he was at the NRA, and the NJ accuser would have been in the position to know this or not. I have a sinking suspicion, that if the harassment charges don’t stick, the issue will turn to whether fraud was occurring.

If anyone has any updated information about what the media would find, I believe Johnny Isakson’s 2004 staff would. That story on Forth came out in 2003. They must have been saving it in case Cain had forced a run-off. Herman Cain also said that this employee had “performance issues” and “wasn’t getting along with her bosses”. Could this be why?

Okay people, this is what I have. You think it’s worth something, go with it. If not, then the Admins can delete it.

Again, from the advice I was given by an attorney today, I am not, repeat, I am not, making any accusations or statements of facts beyond what I’ve been able to find. If I’ve speculated, I said so. If it’s been my opinion, I’ve said so also. This could all be one incredible series of coincidences. If so, I apologize.

My goal was to go after Politico for not reporting the full story. I think I’ve shown there are several avenues that at least need to be investigated. I hope I’ve done more good than harm for Herman.