From the new book by Sam Carpenter, a chapter from Making Oregon Great Again: Guide to the Grassroots Revitalization of the Oregon Republican Party (and the Defeat of the Ruling Class).
Download the entire book for free at www.makeoregongreatagain.com/book
CHAPTER 24
Faux Outrage and Moral Preening:
Self-Appointed LBGTQ Bullies.
“Cry baby,” per the Urban Dictionary: “People who are extremely sensitive and tend to be triggered easily, consequently ending in tears.”
Earlier in the book, in another context, I laid out this reasoning and it’s worth repeating: “Just because you’re outraged doesn’t mean you’re right”
My campaign manager, David Gulliver, was attacked viciously by LGBTQ activists associated with the Buehler Campaign and the Wooldridge campaign. As I’ve mentioned, one perpetrator, Jonathon Lockwood, began his “bomb-throwing” with the Buehler campaign and then shifted over to the brand new Wooldridge campaign to do the same thing – right when I was surging against Buehler in the polls. And I’ve talked already about Ben West’s efforts to malign my character with manufactured evidence. There were a number of other unprincipled attackers too, intertwined in a ginned-up, I’m-a-victim hate-cabal.
Here’s the thing: Membership in the LGBTQ “community” doesn’t give a member immunity from being called-out for being a cry baby, and it doesn’t legitimize hysterical moral exhibitionism.
Lockwood launched an all-out attack on David as a “homophobic bigot,” and a “hater,” spreading this message across numerous LGBTQ-oriented websites, social media platforms, and magazines and to anyone else who would listen. Why? It started with an online post by David, mentioning offhandedly and without judgment that Lockwood is an LGBTQ activist – a truthful statement per Lockwood himself as well as numerous LGBTQ blogs (that always described him in heroic terms). This mere acknowledgement of fact is apparently all it takes now to be branded a bigot and a hater and to have one’s character viciously attacked (especially if one happens to be on an opposing campaign).
But why was David writing about Lockwood? Simple: he was questioning why Lockwood was helping to raise money for a radical progressive far-Left socialist candidate in Portland who was running in a race against well-known conservative Republican and USMC veteran Bruce Broussard. That’s a pretty valid question, don’t you think?
Here’s a post I did about this progressive-generated hullabaloo: https://www.makeoregongreatagain.com/sixty-in-sixty/point-85-pettiness-on-the-campaign-trial/
Back here in the real world, David has for many years taken heat from some of the religious right in our own Republican Party for his long outspoken support of marriage equality. At the ORP platform convention in 2015, David argued for removing opposition to gay marriage from the party platform, winning praise (at the time) from Ben West himself, and other gay activists. But ironically, West, working as a Buehler surrogate during the 2018 primary campaign, joined in on Lockwood’s assault.
Another attack on David came after the publication of a semi-boorish comment David made in a private message to someone he thought he could trust. Was the comment uncalled for? Yes, and David apologized for it when it was made public. But that’s not the underlying problem here. The bigger problem is, are we now going to be scrutinized and judged for every statement ever made in a private conversation, taken out of context? Here’s what happened.
A self-proclaimed “Carpenter campaign supporter” turned out to be an infiltrator. For several months, she posed as an enthusiastic volunteer, ingratiating herself not just with us, but also with several conservative grassroots organizations with whom we closely associated. But it was all a lie. We later learned she had been in constant communication with the Wooldridge campaign. She spent months combing through hundreds of e-mails and private message conversations with David, looking for anything she could use to smear us once the campaign heated up. And for all this effort? She succeeded in finding only one use of an out-of-line pronoun, made in a heated conversation during an intensely emotional private back-and-forth with David.
This one comment was her “big reveal,” to demonstrate that David and I were haters (the insipid pejorative used by the PC contingent when there is any slight deviance from their self-contrived language decrees).
These self-appointed LGBTQ spokespeople blew the comment completely out of proportion as stark evidence that David was a despicable human being.
In any case, a valuable lesson was learned: keep it clean 24/7 – and trust no one in politics.
Another cry-baby, I’m-SO-offended accusation: This same cabal accused us of using profanity on social media. The opposition could only isolate the word, “dumbass” used in one instance out of literally hundreds of thousands of online exchanges. (Over the last month of campaigning we consistently reached over 400,000 people per week with our posts.) David used the word once in a particular Facebook comment discussion near the end of the campaign. In fact, jokingly, I used the word myself, in that back-and-forth social media banter. Here’s the thing: “dumbass” is hardly a vulgar term. It’s a socially accepted descriptor. Per the Urban Dictionary, a dumbass is “Someone who holds a stupid, illegitimate or completely baseless opinion with a perplexing amount of self-righteousness.” And the word is referring to a donkey, not a human anatomical body part.
As an aside, an astute, much-loved, and successful fourth generation rancher from La Grande, Sharon Beck, laughingly told me that “in many cases, dumbass is a perfectly serviceable term.”
Ha!
Something else: I found, 10 days before the general election, on October 27th, that U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, from Utah, perhaps the most revered senior conservative in the Senate, called Obamacare supporters, the, “stupidest, dumbass people.”
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/politics/orrin-hatch-obamacare-comments/index.html
(As I read Hatch’s quote to Diana, she quipped, “it looks like Trump doesn’t just have a backbone, he’s got a supply of backbones and he’s handing them out to Senators…”)
The first well-known public use of “dumbass” was on the popular TV series of twenty years ago, “That 70s Show.” It was coined by the character Red Forman, the tough-nut dad, much like Archie Bunker, who called everyone who was an idiot (everyone else on the show) a “dumbass.” It’s a pop-culture classic. Google it.
The objective of the LGBTQ attacks? First, to recast David as a horrible person, and from that, of course, I would obviously be just as horrible for not firing him.
There’s this common-sense thing about quacking, waddling, and looking like a duck…so I’ll add this obvious question: Lockwood, are you really a conservative or are you a progressive plant in our conservative world? Ben West, what about you?
I’m not accusing. Just asking.
The common thread of the Buehler/Wooldridge I’m-SO-offended camp was that any small kick-back or innocuous comment coming from our campaign was exploded into some kind of raging jihad on the “gay community,” or some other victim group. Blogs, publications, rumor-mill: it was all used to attack David and me personally, labeling us as vile, per the Left’s PC standard protocol of being offended by anything and everything.
And from this developed the meme that I am always on the attack; always ready to destroy my opponents. Really? Then, Sam-haters, give me real-world examples of this behavior.
Just one.
And while I’m talking about these habitually-offended Portland-area activists, I might as well include this groovy travelogue about Portland. I’m guessing all of this is fine with these guys, in the spirit of tolerance. Take the time to watch it. It’s good. https://youtu.be/aSw79yRnDVs.
I put it on my Facebook page, and in just a few days it had over 100,000 views.
And what the heck, as I digress for a moment, for all you folks who are so proud of Portland’s weirdness, here’s another video that popped up just before publication of this book: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272426/escape-portland-daniel-greenfield
Did any of the blog “journalists” who castigated David and me with lies and innuendo make the effort to contact either of us for our side of the story? Nope.
Not once.
Were we imperfect sometimes? Of course. So what? No candidate and team is perfect, but there is a difference between nuanced bickering, and full-scale hysterical “you’re a hater!” personal attacks based on minutia. The former is expected; the latter is a big-baby temper-tantrum.
The attacks were not in defense. They were full-bore offense, with the goal of stopping our momentum by destroying David and me personally. Know this: If you enter a political race in Oregon and you become a threat to the Republican Establishment Ruling Class candidate, you can count on this happening to you.
Get ready for it.
I’ve always thought the combination of the worst two human traits is arrogance and stupidity. Here, with these self-anointed moral policemen, it’s personified.
Have you seen this kind of attack before? I’m guessing you have. But if not, just watch CNN or MSNBC for five minutes anytime of the day or night and you’ll get a belly-full. I’m guessing Donald Trump stays sane through the endless 24/7 scolding by fully grasping that these people are deranged. That’s my stance too, and so l might get a bit distracted out of morbid curiosity, maybe roll my eyes a bit, but my head stays down and I keep working.
These perpetrators are lightweight bullies.
The Left’s ploy of being perpetually offended is a well-worn distraction technique, covering up their own harsh, bullying attacks.
BTW, for what it’s worth, here’s a Jonathan Lockwood quote as he describes his new political consulting business, reported in Colorado Politics, February, 2018:
“I believe that people are like bright flames when they are born into this world, to provide light to the darkness that is around us. In life, we can burn bright, or grow dim, or we can become the truest forms of ourselves to burn blue, with intensity and power.
“My firm will help people harness their truest selves, share that intensely, and back it up authentically, with the public and with the media. My firm will also take on clients who are in need. We all have the right to defense in the courts of law, and we should all have the right to defense in courts of public opinion, now more than ever in today’s hyper-polarized world.”
The reporter went on to say, “The self-described intense, Italian, Sagittarius from Denver who identifies as LGBT said he plans to stick around in Oregon, where he amped up the rhetoric at the state Capitol last year.” (Lockwood left the state as soon as the primary campaign was over, leaving behind a nasty testimony, declaring, “Salem is a disgusting gutter.”)
https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2018/09/12/professional-republican-bomb-thrower-jonathan-lockwood-takes-some-parting-shots-at-oregon/
And, this: Lockwood says he wants to “help people tell their stories, and ignite change through storytelling.”
Incredibly sappy, coming from a bomb-thrower.
The Denver Post Editorial Board has described Lockwood as, “Flat out Deranged.”
Good grief. Again, is Lockwood a progressive registered as a Republican? I don’t know. In any case, great hire, Republicans Buehler and Wooldridge…
And one more thing, a message to political operative Lockwood, et al: No matter how much you caterwaul under the guise of being oh-so-sensitive and being oh-so-victimized, know this: no one I know gives a damn who you or anyone else sleeps with. Stop insisting that we care.