Lions, RINOs and the Libertarian Hedgehogs of St. Francois County by Frost Jones
Are you shocked to find out who is in charge? Of course we are Republican-dominated, right? Ever since Nixon’s Southern Strategy all of us rural folk have been hardcore republicans. But take a look at the archives on page ___ and you can see that 100 years ago in this county, only one person ran as a Republican. Now the Republicans are the Ruling Party, within the last twenty years they have systematically scooped up every county level position. In this election, there were two democrats on their way out whose position did not have a democrat candidate throw in. In fact, zero democrats ran in any of the local elections.
Zero democrats ran in any of the local elections. The St. Francois County Republicans 100 years ago at least had one person run for office. Kosuth Weber for Re-Election as Probate Judge. The lone Republican of 1922 SFC Elections.
We aren’t going to make any judgments about RINOs and who on the Republican ticket might be one or not (RINO=Republican in Name Only). We don’t really make judgments like that, it is sort of an internal party fight that we just hear about. I wonder if local politics will generate enough content to eventually level these types of insults within the party. To me, it is all about how much content gets produced in total, with time they will eventually adopt Trumpy talking points and start going after each other. I went to a meeting recently in a county that is controlled by Republicans. There was a lot of conversation about how folks who were democrats a few years ago had become republicans in order to win offices. They were referred to as RINOs compared to the “good” candidates, authentic Republicans, who were the “Lions”.
As we take a deep dive into the candidates over the next months of this (and future) election cycles, perhaps we can dig deep and figure out who among the contenders that we will be able to vote for has been a life-long Republican, and who might be able to be called “RINO”. Because it might shock you how much partisan flip-flopping has happened within our little county even within the last five or so years.
Someone said: Politics is just Hollywood for Ugly People. I don’t know what that means, but it is interesting to watch the scrambling for local power vacuums that are basically never thought about by the “average citizen” of st. francois county.
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