‘Twas the week before voting and all through the house,

All the creatures were spinning, especially the louse,

The ballot collection boxes set by the courthouse with care,

While the lefties all prayed the Great Mule soon would be there…

 

Ah, the week before an election like none I have ever seen before. The closest thing to this one may be the election of 1856, when the Whigs permanently consigned themselves to oblivion. I have played a command role (campaign manager or chief strategist) in over 100 campaigns. Sometimes the bottom drops out for you late. When that happens, you do your best to get to election day with your dignity intact to prepare the ground for a future effort. I have never seen the sort of flailing, frantic, vicious, counter-factual insanity the Dems are playing this time around. They have not set themselves up to lose an election, but to lose a few generations – and perhaps go the way of the Whigs.

Victory, though, could turn out to be the Republicans’ kryptonite. If they do not stand up and defend the folksies, holding the predators on the left to harsh account for their assault on basic freedom and decency, the rage that will be turned on the GOP will make the anger fueling this election seem like a mild rebuke. We could see both political parties tanking – and honest people building back from the ground up.

Traveling across the northern end of the country, I have been astonished at how few political signs I have seen this late in the game, until I got into New England. Even there, the signs carefully conceal what party each candidate belongs to. If Toto had been riding with me, I would have told him I don’t think we are in the same universe as we started out from. I have attributed the lack of signs in most places as a lack of Democratic enthusiasm and Republicans fearful of being firebombed by the “tolerant” left. What rational conservative would answer any poll anymore, not knowing whether it was a real polling outlet or the local Democratic Headquarters determining who to firebomb? The left has not learned that convincing someone to shut up is NOT the same thing as convincing them.

A dear, old friend of mine, Kathy Salvi, is the Republican nominee for US Senate in Illinois. Her husband, my old buddy Al Salvi, has been telling me all along she is going to win. I love my friends, but Illinois has become a nightmarish blue state hellhole. Yet just a few days ago, I got a tickling feeling that Kathy may very well win, specifically BECAUSE Illinois has turned into a blue state hellhole. The trickle of renewed red support from the summer has started gushing and I think may become a hundred-year flood by election day. This is because the Dems have treated every opening to make a case for themselves an opportunity to show people they really are THAT vicious, THAT perverted, THAT indifferent to ordinary peoples’ problems, and THAT divorced from reality. I don’t think this is going to be a red tsunami. This is going to be a bloodbath. Think the elevator scene from the movie, “The Shining.” Pray that Republicans do not deceive themselves that they have suddenly become THAT popular, but understand they have benefitted from the self-immolation of a once-great political party. Then get to work making this a self-governing Constitutional Republic of the people, by the people and for the people once more.

Of course I don’t expect that. (Lord, just once, couldn’t we do it the easy way?) The fact is we have ceased to be as Godly a people as we once were. Our leaders come from that ungodly pool. We will not become a Godly people again by choosing new secular leaders. We will get good leaders again when they come from a pool of genuinely Godly people. So the great challenge before us is to become a Godly people once more.

 

As I meet ordinary people along my way, I am heartened by their kindness, good humor, and commitment to doing whatever it takes to rebuild a healthy culture for their family and themselves. Yes, folks are shaken by all the weird dangers swirling around the world, but the old remember a joyful culture that is worth fighting for to bequeath to their children and the young aspire to a culture they have never seen but have heard tell of and seen in old movies and newsreels.

Though I have been on the edges of the city many times, I had not crossed the border into New York City since 1975. This year I spent several days there, visiting with Priests and colleagues. I had a wonderful dinner on the waterfront one evening with Mary Malerba, a trial lawyer, and her husband Russ Salerno, a retired patent attorney on the north end of Long Island. I know conservatives are not supposed to be friends with trial lawyers but, oddly, my biggest cohort of friends come from lawyers – with the biggest sub-cohort being trial lawyers. I like trial lawyers because they have a pugnacious edge that I like. I have never found a trial lawyer who is a shrinking violet…and some of the friends I have made from that cohort have come after we have argued vociferously for a time. In the end, a good scrapper always likes another good scrapper who doesn’t take the fencing personally. It’s better than finding a good dance partner. While in New York City, I also received the single biggest donation CORAC has ever gotten – $10,000. Whoo-ee! This month is covered and a decent chunk of next month! I have not quite concluded that I love New York yet, but I sure do love me some New Yorkers!

I went up to Little Compton, Rhode Island, which is quintessential New England. You can smell and feel the salt in the air. We had a wonderful gathering of folks who completely filled an American Legion Hall downtown – and downtown is called the Commons. Such cheery, optimistic people! I felt an inexplicable urge to go whaling. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. After breakfast with my hosts, Susan Kinnane and her sister, Tricia, at the Commons Restaurant (make sure to try the Johnnycakes), I headed on up to see Doug and Lambzie Pounds at their cabin in the wilds of New Hampshire.

Doug is a candidate for the statehouse this time – and he will win. Gotta love his slogan! He is one of a bunch of CORAC members running for local office this time around. I wish I had time to visit Rick Bookwalter, who is running for City Council in Manassas, Virginia. He has been a wonderful, longtime CORAC friend. Doug and Lambzie built a beautiful cabin in the New Hampshire woods – and I stayed in the guest cabin. There was a beautiful small lake just back of my door. While there, my talk was about an hour away at the spacious home of Mike and Indiana Chalsen. I love that spot. I spoke there the last time around. If you watch videos of my talks, that was the one with the heavy snowstorm playing out behind the glass behind me, in which a curious rabbit came hopping by to see what all the excitement was about. Indiana, a Venezuelan ex-pat, makes the best seafood casserole I have EVER tasted (I had three bowls).  Something very good is going on in New Hampshire. Folks there are determined to live free, under God.

 

Now I am in Brunswick, Maine, just north of Portland. Maine is one of my favorite states, though I won’t get to see the rocky coast of Maine this time around – and I LOVE the rocky coast of Maine. My hostess, Tricia Smith, is intimately involved in her local Parish and has a long and varied career as a writer, motivational speaker, and counselor. She has consulted and worked with a lot of top-name companies over the years. Maine is an incredibly picturesque state with a lot of towns with roots in the 1700’s. I always loved New England because of its historic, flinty independence. Alas, it is overrun these days by people who are eager to do whatever they are told by the government. But my travels have shown me that a new generation of flinty independent types are determined to do what their forebears of several centuries ago did: forge a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. One Priest I had dinner with told me, in astonished dismay, that, “we fought a revolution because the tax on tea was too high – and now we kill babies and mutilate children for fun and profit.” This shall not stand. And the flinty folks of New England have begun to rise in defense of faith, family and freedom.

 

David Daleiden just released a video with the longest-practicing abortion doctor in America, Forrest Smith, decrying California’s Proposition 1, which would vastly expand late-term abortions in California. Governor Gavin Newsome ought to think hard about this. When you are so radically pro-abortion that you have offended a major abortion doctor, you really ought to re-think your life.

Lefties thought that if they focused on abortion, they could get Americans to forget about gas prices, ruinous inflation and the threat of nuclear war. Instead, they have revealed just how radical they are – and the polls are showing it, much as the idiot media tries to hide it.

 

Thanks to everyone who has gotten our fall fundraiser off to a good start. We have an ambitious year ahead. I need to get a lot of the down-loadables we have available on the CORAC website printed out and in the hands of Regional Coordinators to give out to their people. I have a feeling a lot of the ugliness that has been looming is going to hit hard next year. You will have a solidly Republican Congress, but a furiously authoritarian executive and Injustice Dept. determined to outlaw dissent and opposition. I suspect that, even in the best-case scenario, it is going to get ugly and dangerous. We WILL have the means for people of good will to band together, work with each other, and rebuild a culture of life and light together whatever the pitiful giant that has become the federal government does.

We are going to hold a national online meeting a couple of weeks after the election. Because of some glitches with the old technology, we will test first with Regional Coordinators and then let you know when it will be. This one will be unlimited as to how many people can get in.

 

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Gab at Charliej373 or at the CORAC group.

Find me on Twitter at @Charlie62394802