When I was a kid we had a typical Latin Jewish Christmas, 1960s style. Yup, some Jewish kids hate to feel left out of the secular part of the holiday, I mean Christmas day and presents, so they get very into Rudolph, Santa, etc. Being Latins in South Florida we’d adjourn to the beach on Christmas midday to have roast pork with all the fixings. A bunch of other Cuban families would join in. As the day progressed the men would set up a table and play dominos while drinking that disgusting Cuban concoction, Malta.
Don’t live in South Florida anymore, prefer seeing the seasons change, and my own six kids are mostly grown and somewhat scattered. But family tradition dictates (very into tradition in and of itself) we congregate in Philadelphia and visit Tony Luke’s for lunch (Geno’s or Pat’s are just for tourists), Max Brenner for dessert and presents, Holt’s and the Ritz Carlton for smokes and drinks, take a stroll around downtown, and survey Longwood Gardens to top off the day. But, no dominos.
However, there are those in a certain little elfhole in Washington, DC, who don’t wake up with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. The boys and girls at the DNC are all about the dominos. Two to be exact: Texas and Florida. If they tip those into the Dem column, like California did over the last generation, then woe will befall the GOP and the nation.
We saw from the last elections that things got too close for comfort in Texas, GOP bastion that it is, and we almost lost Florida. It happened because the Dems realize that if they can snatch those, given electoral college math, there is no way the GOP can ever win the presidency again. The numbers just won’t work. So times ahead they are going to put everything they have into taking those states. They’ll do it by running good ops and one other strategy. A gambit that is so obvious, so hidden in plain sight, that few see it. But those who can clear away the smoke and mirrors know that the immigration fight, the wall, sanctuary cities, and related issues are only about one thing: out-populating the GOP in Texas and Florida. Hell, they just did it in the U.S. Senate race in Arizona. I’ll ignore the fact that AZ now is the only state with two hot female U.S. Senators, like an FNC news-babe showcase. But if the Dems can do it in the land that once belonged to Barry Goldwater they can do it in other present day Republican safe havens.
I don’t know Texas retail politics that much, but I know Florida politics well. Grew up and volunteered in it in the 60s and 70s when we sprayed for Dems in Dade County and Broward, my home turf, still sported a Republican congressman like my mine, J. Herbert Burke. How is that for a GOP moniker, J. Herbert Burke? Makes me feel all warm inside just thinking about it.
The previously mentioned South Florida Cubans pretty much thought, especially after the Bay of Pigs, that Dems were communists. I am not exaggerating. They voted accordingly, many of them having been exiled from their own nation after a communist takeover. But South Florida these days is a lot more diverse. By that I mean there are many more types of Latins. A significant minority of them, mainly the Puerto Ricans, don’t feel any allegiance to the Republican Party or to conservatism in any form. The younger generations of Cubans also are stepping off the reservation a bit. Combine that with a Broward County that has gone hard leftist, the black vote, and even after the last Puerto Rican hurricane an influx of refugees from the island, and you have the makings of state political regime change. That’s why the left went all in this last time out. My pals who still work elections in the swampy snakepit that is Florida politics tell me the Dems can almost taste it.
The case in Texas is where we see Dem hypocrisy at its highest.
Does anyone really believe that the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Robert Francis O’Rourke, and Chuck Schumer care one inch for the highly photogenic moms, kids, and whole passels of unmentioned unattached young men who are trying to cross over the Rio Grande? Will Dem watermelon Marxist charity functions be improved in any way? Is there a marvy effect on weekends on the Vineyard with Babs and Gwyneth? In fact, given their innate social conservatism, will the new Americanos always and forever vote Bolshie?
What they do care about is getting the illegals registered to vote and then making sure their vote is counted. Whether the voter actually shows up on election day or makes other legal efforts to vote is of no importance, as there are contingency plans for that. And if they can’t win that way there is still the new and unethically game-changing tactic of ballot harvesting that turned the mostly red Orange County, California congressional delegation into an all blue club akin to a bizarro world mirror image of South Florida during the apogee of the Republican Latin ascendency.
But beyond control of state politics, what the Dems are striking at is a negation of traditional ideals in those states. Just like Arizona used to be the country of rangers and big irons, Florida used to be a Panhandle good ol’ boy paradise in the north and a hard-driving harder-playing Latin metropolis in the south. The Florida the extreme left envisions is a far cry from those descriptions.
Well, with its laconic cowboys and rugged individualism, Texas is an ideal of America. We Americans derive our dreams from these locales. Davy Crockett at the Alamo and Bob Wills are the cultural markers of an entire country that was and could be again. If the Dems can strike at that and win, it’s like the other side won at San Jacinto.
It’s also of no surprise that the respective state capitols of Tallahassee and Austin are leftist towns, filled as they are with the government class, post-modern academics, and other jetsam of the modern day. Their beachheads will move forward from there. One hopes the smart boys and girls at the RNC see this and are actively planning to forestall it, not having just one more Pinot Grigio at the Old Ebbitt and calling it a day.
For the GOP has, God help us, the responsibility for the American dream. The Dems gave up on it long ago. They are in it for themselves.
If those dominos fall, expect future Christmases shorn of faith, bereft of grace, as any mention of a child in a manger might offend someone. They will be cold and solely materialistic, the moral equivalent of a Black Friday Walmart door rush.
This Christmas we must, amidst the joy, gird ourselves to recognize the dangers and pray for them to abate. As always, remembering the words of Winston Churchill, “Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”
Post-script: I just want to drop a note to readers of this column to extend a heartfelt thank you for reading my scribbling. It is a privilege to write for you. A further note to my colleagues at OpsLens: Thanks, you guys. The honor of working with you is all mine.
And from me and my family to you and yours:A very Merry Christmas and a joyous and bountiful New Year.
Now, on to spiked eggnog!
