Establishment Republicans are enemies of conservatism

I've long said that I have more respect for radical liberals like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than I do for most Republicans.

At least Bernie, AOC, and others on that side are honest about who and what they are. On the other hand, there's very little conservative about establishment Republicans such as Mitch McConnell.

McConnell will brag on his record of confirming conservative judges to the federal bench, and he has to be given credit for that, but what else is conservative in his record? How many times has he opposed continuing government spending resolutions? How often has he voted to increase the federal debt ceiling? Why does he oppose government shutdowns and support expansion of government programs? McConnell has pretended to be a conservative at election time, but his record over the last several years is anything but conservative. His consistent opposition to tea party and MAGA concepts and candidates has rightfully earned him a "RINO" label and the disdain of his party's grassroots voters. He seems to favor process and tradition over results and outcomes.

The entire nation knows of McConnell and those cut from a similar cloth such as Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and others who'd rather capitulate to the left than stand on conservative principles, but Kentucky has a RINO infestation within the Republican Party that goes far beyond the senior senator.

Elected Republicans in the General Assembly have had lots to say about Gov. Andy Beshear the last couple of years, but when it comes right down to it, they have taken very little action to back up their comments.

As early as March 2020, when Kung Flu hysteria was racing across the state, Republicans had an opportunity to take some bold steps to rein in Beshear's authoritarian executive edicts. State Rep. Savannah Maddox was sounding the alarm on what could happen if the legislature didn't act. Unfortunately for the state, legislative leaders didn't listen. Instead, they hastily passed a one-year stopgap budget and got out of town. Everything Maddox predicted came true, and then some.

When the General Assembly returned in 2021 for its 30-day session, it was presented with a unique opportunity to right the ship. A citizen petition to impeach Beshear had been filed. At the time, the governor had lost every lawsuit filed against him in federal court alleging he had violated Kentuckians' rights with various Wuhan Chinese virus edicts, including an order shutting down churches and using the state police to record license plates of vehicles in parking lots of churches that held Easter Sunday services anyway. If his blatant constitutional violations didn't warrant impeachment and removal from office, what did? The GOP-dominated House impeachment committee failed to seize the moment and in the process, failed the people of Kentucky.

One of the individuals who filed the impeachment petition was Andrew Cooperrider, owner of the Brewed coffee shop in Lexington. Cooperrider became a crusader against the government-ordered closures that were destroying small businesses and their owners and employees; so much so that he decided to launch a campaign for state senator.

Cooperrider originally filed to run in the Senate district represented by Alice Forgy Kerr, a Republican who is decidedly more liberal than was her noted brother, Larry Forgy. She's staked out a number of positions that can hardly be called conservative over the years. But two things happened. First, Kerr decided to retire from the Senate and not run for re-election. Then, redistricting put Cooperrider into a district represented by Donald Douglas. Douglas, who happens to be black, won his seat in a special election to replace the late Tom Buford, who died while in office.

Undeterred, Cooperrider has continued his campaign in his new district. And his candidacy has the Republican establishment terrified.

The Republican Senate Caucus Campaign Committee is the political arm of Kentucky's Senate leadership. Those senators are Robert Stivers, David Givens, Damon Thayer, Julie Raque Adams, and Mike Wilson. They are the faces of the establishment. And they have fallen in line for Douglas and against Cooperrider, going so far as to let Douglas sponsor a resolution to end the Kung Flu state of emergency in Kentucky a month before it was scheduled to expire, when Cooperrider had been working against it almost since it began. The move couldn't have been more transparent.

The RSCCC has been doing most of the heavy lifting in Douglas' campaign. They're attacking Cooperrider as some sort of radical and his views and those of his supporters as unhinged.

Seriously? Standing up for individual rights and personal responsibility is radical and unhinged? A Republican working for smaller government is something for a fellow Republican to criticize?

Legislative leaders had an opportunity to do something with bold action, but they paid lip service and took half measures while they were in session.

The two other petitioners who stuck with the impeachment effort all the way until the end, Jacob Clark and Tony Wheatley, have launched bids for House seats. In both cases, they're seeking to oust Republican incumbents who have behaved more like liberals than conservatives.

Clark is running against Samara Heavin, who has supported gasoline tax increases in the past and opposed legislation requiring school boards to allow citizen comment during regular meetings. Establishment figures in that part of west-central Kentucky seem to be supporting Heavrin.

Wheatley's race is especially intriguing. He's running against Kim King, who claims to be a staunch conservative but has a track record proving the opposite.

King was on the House committee that voted not to impeach Beshear. She was also a very vocal opponent of House Bill 28, the legislation proposed by Maddox and co-sponsored by nearly one-fourth of the House that would have prohibited employers from requiring the vaccine. She voted against school choice legislation, calling it "a slush fund for rich parents to send their children to private school." That's a line that sounds like it could come from the group non-lovingly called 120 Wrong, except that they don't like her very much, so it does her little good to curry favor with them. And she's been very condescending to members of the public who have attempted to call her out for her decidedly unconservative positions. She's been perhaps the biggest disappointment of all the Republican legislators.

The epicenter of the conservative movement in Kentucky may be in the north, where these anti-RINO leaders have assumed control of the local parties in some counties and are taking on establishment incumbents. This, of course, has the entrenched interests furious and they've been quite vocal about it. There's been a decent amount of news coverage in the northern Kentucky and Cincinnati media markets, with the takeaway that the old guard is losing its grip on the party in favor of doers, not talkers.

I've long said that conservatives' biggest battle is not with the Democrats, but with the liberals within our own ranks. You can claim to be a constitutional conservative all day long, but if your record while in office says something different, your words ring hollow.

Conservatives must continue to stand strong and battle the elements within their own party that seek to water down and dilute their values, and capitulate to Democrats and other liberals. Some of next week's primary election races provide a great opportunity to let liberal Republicans know that they'd fit in better with the Democrats like which they behave. The establishment needs to be sent a message that it's time to listen to the rank and file within the party, and to answer to the voters and not to the donor class.