War and Peace- Handicap Georgia's 6th District Congressional Race-Part 2

Two weeks ago, I published my best effort at an objective handicap of the 6th District Congressional race.  It was important for me to be objective because leading up to the time of writing that article, I had not made up my mind whom I would support.  What you read in that article was an analysis of the information I had available on those I considered the top three candidates, analysis which I performed in determining who I, myself, would support.  I had no favorite going into the week-long effort it took me to research and write that analysis.  Should you to look back at my social media, you will not find any post, prior to releasing that paper, supporting one candidate or another in the 6th District race. 

Jake Evans                                   Rich McCormick                           Mallory Staples

And if you read that paper, then you already know that according to my appraisal there are three viable candidates in the 6th District, Rich McCormick, Jake Evans and Mallory Staples.  I made that determination because these three candidates have the most money, the highest visibility, the largest campaign footprints, and really the most appealing message deliveries depending of course on a particular voter's point of view.  My appraisal of the top three in the 6th race has not changed.

Everything I wrote two weeks ago, and write below, of course, is based on my foundation of political and geopolitical knowledge and my world view.  If your point of view aligns roughly with mine, you may find these two papers useful.  If they do not, then perhaps you will learn something you did not know which still might be helpful.  

In my previous handicap of the 6th race I cited two issues in the campaign of candidate Rich McCormick which I found troubling.  First, although Rich has the most money for a campaign, very little of it comes from Georgia, and even less from the 6th District in which he is running.  If history is our teacher, candidates whose overwhelming base of support comes from sources far from their home districts will be less responsive to local concerns than those whose corresponding bases are cemented within their communities.

The other major objection of the prospect of a McCormick primary victory, is a bona fide fear regarding his militaristic view of foreign policy.  Politicians who extol this kind of view are commonly referred as, "neo-cons," or "war hawks."  I know, because 20 years ago I was one.  McCormick's militarism is a subject I will now probe more deeply.
 
Roughly two years ago, at a ‘get-to-know the candidate’ event I was invited to attend, Rich McCormick spoke to a group of local supporters informing them that he had never been particularly political in nature or had much in the way of political thoughts until he decided to run for Congress.  He was admittedly, “new to politics,” which by-the-way is not a crime.  Of course, Rich has a plethora of other life experiences and accomplishments including becoming a practicing medical doctor. But, in my determination, the experiences which shape his present world view more than any others, a world view which contrasts drastically with mine, are those lived as a Marine in the US military, service to our country which I honor and admire, and I know you do as well.
 
Now, two years later, after considering his campaign remarks over the past months, and after spending personal time one-on-one with the individual I do consider a friend, it has become painfully obvious that Rich McCormick still does not understand the civilian perspective of American politics enough to formulate a well-reasoned foreign policy geared primarily to meet the needs and life goals of those he would represent in Congress, which, by the way, is the only real job of a US Congressman.
 
Evidenced by his own recent stream of remarks, Rich McCormick advocates that the US should increase war-making and war-spending in Ukraine well beyond the level our mentally-challenged president has ever promoted, pitting American military assets and proxies, paid with American taxpayer dollars, against a capable, nuclear-powered adversary, Russia.  Two weeks ago, during Q&A at the Forsyth County Tea Party, upon fielding my question, “What should be the US policy in Ukraine?” Rich McCormick revealed his personal feelings that in both Vietnam and Afghanistan, America only “went half way.”  McCormick continued, “You are either in or out,” and that being "in only halfway" in those wars, “didn’t work very well.”  Rich followed stating his personal belief, “I think we need to be involved in… this is a proxy war.”  McCormick meant that while US boots-on-the-ground in Ukraine are limited, at least at this time, as we speak America is waging war against Russia in Ukraine using proxies, in other words organized and well-trained private armies which American taxpayers are going into ever-increasing debt to support.  Parenthetically, on Friday of last week, defying public opinion, the US Congress voted to send even more money and weapons to Ukraine than Biden asked for, totaling to an additional $40 billion.  And you wonder where inflationary pressures come from.  I expect Rich McCormick to be in hearty agreement with that expenditure, which will now be added to the overwhelming debt the American people are saddled to pay.  

It mystifies me that after 58,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam, and over 2400 in Afghanistan, and after spending a combined total of $1.8 trillion (a low estimate) over 38 years in those two military disasters, and especially after losing them both, anyone could possibly justify a position that in those ill-conceived military ventures America “only went half-way.”  Using Rich McCormick’s own math, we can readily compute that had America been, “all in,” as his campaign slogan urges, the final death tolls due to those catastrophic policies would have been twice those eventually carved in stone on a wall in Washington DC and buried in military cemeteries across our country.

And even more remarkable concerning Rich McCormick’s statements that evening is that in retrospect neither of those wars, Vietnam nor Afghanistan, in any way turned out serving American vital interests.  The entire 17 year military exploit fighting a war in Vietnam was entered into based upon a lie.  Thirty years after the fabled Gulf of Tonkin incident allegedly occurred, resulting in Congress passing a resolution authorizing then President Lyndon Johnson to escalate US military involvement in Vietnam, a resolution BTW eerily reminiscent of last week's vote in Congress, and a decision which resulted in the destruction of most of that country, killing literally millions of innocent people and 58,000 Americans in the process, Johnson’s Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, clearing his conscience perhaps, finally admitted about the incident, “It didn’t happen,” an “Oh, my bad” moment which will live in infamy.

And what has the American military been doing in Afghanistan for the last twenty years?  If we can believe Obama when he took stage informing the world they finally killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, that revenge killing happened in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.  History will record that the US military involvement into Afghanistan will forever hold the world record for the largest posse ever assembled to go after one bad guy.  Killing or capturing bin Laden was sold to the American people as a justification to go to war in Afghanistan.  But even after they told us the individual they went after was dead and gone, his body unceremoniously dumped into the sea, American fighting forces remained in Afghanistan another eleven years, opening the question of the real interests being served in this forsaken land half-way around the world.  And Rich McCormick tells us that doing so was only “going in half-way.”  For anyone who actually understands the history of the war-making references justifying his policy position on Ukraine, one question to consider is how the Rich McCormick Ukraine strategy could possibly be in America's vital interests, given the facts.

But in addition to his militaristic assertions, Rich McCormick got on a roll and revealed to the Tea Party two weeks ago, somewhat out of the blue, that he does not believe in civilian command of the military unless a Commander-in-Chief has first served in the military and completed the War and Command and Staff Colleges.  So, according to Rich McCormick, neither Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Lincoln, Reagan, Trump nor most of the other presidents who have ever served through the years have been qualified Commanders-In-Chief.  That evening Rich McCormick let it known that he does not believe in one of the foundational principles embodied in the US Constitution, which he swore to defend, the principle of civilian control over the military.  There are so many incongruencies in Rich McCormick’s statements, which when contrasted against both history and the intentions of America’s founders, should astound any knowledgeable voter.

In analyzing his remarks, time after time Rich McCormick demonstrates an inability to differentiate between military purposes and civilian purposes, apparently never fully understanding that the military exists strictly as an instrument to protect civilian purposes and not the other way around.  His statements both confuse and conflate military foreign policy with civilian domestic policy, enjoining them into serving one overall policy, the defeat of various foreign enemies such as those in Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Russia, for some greater domestic good he never explains, exhibiting the kind of mindset which is antithetical to the very Constitution he as a Marine swore to preserve, protect and defend.  In his remarks Rich McCormick misinterprets our founders' intentions to the extent that he is actually willing to agree with known liars, the very individuals who cheated him out of a congressional seat, in order to satisfy what for all practical purposes appears to be an ideological lust, perhaps born of intense military training, to defeat Vladimir Putin because in Rich's estimation, "Putin is a bad guy."

On the campaign trail, Richard McCormick will speak at length concerning how bad Biden is, how bad Soros, and Pelosi, and the mainstream media are.  But on this one issue, Ukraine, and the possibility of US military involvement, which I regard as one of the most important issues of this campaign, Rich McCormick not only agrees with individuals who have not told the truth since early childhood, but furthermore, he contends that these likely criminals who are obviously attempting to destroy our country, are not going far enough executing a policy that will destroy Ukraine as well.  Rich McCormick’s own statements illustrate just how far military ideology has apparently moved the needle of his political thinking toward a place where objectivity cannot survive and cataclysmic danger is omnipresent.
 
I respect Rich McCormick and all he has done in his life and even his intentions in running for Congress. But the militaristic policies he zealously champions are unsupportable, in effect calling for worldwide military conquest, vanquishing each next foe, the beneficiaries of which would be the same ‘bad guys’ presently residing in Washington DC, the ones who stole the US elections in 2020, including his own seat in Congress.  Those ‘bad guys’ who would ultimately benefit from a Rich McCormick Ukrainian foreign policy, are not only dangerous to America, but also the world, and obviously do not share the views of Georgia’s 6th District, nor any purposes the American founders would support.  I, therefore, renew my urging to vote against Rich McCormick in the 6th District Republican Primary.

Next I would like to talk about a new revelation concerning the Jake Evan's candidacy, which has surfaced in the past two weeks.  Again recalling my previous paper handicapping the 6th District congressional race, when I posed the same Ukraine policy question to Jake Evans, a question which elicited the stream of the remarks from candidate Rich McCormick I have been discussing, I wrote that Jake Evans’ answer in response was simply to say, “No money, and no boots on the ground.”  Upon hearing that statement on the phone call with Jake, I asked if there was anything else he wanted to add and he said he did not.  I could live with that policy.  In fact, I like that kind of clarity, especially from a politician.

The problem is that since I wrote that article, I received an audio excerpt from a recent interview between Jake and John Fredericks.  In that interview, John asked very much the same question I did concerning US policy in Ukraine.  But unlike his statement to me, in the interview with John, Jake Evans spoke at length advocating a diametrically-opposed policy position regarding an inherent American military responsibility to make war in Ukraine.  Answering John’s question whether America should undertake a military intervention in Ukraine, rather than expressing something anywhere close to his response to me on the phone, that being, “No money, and no boots on the ground,” Jake Evans responded, 

“Absolutely. If Russia seeks to retake the Ukraine, that could create a sequence of dominoes across that region that could endanger our homeland, and also our allies.  I am against forever wars but this is one of the aggressive actions we ought to be very strong on…This is fully in response to Biden’s weakness, and we’ve got to take this very, very seriously, and we’ve got to get control back of our country.”-Jake Evans on John Fredericks

Thus, in the Fredericks interview, Jake Evans begins by echoing the foreign policy ideology of Rich McCormick, agreeing that America should take aggressive military action in Ukraine, that Biden’s policies are weak and have not gone far enough.  But then, Jake goes even further, indicating his belief that America should actually place "boots on the ground." When John asks why he should send his 17 year-old son to Ukraine "to have his legs blown off," Jake responds, "Because you're going to have a growing enemy in Russia."

Now, please understand, I am not offended should politicians change their minds when they receive better information.  In fact, I encourage that.  But although I would like to give Jake Evans the benefit of the doubt that he simply changed his mind one way or the other based on new information he received, you and I know that is not what happened here.  On virtually the same question, within a short period of time, Jake Evans responded with two diametrically opposing answers, one to John Fredericks, a media personality, and the other to me, a potential constituent.

When I reached out to the Evans campaign about the contradictions, the answer I received was that Jake is a natural fighter, that the remarks I heard him give John Fredericks were simply an initial reaction, and that I could rest assured that Jake’s policy position remains, “no money, no boots, no endless wars.”

Candidly, I believe that in the campaign of Jake Evans, we are seeing is a candidate who has not fully matured in his political principles, his knowledge of world events, or how those events might affect his job as an elected office holder charged with the responsibility of representing 700,000 constituents in the US Congress.
 
And I say that because now we have a pattern of political behavior to analyze. We saw that same pattern of Jake Evans’ behavior which I documented in the article published two weeks ago.  If you read that piece, you will recall Jake Evans’ involvement as a member, and subsequently as chairman of the Georgia Governor’s ethics commission.  You will recall Jake’s role in using the unconstitutional power of this commission to quash protected political speech of a Tea Party leader, the late Carolyn Cosby. Jake’s commission fined Cosby $30,000 for taking out one or more newspaper ads advocating the defeat of a candidate using moneys collected from willing contributors at Tea Party meetings. Furthermore, understand that by simply agreeing to sit on that governor-appointed board, Jake Evans failed to question in his own mind whether the powers of that board were even constitutional, while today he campaigns that he will never fail as a defender of the Constitution and the rights of men.
 
And so, while Rich McCormick’s view of the world and the politician’s role in it have been shaped by his military training and experience, perhaps irreversibly so, Jake Evan’s view of that same world and the politician’s role has been shaped by his education and training as an attorney.  And here is what I mean by that.  As an attorney, Jake Evans has been taught that legislation passing into law, such as the legislation creating the ethics board, is binding under the Constitution unless and until a judicial opinion in a court of jurisdiction strikes it down.  And what I describe is one typical concern electing or appointing lawyers to hold offices of responsibility in government.  If a law is assumed constitutional until a court opinion strikes it down, it will remain on the books until some aggrieved party invests sufficient resources to challenge it in court and actually prevails against a system in which the judges are themselves trained to think in the same manner.  In the Cosby case, Attorney General Chris Carr forever dragged his feet in agreeing to a jury trial because had that case actually risen to the Court of Appeals, he obviously feared the entire statute empowering the politically-charged ethics commission would be thrown out as unconstitutional.

And that is the very reason every elected state or federal office-holder is required by law to take a personal oath to uphold the Constitution, thereby obligating him or herself to personally judge the constitutionality of laws or government works conducted under the color of law, before undertaking to execute those same laws.  In filling his role as a governor appointee on the ethics commission, certainly in my opinion, Jake Evans failed an obligation to his constitutional duties, again demonstrating to the voting public that he is not yet ready to assume responsibilities as a US Representative.

So now let’s speak to the elephant in the room, the fact that President Trump has fully endorsed Jake Evans in his run to become 6th District Representative.  Trump’s endorsement is not lost on me.  And were I not so well-informed on this race, Trump’s endorsement might even affect the way I see it.
 
But let me ask you a question: Who among my readers expects that Donald Trump has gone to the extent I have to intimately understand the candidates and their positions and the circumstances in this race?  Of course, I doubt anyone still reading expects that Donald Trump has any knowledge of the facts I have delivered both in this article, but also in the one I published two weeks ago.
 
I greatly value the opinion of the individual I consider the best President of my lifetime.  In this case, however, I believe I have conveyed to each reader enough factual information, and offered sufficient political judgment to rationally disagree with Donald Trump’s endorsement.  Furthermore, were Trump privy to the information you and I now understand, and which I have attempted dutifully to place in the reader’s view in this and in my previous paper, there should be little doubt that the 45th President of the United States would agree with me and thereby have endorsed the one remaining viable candidate in this race, an individual who possesses a political and world view in agreement with the overwhelming number of voters in the 6th District, and whose temperament encourages her to constantly seek better understanding of issues and questions she will be called on to vote.  And she is Mallory Staples.

Mallory Staples is only candidate of the three who when asked of her favored US policy in Ukraine, answered truthfully that she did not trust the information she was receiving from the Biden administration and mainstream media, was not convinced that Ukrainian President Zelenski was the good guy he is being portrayed, but that before she could answer that question fully, that she needed to better understand the truth of the circumstances surrounding US involvement in Ukraine, which have brought us to this point.  That was an excellent answer, in fact the only reasonable or perhaps even truthful answer given by all three.

As I have gotten to know Mallory Staples, I have confirmed in this person that what you see in her, and what you hear from her, is what you will get when she is elected to represent the 6th District of Georgia in the US Congress.  Mallory Staples is honest; she will never deceive you.  Mallory Staples is strong; she will stand up for you and for what is right.  And Mallory Staples is courageous; I firmly believe she would die for you and this country before she would abandon you, our founders, or the men and women who have fought and died defending America since 1776.   

I hope you will agree with me and vote Mallory Staples to be the next US Representative for Georgia’s 6th District.  You will not regret it.