Just What You Would Expect from Republicans

Our friend Neil Kumar conducted a bold and energetic campaign in the Arkansas primary elections for a Republican nomination to a U.S. House seat. Not unexpectedly, he lost.  Here is his official statement.

​I was the third candidate in US history to be disavowed by the Republican Party during a contested primary. Twice—both at critical times—my online fundraising was shut down, once by the Republican Party of Arkansas and once by the Republican National Committee.

A virtual unknown, this was my first time running for office. My opponent, a six-term incumbent backed by the Republican Establishment, the Walton Family, the Defense Lobby, Big Pharma, AIPAC, and every other evil entity on earth, had a 20-to-1 funding advantage.

The local media refused to cover me at all, while the national Leftist media ran constant hit pieces against me—the ADL, the SPLC, Right Wing Watch, the Guardian, Business Insider, you name it. GOP operatives ran a smear operation against me on the ground.

Arkansas has an open primary system, and I know for a fact that thousands of Democrats crossed party lines specifically to vote against me in the Republican primary.

Yet despite all of that opposition, subterfuge, and sabotage, I still managed to secure at least 22% of the vote—assuming my numbers weren’t actually higher and no “election fortification” took place. I am investigating rumors of some shenanigans, but I’ll save that for another time.

The key here is that despite the fundamental unfairness of this fight, I still managed to secure almost a quarter of the vote in a race for United States Congress. That’s at least 16,400 people who voted for me.

We are not alone. We are just beginning. And this is but the start of my career.

What is most interesting about this matter is the behaviour of Establishment Republicans, confirming how afraid they are of ideas and issues.  Republicans must maintain their “respectability.”   They must never allow a real issue to  intrude into public discussion.  That might make the clueless voters restless and threaten their profit and prestige.  Democrats are not afraid of issues.  That is why Republicans are utterly useless and  always have to be for the latest Democrat fad, just respectably  less so.

Kumar’s incumbent Republican opponent is an Empty Suit carbon copy of most Republican members of Congress.  Kumar brought up the need for an immigration moratorium. All the opponent could say is that “America is a nation of immigrants,” a half-truth slogan from early in the previous century. He added that if immigration is cut down “no fresh ideas, no new blood can come into this country.”

Everything this fellow had to say is meaningless words invented by PR men of the central Republican party.  This man has never given one minute’s thought to the issue that Kumar brought up or probably any other real issue.  Or given one minute’s thought to what his country needs to address.  That might be controversial and upset the comfortable status quo.  Obviously the current immigration situation is unprecedented in American history, a new issue,  and cannot be answered with pleasant bromides of earlier time.  And are Americans incapable of fresh ideas and have to be continually enlightened by foreigners?   Must we be forever a country of immigrants and not a real country?  And what about the morality of continually robbing poor countries of their educated people?  Ask the growing company of unemployed Americans. Foreign tech people are no better than Americans.  They have no new ideas—they are just cheaper and more docile.    

Neil Kumar was a recent candidate for Congress from Arkansas.