This is a high sign here from Utah and may be the indicator of a shift in Utah politics. Evan McMullin is challenging GOP incumbent Senator Mike Lee, who is a major Trump lover. This past quarter he raised twice as much money as Lee did.
“McMullin broke Utah fundraising records raising more than $1,030,000 in his first three months. Lee raised only $654,000,” McMullin’s campaign declared in a news release. The statement adds, “Lee’s total includes more than $250,000 from special interest groups and other D.C. insiders.”
Some wonder how our politics became so broken. Part of it is that too many politicians, including Mike Lee, choose to cater to the extremes. He’s one of the most polarizing members of the U.S. Senate, which is why he can’t get much done. Utah deserves and needs much better. pic.twitter.com/gHz0tf9AGD
— Evan McMullin ?? (@EvanMcMullin) January 28, 2022
Lee has provided plenty of fodder for McMullin’s argument that Lee has gone off the deep end. In the fall of 2020, Lee insisted in a tweet that “Democracy isn’t the objective. liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.” He later clarified that the United States is a constitutional system, with an unelected Supreme Court and antidemocratic aspects — two things that Republicans have used, incidentally, to extend their overwhelmingly White minority rule.
Since then, reports have uncovered that Lee looked into Donald Trump’s bizarre theories to overturn the election in 2020 ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Although he batted down the plot to stage a coup, he failed to report the scheme to the FBI or the public. Lee also voted repeatedly to filibuster voting legislation and to block a bipartisan commission to investigate Jan. 6 (which fellow Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney supported).
McMullin plans to appeal to voters’ frustration with gridlock and hyper-partisanship. “We need to ensure that we still have a democracy that serves the interests of the people, not just extremists and special interests,” he contends. “They’ve gained too much influence in Washington and worsened the pandemic, failed to lower the high costs of health care, contributed to inflation, prevented us from protecting our air and water, and weakened America.”
He has also been a strong advocate for “free and fair” elections, including eliminating gerrymandering and getting special-interest money out of politics. These reforms, he says, are essential if we are “to ensure that our government remains accountable.” He has ruled out accepting PAC money.
McMullin has an uphill climb against an incumbent, but his decision to go the independent route might pay off and provide a model for other conservatives disillusioned with the MAGA GOP. If nothing else, McMullin’s fundraising success shows there is some appetite for an alternative to the most extreme wing of the Senate GOP.
The fundraising success is indeed a red flag. I take it as a hopeful sign that even in deep red states there are enough sensible people who want to have less extremism in government. I hope that that is an accurate reading. This is one race to keep an eye on.
Any state that is full of folks that believe what Mormons believe is a lost cause. Mitt is a rich spineless hypocrite who fucks Jesus at every turn of the road. Hey Mr elevator in ur garage. What happened to the sermon on the fucking Mt? Lee is just a reminder there are psychiatric cases not locked up in the hospital. As Dylan sang in Masters of War, “even Jesus wouldn’t forgive what u do.”
Utah is very strange. One of my best friends was from there (she’s passed on now) and she was Mormon from Utah. Wonderful kind woman. She was married off at age 13. She had twins at age 14 and then three more children, so she was a mother of five by the time she was 18, if you can believe it. She dumped Mormonism like a rock and she also got a divorce. She put herself through hair dressing school and made her living doing that. Imagine being a mother of five at an age when most females are still virgins.
Sounds like someone should have gone to prison. Ur friend is an example that people can overcome brainwashing. Yeah that’s too much responsibility at too young of an age. My grandmother had 11 & took in a couple of kids for a while. My other grandma had 6 with 5 being boys. Heros. Where the hell would any of us be without our mothers? Utah is beautiful that’s for sure.
A great way to fix our countries financial situation is to tax all land.
Including land owned by ALL churches.
That way the church cannot cry that they are being taxed.
Also, churches are not taxed and because of that, are not allowed to preach politics.
Maybe the feds should start doing their fucking simpleton jobs.
Agree. Hey I studied biblical history with a true scholar, Dr. Bernard ‘Bunny’ Boyd, at UNC-CH. He knew the languages, the cultures, & was an archeologist. He had the text committed to memory just to prove the Jewish sacred oral tradition was not as loose as our culture’s memory of anything really. He knew the unsolved mysteries. He was a Chaplin in the war. He challenged many of our individual & cultural beliefs. Anyone who grew up in the Bible belt that thought they knew the Bible found out differently. Unfortunately, ignorance & arrogance being two underpinnings of our existence, times haven’t really changed. We worship shallowness of thought, word, & deed. Just take a look at our values & who gets attention in America. Trump wouldn’t exist if we were who we think we are as a culture.. The so called churches have no more sacred hold on the truth than anyone else. They ignore, with exceptions of course, the facts of where we are & how we got here. I expect the Webb telescope, once calibrated, to alter some of our ‘facts’ about our ideas about the universe. Hubble did some but it orbits around the earth. Webb, named after a UNC-CH grad, will orbit the sun. We already know the speed of light & use it to measure distances in space. It can travel 7x around the earth in one second. It would take 26,000 years for it to travel to the center of our galaxy. There are an estimated 350 billion galaxies. I expect Webb will alter that one. Ask any Bible toting believer who made all of this & the answer will be God, Yaweh, Allah. Then watch as they say they know this being inside & out. Liars. Everyone is an expert & demands a cone of protection for any and all ignorant beliefs under the umbrella of ‘faith’. They respond to challenges, not with open minded argument with whatever facts they possess, but usually with violence. It’s an old story, & not one limited to Judeo/Christian culture. They should not be subsidized by the state. They should not be given an automatic pass on lies spewed over the public airwaves as if the word ‘faith’ covered them as a shield. The irony, & there are many, is they have no faith. They can’t face things as mysterious & unknown as they are, & have been. They can’t face our collective fate of aging & death without certainty. Dylan once sang, ” you say u lost ur faith. U know it’s not like that. U had no faith to lose & u know it.” I don’t think citizens of a so called democracy should be attached to this ball & chain. Let’s set up a children’s fund to feed our kids, or their education, or any damn thing they need. That would be a great shift of resources.