“It ain’t what you
don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just
ain’t so” – misattributed to Mark Twain
The statements made by Jadon MacCormack on a Facebook
posting were not unattributed.
MacCormack wrote, “This ideology” – the transgender and LGBT
movement, according to the Hartford Courant – “promotes
confusion over clarity, prioritizes feelings over biological reality, and seeks
to redefine the natural order of marriage, family, and human identity in ways
that directly contradict God-given rights and common sense.”
MacCormack was not called upon to clarify his propositions
because those condemning him needed no clarification. He was, unsurprisingly,
roundly denounced and asked by all and sundry to resign from his position as the
Republican Party nominee for House District 50, currently held by “Patrick S.
Boyd of Pomfret, a well-known conservative Democrat who has served in the
legislature since 2017 and currently co-chairs the House Democratic Moderate
Caucus,” according to the Courant.
Democrat Governor Ned Lamont said, “The hateful comments
made repeatedly by this Republican candidate for public office are unacceptable
and completely out of step with Connecticut values. Connecticut is a state that
welcomes people, respects differences, and believes everyone deserves to be
treated with dignity. Hate and discrimination have no home here, and I will
continue to stand with the LGBTQ+ community to ensure our state remains a place
where everyone feels safe, welcome, and respected.”
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora said, “Mr.
MacCormack’s recent comments about Pride Month are his own. They don’t speak
for the Republican Party here, and they don’t reflect the priorities our caucus
members are running on. They were immature and reckless, and they show a candidate
who isn’t ready for the responsibility he’s asking voters to give him.
Residents in the 50th District, like voters across the state, want a state
representative focused on their paychecks, their property taxes, and their
kids’ futures. Mr. MacCormack has shown he isn’t that candidate, and the best
thing he can do for the 50th District now is step aside… I will not support a
candidate who suggests that people should be jailed or hung based on their
sexuality. And for the record, this candidate’s comments have gone far beyond
simply calling out Pride Month. Unhinged, violent rhetoric has no place in
society, let alone politics.”
State Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding said, “He
must step aside. The Senate Republicans and I condemn these comments in the
strongest of terms.”
State Republican chairman Ben Proto said, “By invoking
historical punishments for individuals based on their sexual conduct and
coupling those references with language portraying entire groups of people as
threats to society, Mr. MacCormack crossed a line that should never be crossed
by anyone seeking public office. Whether intended or not, such rhetoric can be
interpreted as validating hostility toward members of the LGBTQ community and
contributes to an atmosphere of division and fear.”
Democrat House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford and House
Majority Leader Jason Rojas issued a joint statement: “The Connecticut House of
Representatives includes members and staff who are members of the LGBTQ+
community, and it is sickening to think that this candidate wants to spew this
kind of poison in the people’s chamber. I’m sure Jadon will keep howling at the
moon. Northeastern Connecticut is smart enough not to listen.”
Kevin Rennie, a former Republican state senator, now a
Hartford Courant columnist, wrote, “Republican Jadon MacCormack, who highlights
on his campaign website his warbling gospel music as one of his chief
accomplishments, has let loose with a full blown moral panic fusillade in his
campaign for the 50th House District. The nominee of the party of Lincoln has
diagnosed the ills of the eight-town district and found them in four letters:
LGBT.”
Republican State Senator Heather Somers, widely celebrated
as a moderate Senior Deputy Leader said, “No one should feel unwelcome or
uncomfortable because of who they are. These types of divisive politics are
tearing communities apart at the seams. My focus is on bringing people together
to address Connecticut’s affordability crisis, property tax burden, and build a
more prosperous future for everyone.”
Prominent members of the state Democrat Party were delighted
to be able to use MacCormack as a campaign foil with which they lustily
attacked state and national Republicans.
“The state Democratic Party," the Courant noted,
“strongly criticized state Sen. Ryan Fazio, a Greenwich Republican who will be
running in the November election [against Lamont]. They noted that MacCormack
had his picture taken with Fazio in posts that have been seen on social media,
and they noted that Fazio had not reacted as quickly as other Republicans.”
Democrat Party spokesman Ian Clarke said, “This is an
endorsed GOP candidate wishing death and AIDS upon millions of LGBTQ+
Americans. Where exactly is Ryan Fazio on this? This is pure hatred, and
condemning this kind of inhumanity shouldn’t be hard. MacCormack has campaigned
with him, promoted him, and bragged about working with him. If Fazio wants to
lead this state, he can start by doing the bare minimum and condemning the
bigotry coming from his own political ally.”
“Without mentioning MacCormack by name,” the Courant tells
us, “ Fazio said at about 12:40 p.m. Wednesday that the candidate ‘has made
several posts that have come to light which seriously violate the values of
freedom, safety, and individual rights that Republicans, Americans, and
Connecticut residents hold dear… While Democrats continue to run candidates who
have been repeatedly charged with serious crimes or are under federal criminal
investigation, Republicans hold their candidates to a higher standard. The
candidate’s posts and comments are entirely unacceptable, and he should withdraw
from the race immediately.”
Democrat contender for the U.S. Senate in Maine Graham
Platner has given no indication he plans to bow out of the race following a
devastating story –“Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’
Behavior” -- in the New York Times, a paper that has
rarely supported President Donald Trump. Leaning far left, Platner has fallen
off the Democrat’s moral bandwagon, and his fall has not caused fellow Democrat
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to reconsider his support of a man that for
years has proudly displayed a tattoo replicating the insignia worn by Nazi
prison guards in Jewish extermination camps. Platner has so far escaped
whipping from moral esthetes such as Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal,
like Sanders, a Jew.
MacCormack has now been hanged, drawn, quartered, and fricasseed.
It was Voltaire who said if God did not exist, theists would
have to invent him, presumably to justify their theism. Turning Voltaire in his
head, Dostoyevsky had one of his characters say that if there were no God,
atheists would be forced to invent Him to justify their belief that – “without
God, all things are possible.”
If there were no MacCormack, majority Democrat politicians
in Connecticut would be forced to invent him so they might with impunity
denounce all Republicans.
Comments