I was on the first phone call and helped organize and found one of the first modern-day Tea Party groups in the United States. We were maligned, our characters impugned; we were called every name imaginable and referred to as racists simply because we didn’t think Uncle Sam should be with our doc at the business end of the lady stirrups. Every ad hominem tool was employed against us, and while dissent was considered “patriotic” under the Bush administration, it was made outright criminal by the Obama admin. Government agencies acted as sentinels, seeking and destroying or making supremely difficult the lives and actions of numerous conservative groups and activists. Catherine Engelbrecht and the King Street Patriots were targeted, Dinesh D’Souza, James O’Keefe, the Richmond Tea Party, and numerous others were persecuted and engaged in lawfare. George Soros–funded sites like Media Matters put reporters on people beats—assigning them to listen to and follow certain high-profile activists and conservatives. Rather than act as some quasijournalistic review, as they falsely presented themselves, they served as the official dumping ground for opposition research and acted as the official water carriers for the DNC. They were the attack dogs for the Obama admin, going so far as to present hysterically libelous headlines as news. They practiced the LBJ art of accusations, particularly the “make them deny it” tactic.
“. . . was that in both the Ohio and Nebraska primaries, back to back, McGovern was confronted for the first time with the politics of the rabbit-punch and the groin shot, and in both states he found himself dangerously vulnerable to this kind of thing. Dirty politics confused him. He was not ready for it—and especially not from his fine old friend Hubert Humphrey. Toward the end of the Nebraska campaign he was spending most of his public time explaining that he was Not for abortion on demand, Not for legalized marijuana, Not for unconditional amnesty . . . and his staff was becoming more and more concerned that their man had been put completely on the defensive.
This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s lifelong habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows. Wrote Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72:
“C——, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-f**ker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”
“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofab*tch deny it.”
In this new media landscape, a denial is a scalp, a ridiculously false story can plant just one seed of division. That’s the goal: Chaos.
During the early 2016 primary fight I was completely repulsed to see certain conservative Web sites engage in yellow journalism. I don’t believe in the objectivity of any media entity. Everyone has a bias. For instance, I’m biased toward limited government and Christian values. I freely admit it; that’s the difference. I don’t believe in an unbiased media; it’s a joke. Media was never unbiased; it was never objective. It began in the United States when people like Ben Franklin wrote under pseudonyms to talk trash about people with whom he disagreed. Media was never more than the comments of a YouTube section, with rare, shining exceptions that do not serve as the rule. Media already compromises journalistic ethics by claiming objectivity. There is no such thing. But there is such a thing as honesty. You can be opinionated and be honest. They are not mutually exclusive traits. It’s frustrating to see conservative outlets that claim to be some sort of media ombudsmen utilizing for ad dollars the exact same tactics that they criticize on their pages. As reader consumption changes, so too changes the media landscape. News consumers are busier than they were twenty years ago. New technologies meant to make lives easier have somehow made them more complicated. New media—and I don’t mean blogs, I mean Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook (the era of blogs is over and we’re smack in the middle of the micromedia and viral narratives era)—are adapted perfectly to giving consumers the thirty-second headline they require to work with their busy schedules. As it has become harder to distinguish truth from fantasy in media, so too has it become difficult to follow the workings of the Washington cabal. Certain power-hungry members of the elected class ignore promises to allow other lawmakers forty-eight hours to digest a thousand-page bill before voting, others propose suspiciously redundant legislation, and others still push through so much at once that it’s virtually impossible for lawmakers (to say nothing of their constituents) to keep their pace. Adding insult to injury, the party that conservatives support regularly to prevent government excess has helped to enable it, less than the other, but enable it all the same. This, coupled with the lack of appreciation given to conservatives who for decades filled ballot boxes with GOP votes, exploded for the second time in 2015. A new nationalist movement was born, different from patriotism; time will tell where this political furor will lead.
Donald Trump, with whom I had maintained a good relationship, reached out to me through his team and asked if I would be his surrogate in the media. I have an insufferable antiauthoritarian streak. No matter how much I may like a particular candidate, I could never be a politician’s mouthpiece. It’s not what I do. I replied to the staffer that I could be relied upon only to give credit and criticism when and where they are due; I could not offer anything more. It was a polite denial; I had nothing personally against Trump. He was a guest on my program a plethora of times. I just prefer not to be in someone’s pocket. I won’t speculate whether it was this or my disagreement with his remarks during the Planned Parenthood–versus–Center for Medical Progress fight that “Planned Parenthood does a lot of good for women too” on Fox one evening that created the divide between me and Trump’s orbit, but a divide was evident shortly after, nonetheless. Months later, and after many had asked, I publicly explained in National Review why I personally could not support him. The response from what I can only believe to be the candidate’s core supporters was eye-opening. Aside from being called every sexually derogatory name in the book, I was labeled a “cuckservative” and more as a result of my opinion. A few things: I don’t work at National Review, my opinion is my own; Reagan called it his “favorite magazine”; and it never endorsed McCain, only Romney over McCain in 2008. I blast the Left every day on my programs, and anyone who has any familiarity with my programs’ content knew that I was moving toward this position the more I read and the more I interviewed Trump. There are conservatives who are nationalists, but not every nationalist is a conservative, and I can only think that this segment of the electorate is where the bulk of the hatred originated. I felt as though that politicians were exploiting that infuriating, helpless anger so many (myself included) feel and trying to direct it toward a specific purpose that does not include limited-government principles. I don’t apologize for my contribution to the consortium; it was reasoned, well thought out, and written with a civil tongue—most important, it was my opinion. Maybe not yours, maybe not hers or his, but mine. And because I’m a conservative, it’s cool if we don’t agree. What isn’t cool are the people who feel that questioning someone’s marriage or suggesting that they should be raped is in any way an acceptable response when confronted with diversity of thought. In America we may like our doctors but we can’t keep them, we can’t keep our land when the Bureau of Land Management comes knocking (particularly if you’re a North Texas rancher), we can’t keep illegal aliens from entering our country without being sued by the DOJ, but we can still keep our opinions. (Well, some of us. Others have been prosecuted by the alphabet soup of bureaucratic agencies.)
I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. You can quite literally chart my political and spiritual growth online. I began writing about politics, pop culture, and lifestyle anonymously back in 2003, just another generic political blog, a dime a dozen. That turned into a newspaper column, through which I was offered a radio job in the spring of 2008. The rest is history. When I began I was angry. I still am, but with experience comes wisdom. You can’t always be angry about the state of the world, you can’t always yell when talking to listeners through the mic, and you can’t always be that person who is perpetually ticked off, because it burns too much energy and makes everyone else feel miserable. Anger isn’t a solution. It’s a motivator, but not a plan of action. You can’t win anything without a plan of action. If you’re angry that you are out of Double Stuf Oreos, staring down your pantry and being mad about it doesn’t put Oreos in your pantry. Being angry enough about it, wanting them badly enough that you’ll drive to the store, buy some, and put them in the pantry yourself, well, that plan of action succeeds. You can be angry six ways to Sunday about the state of government, but being mad about it doesn’t change it. Ranting on Facebook doesn’t change it. Sending e-mails with the subject line “YOU SUCK!!1!!1” to conservative female talk-radio hosts who simply think differently about a primary candidate doesn’t change it, either. In July of 2009 I spoke at a Tea Party rally in mid-Missouri. The Tea Party was total Americana. I’ve never seen a rally where people brought fold-up chairs, umbrella hats for the sun, and coolers full of Hi-C, but they did at Tea Party rallies. People said prayers and sang the national anthem at every rally I attended across the country. While there were such groups on the coasts, the fire came from the heartland. From Flyover Nation. I said at this rally that our fight is a marathon, not a sprint.
“Progressives have a generation on us,” I told the crowd. “We cannot expect in one, two, or a few election cycles to match what they have accomplished with generations of plotting and misinformation.” The struggle is slow, but we’ve made progress. We have more conservative senators and a conservative caucus in the House; Eric Cantor is out; Boehner is out. I am not yet satisfied, and neither is almost anyone else. There is still so much to do, so much that some of those same patriots who stood with me that day and said, “Yes! a marathon!” feel dispirited and have given up entirely, or given in to total anger. Please don’t.
For many weeks I focused on Matthew 10:28:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
What is the “soul” of conservatism? I have not faith in man over God but I have faith in the individual over government. I believe in the power of the individual over the power of government. I believe in voluntary stewardship of our fellow man, responsible stewardship of our country’s affairs made possible only with the permission of the country’s citizens. I believe in a strong national defense, really the government’s only job, and when the government isn’t focused on defense, it can stay out of everybody’s lives. That, to me, as I have always known it, is conservatism. The largest body for this, for all intents and purposes, has been the Republican Party, though it has been threatened by the growing number of libertarians and independent conservatives. However, the Republican Party has been a poor body for the soul in recent years. The discussion becomes, then, do we sacrifice the body for the soul? Do we sacrifice the building for the mission? Do we continue to support the body with the belief that we can preserve the soul and achieve the mission, bit by bit, even if we must compromise certain principles to get there? All politics is compromise, but there is a point when compromise becomes suicide. The limit is ever changing. It’s hard to know. This adds to the Flyover anger.
I asked a friend recently, when discussing this very subject, and I meant it in love, “Why have you not done more to change hearts and minds than to sit on Facebook or Twitter? Why have you not phone-banked, gone door to door, written letters to the editor, donated everything you could directly to the campaign you support?” In quite a few of my discussions with people across the country, many have not done this. It’s hard work changing hearts and minds. It’s hard facing the possibility of rejection or having to satisfy yourself with knowing that maybe your only victory that day was planting the seed. But know this: Truth lasts longer than propaganda. Persistence works. Even water wears down rock. Our children need to see us never giving up, never giving in, and they need to participate with you, because, as Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
I have said often that I think there are a number of conservatives who like the idea of limited government and the fist-in-the-air aesthetic of political incorrectness, but they also like to be comfortable. During the first Republican primary debate of the new year the veil was torn and the massive divide between Flyover and the coasts revealed. Earlier in the primary Donald Trump jabbed Ted Cruz’s faith and flamed the birther rumors by remarking, “Not a lot of evangelicals come from Cuba.” Cruz returned fire, remarking, “Not a lot of conservatives come from New York.” Trump defended his “New York values,” at which point Cruz replied, “Everybody understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal and proabortion and pro–gay marriage and focus on money and the media.” The coasts were apoplectic.
But why? Was that statement wrong? No, it wasn’t.
Social media went crazy. It seemed like a competition to see who could win first place in butt-hurtness. But was Cruz wrong? New Yorkers are fleeing the state. Conservatives may congregate upstate, but they’re outnumbered by Manhattan progressives. It’s a state that has gone for Democrats by wide margins in the last seven presidential elections. When I hear “New York values,” I think of the seven-round magazine limit, the ban on Big Gulps, de Blasio’s disrespect of cops (remember when they turned their backs on him?), the New York SAFE Act criminalizing gun owners, the extra tax you have to pay just to have your bagel sliced at the deli, the fact that the New York City Council is barely elected, that gay hoteliers are attacked and treated like Elijah Lovejoy just short of death simply for throwing an event for a Republican candidate. (Some partisans wondered why Republicans would meet with gay supporters at all, as opposed to—what?—throwing them off rooftops like ISIS does? I’ll take my direction on planting seeds and engaging those who don’t think like you from Christ, thanks.) I think of Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, restrictions, high cost of living, high taxation, and criminal-justice decay when I think of “New York values.” Something was said about New York that was simple policy truth and people lost their minds. Someone once asked me in classic straw man style: “Dana, what if a presidential candidate had disrespected your home state?” Like how? Like saying that Missouri is hemorrhaging jobs to states with right-to-work laws? That St. Louis has one of the highest crime rates in the nation? That I had to move out of the city because gangs and drugs were moving in? That the mayor and the sheep of a police chief blamed law-abiding gun owners for the crimes of repeat offenders as a way to justify further gun restrictions in the city, making it harder for moms like me to defend myself? That the city’s high cost of doing business, lack of population outside working hours, and corruption have destroyed any recovery? Please. Try being from Flyover Nation and then tell me how bad you have it. We’re called “bitter clingers,” hillbillies, rednecks; we’re mocked for meth, Walmart, muddin’, and more. This is a daily occurrence. And yet we don’t make people pay extra to the state to cut a bagel, nor do we limit your magazine capacity, and people are leaving to move here, not Manhattan. We are slammed every single day by coastal snobs who liken St. Louis and all of Flyover to a monolithic cow town where it’s assumed that everyone has uncomfortably similar DNA. New Yorkers were appalled that a Texas senator stated the obvious about their state. These are people who attack and denigrate Flyover Nation, who applaud the president for referring to us as “bitter clingers” and mock us on Saturday Night Live. We’re supposed to defend them with lies against the simply stated truth? When did the right embrace political correctness? We need to have some folks join Black Lives Matter in its “safe space.”
I come from unapologetic southern-Missouri stock. I come from farmers, from good ol’ boys, from home cookin’, from the land of moonshine and coveralls, from people who would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it and a busted lip if you needed that too. I don’t subscribe to lockstep, hive-mind thinking. Never have. Never will. I love God, family, and country, in that order. I love the principles with which I was raised, principles I saw in action when my single mom took three jobs to stay off the government dole, when my grandpa would come home of an evening from the fields with dirt on his jeans and grease on his hands. I saw these principles in action when my cousin volunteered to go to war right out of high school. I saw these principles when my aunts and uncles would argue and drama would ensue—until Grandma, the ultimate matriarch, shut it down with one single look. I saw these principles when my cousin walked her down the aisle to be seated at my wedding. I saw them again when I told her I was pregnant with her first great-grandchild and she patted my expanding belly and with the wisest smile I’ve ever seen replied, “I already knew, child.” I saw them in my husband’s grandmother, who emerged from the fog of Alzheimer’s long enough to meet that baby, her great-grandson; a warm glow of recognition spread across her face as she cooed, “I know you!” while holding his tiny hands.
I felt them when I would sit on the porch swing with Grandpa, the first father figure I ever knew, and lay my head on his shoulder while his large, tobacco-stained fingers ran through my hair until I went to sleep. I saw them when my entire family held vigil for him at the VA, taking turns to make sure he was never, ever alone in the hospital. I saw them when my mother almost leaped across the nurses’ desk at that same hospital, my aunts standing in solidarity behind her, after she discovered how long Grandpa and the other veterans had gone without water through the night. I saw those principles when I saw my grandfather cry or show emotion for the first time in my life at my grandmother’s funeral as he collapsed near the casket in tears that could not be contained and every man in the family abandoned all formality and raced to be at his side.
I see them in people from my family’s hometown and home county, people who don’t know me but know my family name and display my magazine covers in their mom-and-pop shops and helped my stepdad gather copies of one magazine all across town to give away to friends. I saw it at my uncle’s funeral, where I gave the eulogy, in the worn faces of people who’d fought through some hard things in life but were in tears before his casket as they realized the magnanimity of God.
I saw those principles and values in two ladies who came to one of my book signings and told me as I signed their books that they were from the Ozarks before departing with a “God bless you.” I see it in my friends, good country folk like my friends Jimi Pirtle and the Kruta family, the latter of whom have had a family-owned bakery for generations and bring St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake for me and my entire staff whenever I’m in town. I saw these principles and values of compassion and love in my own boys one day when, while walking with them through Target, I suddenly realized I was alone. I looked back and saw them saluting and thanking a soldier in uniform, who shook their hands as his wife stood near their cart filled with diapers, cradling their infant in a sling. I see these principles still when my oldest son reminds me at a restaurant to bow my head for grace before he confidently and loudly thanks God for our blessings.
Whenever I feel lost and tempest tossed in this world, I think of these things. I think of Flyover Nation. These people and what they believe are the soul of this nation. “Bitter clingers?” Hardly. And FYI, “hillbilly” is a compliment. You’ll be wishing you knew one if things get rough in the world.
Whenever I feel that they and their values are under attack, my eyebrow (my “Ozark eyebrow,” as my friend Jimi calls it) raises and my nostrils flare. Whether I’ve met them or not, they’re all family (and as big as my family is, heck, we might actually be related).
And they are angry and they feel unappreciated. Angry and unappreciated because they have become an increasingly isolated island in a country that values popularity, pocketbook, and power over principle. Unlike places like Washington, people in Flyover don’t just get angry. They know anger isn’t a solution or a plan of action; it’s simply a motivator. And with a clenched jaw they’ll roll up their sleeves and set out to change things. We can only hope.