Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My Point of View by Brad Kramer

What does politics mean to you? If you are like many people, you don’t follow it. It seems like it’s a big machine, where each of us is almost meaningless. A big, scary process that plays out on the news and in Washington, D.C. In reality, though, it is the interactions and beliefs we all share in common. It’s how such beliefs get pushed into laws that govern the nation and how we interact with other nations. It’s many of the little things we do, like getting involved in community collaborative efforts, standing for your beliefs that matter to you and simply voting. The millions upon millions of little actions that you and I take in our lives that define what America is gets reflected in our political climate. That is America. Each of us has ways to contribute to make a better country.

Over the last few months, we’ve made a very strategic effort as your county’s Republican Party to explain what our values are, what we accomplish and who we are. While the occasional comparison or focus on the Democrat Party does have a place in our columns, we’ve decided that our identity is not based on what we are not, or what the Democrats are doing, but rather how and what we choose to accomplish. We are free market capitalists who believe in building our nation’s economic prosperity. We are community members who stand behind our first responders. We are patriots who love America, not because other nations are lacking, but because we love the nation that gives us the way of life we have. Repeatedly, we’ve focused on sharing with you what we see as the benefits of a capitalist economy, for example, and why our nation cannot embrace Marxist principles.

In the Democrat’s columns, on the other hand, Jennifer Vogt-Erickson chooses to keep slinging mud and telling you what Democrats are not, rather than telling us who they are. They’ve told us they’re not racist by telling you that Republicans are. They’ve told you that they are not heartless by telling you that Republicans don’t believe in the same COVID measures that they embrace. We’ve all gotten a pretty good idea what our local Democrats supposedly do not believe, while having little or no idea what they actually do believe.

In recent columns, I’ve shared why we love our capitalist system. Frankly, this is one of the biggest political issues of our day. It will literally define who we are as a nation, what freedoms we have and what kind of economic security (or lack thereof) that our children will have. I will offer, without reservation, that if the Democrats are able to implement the socialist principles that they want to, our nation will be unrecognizable in another generation. Yet, Mrs. Erickson has not spent one paragraph addressing that issue because she knows full well that what she believes and what she can communicate to you as an audience are two completely different narratives. She will tell you that she loves capitalism, while telling you how rotten to the core it is. She will not say how we can improve capitalism to make it serve us better, but what the Democrats want to eradicate from our society. Hence, we get column after column that uses political maneuvering rather than sharing with you, the people who matter, what they believe and want to accomplish. People like Mrs. Erickson want to continually make politics about putting down Republicans as a whole, rather than positively state what Democrats have to offer America or how we can work together to strengthen our community and nation — hence, the constant jabs she takes at people, not issues. That is the ugly part of politics.

Democrats know they cannot win your hearts and minds to their cause to support Marxist ideas on the merits of their principles, so they are like an angry child who knocks over the other kids’ Lego buildings rather than learn to build their own.

Brad Kramer is a member of the Freeborn County Republican Party.