How to Identify Those Souters in Sheep’s Clothing

To this day, if you want to bring chills to the spines of conservative Republicans, just mention the name David Souter.

Souter was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush because he was mild-mannered and thought to be able to avoid the bruising confirmation fight that snared Robert Bork.

“He seemed to have felt a commitment to his conservative philosophy for about six months, and then just fell off a cliff into the dark side of liberalism,” said John Sununu, a fellow New Hampshire native and former governor and senator from the Granite State, who had pushed for Souter’s nomination.

Since then, conservatives have tried to prevent this from happening again – to spot the Souters before they got into office or gained lifetime appointments then betrayed the conservative principles of those who put them in office.

Today, some are worried that Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett may not measure up to conservative expectations on the Court, and others doubt whether Elise Stefanik is even as conservative as the woman she replaced as Republican House conference chair, Liz Cheney.

But what’s done is done in those cases. The task now is to identify future Souters – Republicans who would gain our trust and use our names to get elected then turn their backs when it came to policy decisions. And one may be emerging in a south-central Ohio congressional district.

When Rep. Steve Stivers, the Republican who represents the district now, announced last month he was retiring, Brian Stewart, now the District 78 representative to the Ohio House, stepped forward to run for his seat.

In 2015, Stewart, then a commissioner from Pickaway County, helped found the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, which defined itself as a “coalition designed to be a voice for conservative support for common-sense, all-of-the-above state energy policy.” All mention of Stewart was scrubbed from the site in 2019, and a look at the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum’s documents suggests why.

The group’s founding release cited its approval of then-Gov. John Kasich, himself a Republican who attempted to govern like a Democrat in the statehouse and during his eight terms in the U.S. House, for wanting President Obama’s unconstitutional and counterproductive Clean Power Plan implemented in Ohio to encourage green energy investment.

The group’s statement of principles touted man’s responsibility to be stewards of the Earth, made claims of great job growth in connection with green energy, tied green energy to national security and economic growth and pointed to surveys that voters wanted more government subsidies for green energy.

“OHCEF is a movement of conservatives who recognize clean energy as a solution to sustaining energy dominance, keeping our economy booming and providing power to build and sustain the American way of life,” the front of its website reads.

If that’s not enough to show these groups are intent on Souter-izing energy policy, the Ohio organization is a member of the Conservative Energy Network, which is a network and has somewhat of a relationship with energy but is in no way conservative.

It takes money from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Turner Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and the Argosy Foundation, all left-wing sources. It took $200,000 more from the TomKat Foundation, controlled by left-wing environmental extremist Tom Steyer. It favors “real energy and climate change solutions,” such as a carbon tax and subsidies for green energy.

The Energy Foundation, which funnels liberal dollars to these Souter-ized “conservative” groups, has on its board of directors Gina McCarthy, current White House climate czar and administrator of the EPA under President Barack Obama – appointing her about the time Brian Stewart was getting involved with Ohio Conservative Energy Forum.

All the Republican candidates in Ohio-15 are going to claim to be conservatives. When is the last time you heard a Republican claim to be a moderate? They’re going to say they are for plentiful and affordable energy because the economy comes to a standstill without it.

Some such as Stewart will talk about opportunities for governments – chances to subsidize or forgive taxes – to “invest” in “future technologies,” “create jobs” in “sustainable industries” in pursuit of an “all-of-the-above energy policy” and “expanding efficiency.”

But what they mean is that they want to take money from taxpayers and give it to favored industries so they get brownie points for being green and keep contributions flowing.

We need conservatives who unabashedly make the case for a truly market-based energy policy, one that rewards producers who can bring their products to market most efficiently rather than those who would not be economically or ecologically viable otherwise.

Brian Stewart wants you to think he is that guy. But he’s not, and unlike the case with David Souter, we know enough about him now not to make the same mistake again.

You want to find out how to separate the REAL conservatives (i.e. those intent on using the authority of the office that their running for to protect our liberties, not to limit them) from those merely claiming to be conservative to get votes? It is easy:

https://lneilsmith.org/whyguns.html

“Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician — or political philosophy — is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician — or political philosophy — can be put.

If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody’s permission, he’s a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude — toward your ownership and use of weapons — conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn’t trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

If he doesn’t want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend — the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights — do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil — like “Constitutionalist” — when you insist that he account for himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath, isn’t he unfit to hold office, and doesn’t he really belong in jail?

Sure, these are all leading questions. They’re the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician — or political philosophy — is really made of.

He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn’t have a gun — but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn’t you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school — or the military? Isn’t it an essentially European notion, anyway — Prussian, maybe — and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

Try it yourself: if a politician won’t trust you, why should you trust him? If he’s a man — and you’re not — what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If “he” happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she’s eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn’t want you to have?

On the other hand — or the other party — should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You don’t have to study every issue — health care, international trade — all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

And that’s why I’m accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.

But it isn’t true, is it?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.