Posted on 04/27/2012 6:57:39 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
April 27, 2012
I deal on a regular daily basis with self-identified conservatives all across America who are addicted to the Republican Party. And when it comes to the impending nomination by their party of the most liberal governor in U.S. history, Mitt Romney, their reactions are overwhelmingly in line with the classic symptoms described below. We can't make them face reality, of course. All we can do is to keep pointing it out to them, in the sincere hope that they will recover in time to help save the country.
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From Wikipedia :
Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. The subject may use:
The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. The theory of denial was first researched seriously by Anna Freud. She classified denial as a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality. Where denial occurs in mature minds, it is most often associated with death, dying and rape.
In this form of denial, someone avoids a fact by lying. This lying can take the form of an outright falsehood (commission), leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission), or by falsely agreeing to something (assent, also referred to as "yessing" behavior). Someone who is in denial of fact is typically using lies to avoid facts they think may be painful to themselves or others.
This form of denial involves avoiding personal responsibility by:
Someone using denial of responsibility is usually attempting to avoid potential harm or pain by shifting attention away from themselves.
For example: Troy breaks up with his girlfriend because he is unable to control his anger, and then blames her for everything that ever happened.
Denial of impact involves a person's avoiding thinking about or understanding the harms of his or her behavior has caused to self or others, i.e. denial of the consequences. Doing this enables that person to avoid feeling a sense of guilt and it can prevent him or her from developing remorse or empathy for others. Denial of impact reduces or eliminates a sense of pain or harm from poor decisions.
This type of denial is best discussed by looking at the concept of state dependent learning. People using this type of denial will avoid pain and harm by stating they were in a different state of awareness (such as alcohol or drug intoxication or on occasion mental health related). This type of denial often overlaps with denial of responsibility.
Many who use this type of denial will say things such as, "it just happened". Denial of cycle is where a person avoids looking at their decisions leading up to an event or does not consider their pattern of decision making and how harmful behavior is repeated. The pain and harm being avoided by this type of denial is more of the effort needed to change the focus from a singular event to looking at preceding events. It can also serve as a way to blame or justify behavior (see above).
This can be a difficult concept for many people to identify with in themselves, but is a major barrier to changing hurtful behaviors. Denial of denial involves thoughts, actions and behaviors which bolster confidence that nothing needs to be changed in one's personal behavior. This form of denial typically overlaps with all of the other forms of denial, but involves more self-delusion. Denial at this level can have significant consequences both personally and at a societal level.
Harassment covers a wide range of offensive behaviour. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing.
DARVO is an acronym to describe a common strategy of abusers: Deny the abuse, then Attack the victim for attempting to make them accountable for their offense, thereby Reversing Victim and Offender.
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd writes:
...I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower's credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. [...] [T]he offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. [...] The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.
Furthermore, while trimming the genoa on the Cyrano I learned that one does not often get where one is going on one tack. If we take the House and Senate, Romney's feet will be held sufficiently to the fire, IMO.
What other reason could there be for someone posing as a conservative to support the Massachusetts mushball, pro-abort, family institution destroying, socialized medicine enthusing, serial lying, utterly coreless, global warming flunky, tax hiking (on ordinary folks only to shift the burden from his spoiled and privileged Wall Street financiers) etc. Romney is a useless POS who will not only wreck this country but also leave it without even an opposition party to bipartisan Obamunism.
What or whom do you suggest as an alternative to Romney for removing Obama from office? A brokered convention? I am open to suggestion. We are living in a strange time: the death throes of the Republican Party. It's ugly, but we have not yet figured out how to replace it without abandoning the field to the Democrats, which I greatly fear a Third party candidate would do, as Perot did to GHWB .
Politic means dealing with ambiguity. If you wish to have a political party in which everyone agrees with you, permit me to suggest a European venue for your political activities.
Right-wing Democrats (by way of being Conservative) don’t exist anymore. The media considers those to be Marxist instead of Stalinist Democrats. Post-Watergate, you could count them on 1 hand those serving in Congress. Now, if you mean by voters, that’s a bit more complicated, but for those who chose to bitterly-cling to a Marxist Party, their votes betrayed any claims to Conservatism.
As for my relatives, the one most prominent politically in my family during the Depression, my grandmother, was a Democrat, but VERY left-wing, and her diatribes helped to make me a Conservative. She hated Conservatives/Republicans so much that she denied her cousin, a very popular GOP Mayor of St. Louis, was anything but a Democrat (which would’ve been news to him, running prominently against the FDR ticket in 1932 for the U.S. Senate).
Me holier than thou ? I’m just one who has been chin deep in politics since I was knee high to a june bug and learned a lot more than most would want or care to know. I’ve seen the whole spectrum. The unadultered, ugly corruption and pure evilness of the Democrat Party, and the stupidity and gutless weaselry of the GOP.
As for Reagan Democrats, those folks become Republicans 20-30 years ago. If they’re still voting Democrat, as I said above, they’re not Conservative.
I do not expect everyone in a given party to agree on every single issue, but there has to be some basic agreements on key issues. If you have candidates who are antithetical to those points (or claiming to be for them while their records betray them), you’ve got a big problem. I’m fairly good with picking out “problem” people who end up leaving a given office in far worse shape than going in. In other words, a big ass RINO detector (or more to the point, an anti-Conservative “R” detector). Now while about 99.99999% of Democrats set off the radar, I can also sense Democrat Trojan Horses, and it seems to be more and more of those running for the higher offices, a frightening prospect.
It’s your business whom you vote for in November. But I’ve spent far too much time and have too much of a sense of conscience and ethics to support the Trojan Horses that manage not only to slip behind the walls, but earn the full-fledged support of people who ought to know better. Either these folks have been lying to us all along, or they are willfully stupid, and neither speaks well for the party. If that’s the case, we need a full-scale purge of the problem people, or perhaps just a new party altogether. It’s not written in stone that the GOP is to remain a party for perpetuity anymore than it was for the Whigs, the Know-Nothings, the Federalists, the Greenbackers, the Nullifiers or the Monster Raving Loonies.
To your last point, I have been asked to run for office, but health limitations make that an exceptionally difficult prospect. I also live in a heavily Democrat locale (Nashville hasn’t really been two party since the 1850s, when it was a Cotton Whig stronghold, and the GOP never took hold beyond a few unusual occasions, and hasn’t elected a GOP Congressman since two Democrats split the vote in 1872 when U.S. Grant was running for reelection). My district is also a rotten borough (illegals galore) and a VRA-protected one (for a Black State Senator based out of downtown who ignores all but ‘Holder’s Peeps’). I have pretty much spent my political life knowing what it’s like to be perpetually UN-represented.
I’m betting your young ‘un didn’t get the baptism by fire, politically-speaking, that I did.
I do not attempt to speak for our august Black Elk, but for me, your speaking to tolerance of political “ambiguity” seems to encompass being tolerant of outright lying. My basic benchmark for a person seeking to hold office is that they don’t lie to me. Most Democrats lie. Zero is a liar. Willard is a liar, and a pathological one at that. I’ve followed Willard for 18 years since his candidacy for the Senate enough to know him quite well. If he ends up officially receiving the nomination, the GOP will have accomplished something absolutely remarkable... they will have nominated someone even worse than the Democrat incumbent. You’d have to go back to James Blaine in 1884 to find such a scenario. Unfortunately, Zero is no Grover Cleveland.
Seriously, if I were canvassing for Slick Willard, how could I tell anyone he was honest and trustworthy ? He’s not. If he doesn’t have that, how can you persuade a fence-sitter or any Conservative to go his way when the incumbent is no different ? Willard’s deceitfulness will get the entire party painted with his sins. Look at all the good Conservatives and Republicans who lost in 1974 because they were punished for Nixon ? We can’t allow that to happen.
Obozo is a despicable Marxist anti-American, baby-killing, marriage destroying, gun grabbing, medicine socializing, global "warming" hallucinating and taxing, tax raising (on ordinary folks), elitist, envirowhacko, leftist judge nominating, etc., Catholic and other church persecuting nether end of the digestive tract of the McGovernite revolutionaries who run the Demonrat Party.
That makes Obozo, in effect, little different from Robamney UNLESS you are a member of the trust fund class which I and most here emphatically am (are) not. Robamney gives conservatives absolutely nothing and even refuses to credibly pay his customary lying lip service to conservative values on those (non-social) issues where the gullible might believe him.
The clincher is that Robamney is the gravest nominated enemy of the Republican Party and of conservatism who dares to purchase (there is absolutely no reason other than mountains of money that funded his lies) ever to be nominated. He makes such feckless idiots as Herbert Hoover, James G. Blaine, and Gerald Ford look like giants of the GOP. It never appeared that any of those three imbeciles ever hated the GOP as such. Robamney does.
History is not at stake permanently in each election. The future holds unrevealed history which we cannot see clearly in advance. We see through the proverbial glass darkly. We must act on the evidence we have. Obozo is NOT superman just because we hate his abysmal Marxist guts. Don't kid yourself. ANYONE named Romney holds views greatly similar to Obozo. Elect Romney and he will demonstrate his grasp of the power of money to guarantee via jobs and contracts his ability to ruin the GOP and control its image, its policies and its destiny far into the future.
You want to vote for evil? Feel free. That will be between you and God when the time comes. Conservatives will give you every assistance and opportunity to repent at leisure. The Two Party System, in its present degenerate condition be da*ned unless the GOP can do a LOT better than to nominate an absolute ideological treason weasel like Robamney and with him let us also dispose of the Robamney sell-out alikes who hold so many GOP Senate seats and House leadership positions.
It may well be that the Citizens United was correct and that it allows greater freedom. I have my doubts. If Citizens United was correct, the next step, as amply proved in this year's primary contests is that it must be a conservative principle that ANY mushball like Robamney who tries to buy the GOP nomination in the future by the same despicable tactics of media carpetbombing he used this year must be beaten for his anti-conservative behavior AND for his disgusting use of money to slander and libel all actual conservatives and Republicans in the field. Make the rejection of any such candidate and tactics in both the primaries and the general election as automatic as the rejection of Ron Paul's McGovernite/Paulistinian foreign policy.
Anyone with REAL ANTIPATHY to Robamney will not vote for him. The alternative for each and every actual conservative is to lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. The alternative to Romney is defeating Romney and his fifth columnists in the GOP.
Your problem and that of those who agree with you is that you sooooo understandably hate Obama that you have lost all perspective and are willing to destroy the GOP and the nation itself in order to get at Obozo. Better you should heed St. Thomas More's sage advice to the twerp Richard White about what will happen after White has destroyed the law to protect against it shielding Satan and to facilitate his hunting down Satan and then asks what White will do when, freed of any legal restraint, Satan turns on Richard White unobstructed.
My alternative? First, an obsession with defeating Obozo is no longer on the table so long as Robamney stands to be elected in such an event. Second, whether or not Robamney is elected, destroying him and his control of the GOP and his cadre of wealthy benefactors comes next. In whatever opportunity may arise this year (by brokered convention or any other means), support any reasonably conservative Republican as once the conservative movement supported for sixteen years and ultimately elected Ronaldus Maximus in two national triumphant landslides.
Let me remind you that when the movement got its way and stomped the mushball elitists, Ronaldus Maximus lost only Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island and West Virginia in 1980 and only Minnesota in 1984. That means that Reagan TWICE took such states as Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois. Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and another 30 states. Reagan did that as a hard core conservative and humiliated any remaining moderates much less liberals. Then, with GHWB, we returned to wimpy, cowering BUSINESS uber alles (and insane proposals for a "New World Order") as usual.
Next, I would have supported anyone running this year OTHER than Robamney, Huntsman or Paul and, at one time or another, I did depending upon who was Robamney's strongest opponent of the week. I voted for Santorum in the Illinois primary and regarded him as the best candidate available as well. The same tactics that were used by Robamney were also employed by comparative mushball and slave of leadership Adam Kinzinger in defeating my Congressman. It was the usual formula: mountains of corrupt money to spread non-stop lies and slanders against Don Manzullo. I shall neither forgive nor forget this year's despicable campaigns of Robamney and Kinzinger. Kinzinger's grass-roots Tea Party opposition candidate in the next GOP primary (2014) is organizing as we post.
As to POTUS candidates for the future or in a brokered convention (not very likely such a convention), give me Sarah Palin. She ran for governor because she was offended by the bipartisan corporate corruption in the oil and gas businesses in Alasks, defeated Lisa Murkowski's utterly corrupt daddykins Frank Murkowski who was the incumbent and, in fact, drove him into THIRD place in the primary. Sarah left Frank Murkowski's bloody mangled political corpse in the gutter where it belonged. I want her to do the same honors on Romneyites and the other Demonrats and particularly to the corrupt money people on both sides of the aisle. I don't care if she runs as a Republican or as a flat-Earther or as the 1950s Rock 'n' Roller or as a candidate of the Amelia Earhart Party or on the Mama Grizzly Party. In this era, she is the goods until anyone better comes along. She also knows how to ride as a last minute passenger on the back of a Harley in Rolling Thunder (while Romney munches watercress sandwiches), is the ultimate candidate to have over to your house for a barbeque or for dinner, and unlike trash like Robamney has a full range of actual PRINCIPLES. What a concept. Name Scott Walker of Wisconsin as VP or run him if she won't run. Marco Rubio dispatched Charlie Lavender Crist and that is a great recommendation in itself AND he KNOWS why his parents came here from Cuba and he can eloquently explain it and how much that family loves this country and why. Assuming that he defeats elitist LGov Dewhurst in the Texas Senate primary, we should look at Ted Cruz who also has Cuban refugee ancestry and is apparently the single best insurgent this year. Indiana's next governor, Mike Pence, ought to be considered. I could name more but only at the expense of the most important tactic for 2016: The conservative movement MUST be reconstituted and must accept the discipline of its trustworthy leaders in the selection, no later than 9/2015, of ONE AND ONLY ONE candidate for POTUS and wage absolute WAR on that candidate's behalf and against the genuinely evil Wall Street greedheads who have caused the disaster of 2012. Rule or ruin now and forever
"While trimming the genoa on the Cyrano" must have a meaning but it escapes me unless you are referencing a type of sail (a genoa) and one of Bill Buckley's boats (the Cyrano) and a tactic (tacking such a sail) to sail into the wind. My wife gets the credit for that potential translation other than the Cyrano. I was certainly acquainted with Bill but not because of his yachting hobby. Care to elucidate?
Oh, that must be verrrry good stuff you smoke if you think that most of the sorry SOBs in the GOP Senate caucus will resist Robamney at all.
The direct hell bent for leather approach to politics will NOT work among the perfumed and powdered limp wrists of Europe eager as they are to try any fantasy at all to preserve their beloved atheism and socialism and baby-killing and lavender coddling. Maggie Thatcher was the last leader in Europe willing to wear the pants. If you find Robamney even vaguely supportable, no matter the excuse, YOU should go to Europe: See David Cameron of the formerly Great Britain. Ambiguity is a false god.
Finally, you concede that we are witnessing the ugly death throes of the GOP but you insist on holding onto the rear deck railings on the GOP Titanic, after it is broken in half and after the forward half has sunk and as the vertical rear portion has begun to sink straight into the Atlantic. There are lifeboats and not all are full and the ocean water is below 40 degrees and not survivable by swimming or even treading water. Truly remarkable and all because of what amounts to Obama derangement syndrome.
Strike up the band: Nearer My God to Thee.....
Romney voters are like the loyalists of the revolution.
you: take out Romney and then do something about Obama when is should be:
Me: take out the biggest danger to America in the modern age, OBAMA, then, take on Romney. It's so simple, no need to write 40 paragraphs to make a point.
Why not elect Romney in a landslide so he has a mandate....a mandate of repealing Obamacare in the republican platform....and push for conservatives down ballot...then we have congress pushing for repeal of Obamacare and if and when Romney pushes back against us we start our search for a Palin to run against him in a 2016 primary as a true conservative? Then the true conservative that beats Romney has a conservative congress in place to fight the good fight.
I like your idea, I think it would help our side. And since it’s state by state I’d love to see PA and Michigan do it and Texas not do it. In fact thinking about it PA and Michigan Republicans are giant fools for not doing it immediately. I guess it’s one of those things that makes too much obvious sense for them to even think of it.
I meant Clinton would have lost in 96 if the only thing you were factoring in was 1994. Unfortunately for us stuff happened inbetween 94 and 96....Newt stuff and Clinton "triangulating". And Perot preventing the race from being close.
BTW whether in 94 if the election was then or 96 I don't see how the candidate would have been anyone but Dole. It was his "turn". We have a long tradition of usually giving the nomination to the runner up from the last open seat that is unfortunately continuing this year.
Phil: in Oct. 2004, I used the 2002 election results to predict that, in IL, Kerry would win 57% of the vote. A month later, I was correct
Close but Kerry got 55% (54.82% to be exact) in Illinois not 57%.
Believe me I hope you're right cause that means Obama is losing big time, more than here I hope you are right about Ohio cause winning Ohio is almost a guarantee of winning the election. Last time they voted for a loser was 1960 and Kennedy stole that election so you really have to go back to 1944 when loser Dewey won Ohio but lost.
I can't allow myself to be that optimistic. I expect Obum will lose but narrowly.
He’s not going to win and he’s not a conservative.
Deal with those facts.
Interesting thought but we really don't have a historical example of that. The Senate is more of an island (look at 1982 bad loss of House seats but essentially broke even in the Senate and in 1970 the GOP gained Senate seats cause we were "due" big time after 1964 and 1958) but having the White House almost always means losing House seats in the midterm. When the President's party has gained House seats it has been slightly.
The elections were that has happened in modern times are 2002, 1998, and 1934. And toss in 1962 when the House went from 437 back down to 435 and I think it was -2 dem but plus zero GOP and the rats gained in the Senate that year.
All of them had in common one thing, the President was very popular at the time. Bush in 2002 was popular (also we had favorable redistricting), Clinton during impeachment with the media telling everyone how great the economy was and how "it's just sex" was popular, Kennedy in 1962 was popular (and I have to think the rats had favorable redistricting with their vast state leg control, the map in Cali was a disaster that gave us 1/3 of the seats on half the vote). There were no Presidential approval rating polls in 1934 but it's safe to assume FDR was popular and the GOP was still hated and reeling.
We were due in 94 and liberals were disliked but anger at Clinton was the #1 motivating factor, without it could we really have won? What if Bush had another read my lips style blunder? Would Kerry have been popular in 2006? I don't think rats were due in 2006, maybe we could have had a 1998 type of "tie" but I really can't see the rats winning majorities without the Bush hate. Maybe Kerry would have been just as hurt by Katrina.
And in 2010 could we have benefited from the hatred of the rat congress if we had RINO McCain at the helm? What if McCain was working with them to pass watered down versions of the crap that Obama eventually passed? Would the tea party still have arisen? Maybe we could have gained in the House cause there was little room to go down after 06 and 08 but a big gain or gaining (and holding) all those Senate seats? I don't know. Maybe if McCain had pulled a sideways Truman and espoused strong Conservative values and vetoed everything but this is McCain we're talking about. Maybe if he died a year in and Palin took over.
If those midterms had gone as you propose it would have been unprecedented. If Obama loses I hope 2014 will break the usual mold. Lots of tasty Senate seats up, we should gain there even if Romney is in and isn't popular.
2 of the last 4 midterms have seen the president’s party gain seats, so I don’t think that the old “rule” applies anymore. And I refuse to build a congressional strategy predicated on allowing the Democrats to win the presidency.
Hey you know I want Obama to lose no matter what, and voted McCain to keep him out in the first place.
Don’t mistake my love for historical speculation. I can’t imagine ever WANTING the democrat to win the White House cause of the judges alone. But after Obama did win it was nice getting the ball back and creating the opportunity to actually get some small positive change going in the next 4 years.
I really think that President being popular thing is the deciding factor. I don’t see how McCain could have been with the crap economy. We were screwed one way or the other in 2008. Shillery would probably be leading McCain right now if she could avoid creepy old lady hair.
I can’t really see those former blue dog seats reverting under any scenario but I hope Glove and Boner don’t mess up as bad as Bush and Hastert so we won’t have democrat Congresses to worry about in the near future.
I’ve always wondered about Blaine, don’t know that much about him just that democrats said he was super corrupt.
What’s the 411, why was Grover to be preferred?
It was a question not a statement.....how does “deal with those facts” help the discussion? You argue like a liberal.
It is simple all right. You are simply wrong. When I lived in Connecticut, a group of actual conservatives including me drove Lowell Weicker from the Senate in favor of Joe Lieberman. I have never regretted it. That the CT GOP never took advantage of the fact that it would take only one more election to elect a deserving conservative to the US Senate seat, does not change the fact that, if Weicker stayed in office, it would take two elections (one to defeat him in a primary while losing the general and one more to nominate and elect a conservative). Now is the time to absolutely punish Romney’s despicable behavior in BUYING the GOP nomination without a single positive advertisement while carpet-bombing the airwaves with lies, slanders and libels. There needs to be an actual Republican Party to be a vehicle for freedom and morality in our politics. If any old corrupt leftist POS like Robamney and labeled R and backed by even worse elements is good enough for you, then we part company. It will be good for both of us to know who our respective enemies are. If 40 paragraphs are too much heavy lifting for you and give you migraines, find some hobby less challenging than politics: polo, tiddlywinks, horseshoes, yacht races, portfolio tending? That is the simple truth in one paragraph. Now take your paranoid obsessions with Obozo and say goodbye to the nice people.
1. Enacted pwrsectution of the Catholic Church into law under Robamneycare? Check.
2. Gun grabber? Check
3. Tax hiker? Check.
4. Nominated nothing but leftists (mostly registered Demonrats) to the Taxachusetts courts? Check.
5. Enthusiastically supported and implemented rump-ranging and other perversions while calling same "marriage." Check.
6. Had no problem with envirowhackoism? Check.
7. Fled office with a 35% approval rating? Check.
8. Global warming believer and wannabe taxer? Check.
9. Elitist idiot? Check.
10. Displays every bit as much contempt for ordinary folks as any other Democrat, making him nothing more than a Demonrat in GOP drag. Check.
11. A Demonrat, whether Obozo or Robamney WILL be elected this fall so that issue is already foreclosed. If you want a congressional strategy or intend to have one, it will most certainly be predicated upon the reality of a Demonratic presidency, whether Obozo or Robamney. The difference will be Robamney using the vast resources of the US Government, its money, its contracts, its bank deposits, its powers to PREVENT any improvement in GOP CONSERVATIVE ranks in Congress. Robamney is nothing more than a very thinly disguised Elitist Trojan Horse. Ask the folks at Troy how that worked out for them. Beware of Robamney bearing gifts!
There was a Protestant minister who introduced him at a New York City Republican fundraiser who, on that occasion, described the Democrat Party as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." That was of course a none too subtle expression of anti-Catholic bigotry and specifically anti-Irish bigotry. It took the GOP nearly a century to put that behind them along with the Massachusetts GOP equivalent that greeted Irish immigrants on the docks at Southie (South Boston): "Jobs available: No Irish need apply."
I don't know anything about money corruption of the conventional sort (see Robamney for an example) that may have touched or defined Blaine. I'll leave that to others.
Grover Cleveland was a champion of small government. He may have been the last POTUS to actually use the Tenth Amendment regularly in vetoing any Congressional enactment (and there were many) that he viewed as not being characterized as among the specific powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution itself. He was a hard money man who was the opposite of William Jennings Bryan in that respect. You may say that he was a champion of "the flag, the Bible and no damn taxes." To this day, Grover Cleveland is responsible for the fiscal conservatism of French Canadians in the New England states for reasons that are not clear to me.
When Benjamin Harrison defeated Cleveland in 1888 after Cleveland's first term, Senator Harrison famously went to the office of his campaign manager (Matt Quay) on the morning after the election and said: "Matt, thank God, we have won." Quay replied: "Harrison, God had nothing to do with it. We bought every vote you got." Cleveland never bought votes, not even with taxpayers' money. Four years later, his honesty and frugality were missed and Cleveland was again elected to the White House for his second and final term.
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