CONDOLENCES

Our condolences go out to former County Chairman Bill Dowd on the loss of his brother, Hector P. Dowd.

ROMNEY ENDORSES McCAIN

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will endorse Sen. John McCain today in his drive for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, according to reports on The Rush Limbaugh Show. It is also reported that Romney will release his delegates to support McCain so as to give the Arizona Senator enough votes to clinch the nomination.
No word yet on what effect this will have on reported efforts by the New Jersey Romney campaign to field a slate of delegates in the June primary, but it may be like the Japanese soldiers found years after World War II who were unaware that the war was over and they had lost.
Also no word yet on what effect, if any, this news will have on the Draft Joe Kyrillos for U. S. Senate movement. (UPDATE: Joe Kyrillos will not be running for the U. S. Senate. The Draft Kyrillos.com site has been taken down, although the blog is still up.)

WHAT IS THE GOVERNOR THINKING???

So what is up with the Bozo-coiffed Governor Jonathan Stevens Corzine? Why does he do the things he does? He's a Wall Street financial whiz, isn't he, who brought his sharp business acumen to Trenton to fix the mess that New Jersey is in, isn't he?

Not quite.

Under Corzine, New Jersey has lurched leftward, enacting many "progressive" policies while needed reforms go unaddressed and corruption goes unenforced. The governor is agenda driven.
His latest scheme, the so-called "asset monetization" plan, is nothing more than a plan to finance more left-wing policies. By radically increasing tolls, Corzine not only closes a deficit (See if it ever does close.), he funds all sorts of projects like embryonic stem cell research (Which, incidentally, was defeated by the voters.).

Probe With Steel

Why does Corzine propose so many things, only to withdraw them in the face of opposition? Does he have that bad of a tin ear? The answer may be found in a quote attributed to the Georgian statesman Ioseb Besarionis Jugashvili, better known as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: "Probe with steel. If you find mush, keep probing. If you find steel, back off."

In other words, see just how far you can go. The Governor is seeing just how far he can go. Take for example the arrests of former Atlantic County Freeholder Seth Grossman and former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. I think it's pretty much agreed by now that it originated in the Governor's office. Public reaction was the key. If there was public support for the arrests, i. e., if people saw Lonegan and Grossman as troublemakers, hooligans, you can bet that there would be more arrests. Since public reaction was negative, the Administration backed off.

Same holds true for the toll plan. Corzine throws out some extreme ideas like selling the highways to a private corporation or charging tolls on heretofore free highways, like Route 440. This serves two purposes. One is that if there's no opposition, he gets a new toll road in the state, with all the patronage that comes with, not to mention the possibility of future expansion to other routes like 287. If there is opposition, he takes it off the table, which he did. He still gains, because he has now shifted the debate from abolition of tolls altogether to limiting tolls to existing highways.

In closing, let's take one more look at his plans for the toll roads. The Governor plans to set up a non-profit corporation to administer the roads. This part of his proposal is cloaked in secrecy. Make no mistake, if you think the existing Turnpike Authority and its predecessors are loaded with waste, cronyism, rascallism and patronage, just you wait until Corzine's double-top-secret superauthority gets up and running. It will not be subject to the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), so it will operate in deep shadows. We all know what happens here in New Jersey when that happens.

What is to be done? Stay tuned, dear reader. Stay tuned.

!PUHARIC PUSHES KYRILLOS FOR U. S. SENATE!

Say what?

Chairman Adam Puharic is pushingMonmouth County State Sen. Joe Kyrillos for U. S. Senate, PolitickerNJ.com reports. Kyrillos would ostensibly be competing for the nomination against Anne Estabrook, "Jersey Joe" Pennacchio and Murray Sabrin, who are already in the race.
Puharic serves on Estabrook's exploratory committee; Estabrook is also from Monmouth County.
And this guy's not divisive?

Read the Draft Kyrillos Blog here.

THEN THERE WERE THREE

This just in:
It was just reported on the Rush Limbaugh Show that Willard Milton Romney has officially withdrawn from the Republican presidential race. This leaves John Sidney McCain III, Michael Dale Huckabee and Ronald Ernest Paul to compete for the nomination.
It is not certain at blog time what is to become of Romney's delegates, nor is it certain what Adam Puharic, Joe Kyrillos and the rest of the Monmouth County Romney people will do.

McCAIN!

Arizona Senator John McCain took all of New Jersey's 52 Republican National Convention delegates in yesterday's Superduper Tuesday Presidential Primary.


Although still short of the delegates needed to win the Presidential nomination, nationally McCain has opened up a lead over his nearest challenger, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, that some see as nearly insurmountable.


Nationally, McCain is seen as being backed by the moderate or "country club" Republican establishment, while Romney is backed by our party's conservative wing. It's more complicated than that, however, especially here in New Jersey. McCain, while not the most conservative in the Senate, is far from a liberal. And Romney, regarded as a moderate as Massachusetts governor, was criticized early in the campaign for apparent "flip - flops" on social issues. Indeed, here in Jersey, the establishment had been divided between candidates, with State G. O. P. Chairman Tom Wilson and former D. O. T. Commissioner and current lobbyist Hazel Gluck endorsing McCain, and State Sen. Joe Kyrillos (R - Monmouth) and Monmouth County G. O. P. Chairman Adam Puharic (A Kyrillos protege) backing McCain. Kyrillos served as New Jersey chairman for the Romney campaign; McCain's campaign was led by State Sen. Bill Baroni (R - Mercer).

Here in Monmouth County, McCain also carried the day. Kyrillos and Puharic just could not deliver the vote for Romney. In addition to McCain having powerful support from State Sen. Sean Kean and Assemblyman Dave Rible, among others, Puharic was criticized for allowing only the Romney campaign access to the County G. O. P. e-mail list. Too, the fact that former rogue blogger Alan Moretti, a/k/a Monmouth Rastaman, also ran a Romney support blog may have hurt the former Massachusetts governor here in Monmouth.

The next few months will reveal who gets our great party's nomination to fill the shoes of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan. Our party must come together behind its nominee, lest those big shoes go unfilled and the "vacancy" sign goes up outside the Lincoln Bedroom and the "do not disturb" sign goes up outside the Oval Office.

The next few months will also reveal whether Puharic is weakened by the Romney loss in Monmouth County.

SPEAKING OF APOLOGIES

The Trentonian ran a powerful editorial yesterday addressing the recent Democrat - led apology for slavery and that party's own sordid history in race relations.
Read it.