NEWS FLASH: Hawaii’s Republican Party leaders are crying “foul” about the Hawaii Republican Assembly’s unbroken record of accurate predictions and truth-telling. In HRP’s spin control message to party members over the weekend (click HERE to see it), party chair Pat Saiki and national committeewoman Miriam Hellreich (seen here with fellow 'moderates' Aaron "Ling" Johanson and Beth Fukumoto) tried desperately to divert attention from their horrible record and the very inconvenient truth that a closet Democrat, named Aaron “Ling” Johanson -- whom they strongly supported throughout his years of failed leadership, right up until his surprise defection last week -- had been in charge of the party’s agenda and most of the elected Republicans at the State Capitol.
The sad diversion used by Saiki and Hellreich was to respond to a planted question from a make-believe Republican Party member. HRP leadership wrote the following:
"This organization [HIRA] is not associated with the Republican Party of Hawaii, and our leadership does not condone or support their communications which have been slanderous, false and misleading."
This red herring does have one small sliver of truth: HIRA, as an organization, is not an official arm of the Republican Party (we put this very forthright disclaimer on all of our media), but HIRA's members and its leadership are all card-carrying Republicans (some of whom even serve on the party's state committee). Most of all, HIRA members want conservatism back as the fundamental core in our party after years of failure as a 'liberal' or 'moderate' party which echoes the Democrats rather than giving voters a choice. That’s where Saiki's and Hellreich's truth ends and, as usual, the highly charged claim of “slanderous, false and misleading” is supported by no evidence.
To the contrary, the Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA)
is the very organization which successfully led the effort to “out” Johanson and pressure this RINO to just go away . . . and not merely any RINO, but the sitting faux Republican leader -- the top Republican-In-Name-Only -- who admitted he never really wanted to support and/or fight for the Republican agenda.
It is clear that the current leadership in the Hawaii Republican Party (HRP) has reached rock bottom due to willful ignorance, malice, weak leaders, cowardice, and greed among other things. They especially do not like HIRA talking about these self-destructive tendencies, and there are three main categories why:
- There are those in party leadership who are, frankly, careerists; whose sole interest is to advance themselves and make money off of “top-of-ticket” campaigns. If their poor performance is talked about, it “rocks the boat” and that could threaten their jobs. They do not like what HIRA says. See, people get upset if you lie about them; they truly get furious when you tell the truth about them, especially when they do not want you to know it.
- Then there is the Republican “establishment” crowd. These folks are the blind loyalists who support their “friends” regardless of the failures they cause. Most agree with what HIRA says; they just do not like that we are saying it and wish that we would not . . . well, because it’s their friends.
- Finally, there are 'the Sensitives' -- those who have no problem with what we say or that we say it, their disagreement is with how we say it. They say HIRA is mean-spirited, divisive, personally attacking. Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. It is unfortunate that so many have fallen victim to the weak politically correct trend in our culture; they resent plain forthright talk and there is far too little of this in our party today. If this damning evidence, and how it is spoken of, rings too harshly in the ears, then ask yourself this burning question: if the “reach across the aisle”, “bipartisan”, and other sissy-speak approaches have worked so well, then why do we continue to see Republicans falling away from the party and so many Republican candidates going down in flames?
HIRA challenges the failed establishment and its ever-diminishing cadre of loyalist supporters who allow the demise of the Hawaii Republican Party to continue, and believe us; they do not like being challenged one bit!
Since April, 2013, HIRA has been documenting the issues facing the HRP and forecasting the stunning failures that have come to pass. Here are some examples to refresh some memories:
April 2013 - Throwing in with Democrats rather than fighting them will have an unhappy outcome.
May 2013 - Running like liberals will cause Republican candidates to lose.
August 2013 - Selling out Republican principles to help Democrats elect Joe Souki and pass a fiscally irresponsible budget would not pay off for Hawaii Republicans.
August 2013 - An unhappy fate awaited HRP chair David Chang for being seen doing absolutely nothing in the face of the Democrat push for same-sex marriage: The weakened party chief was ousted a few months later and replaced a full year and a half before the 2014 election by RINO Pat Saiki.
March 2014 - HIRA warned HRP leaders not to ignore the fundamentals of building a successful party organization and urged them to replace the entire do-nothing leadership team with people who were ready to work.
March 2014 - HIRA warned against going up against the Democrats with a neutral platform of ideas -- standing for/against nothing in particular -- when the Democrats know what they stand for and have a sorry record to defend.
March 2014 - HIRA warned the party that having a committed liberal like Pat Saiki as party chair would lead to political disaster for the supposedly conservative party on election day.
March 2014 - HIRA warned Republicans that the party’s decision to be neutral on all issues by adopting a neutral party platform in an election year would harm us politically by failing to differentiate Republicans from Democrats.
May 2014 - HIRA warned that HRP’s continued financial mismanagement would lead to the party being flat-footed in organizing, messaging, voter identification, get out the vote efforts, and more in an election year.
May 2014 - HIRA warned that HRP’s state convention was a key indicator that the election would go poorly due to the decision to triple down on neutrality, silence and inaction such that voters would be unimpressed by our lack of resolve to deliver serious change and reform.
July 2014 - HIRA warned that the unanimous, ‘bipartisan’ vote by Republican legislators in the State House in favor of creating an Obamacare exchange (the “Hawaii Connector”) coupled with the lack of resolve to clean up this mess would rob local Republican candidates of one of the best campaign issues in a lifetime going into 2014.
For sure, this is not the namby-pamby milk toast pabulum that the current 'party leaders' feed to the masses. But it is the truth, and sometimes the truth is hard to take . . . especially when the egos of those responsible are at stake and the possibility of their liberal agendas risk being exposed. All of these problems need to be addressed, honestly assessed, and resolved. The first step is new party leadership. More to follow . . .
