| Former Reagan appointee and federal prosecutor, Gary Richardson, has watched his Republican leadership squander great opportunities and he decided he could not remain silent. In June, he did what no other Republican leader would step up to do. He mounted a 4-point challenge to the corruption of the legislature and governor. Richardson says the citizens are angry that their Republican politicians have failed the state and violated the constitutional rights of the people. We asked him to pen a concise response to the events over the past year. Here is his statement.
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| I have been a conservative all my life and a Republican since 1978**. My politics were shaped by the ideals of Ronald Reagan, so I never thought I would see the day when the GOP is leading the charge for massive and multiple tax hikes. Leaders (and I use that term loosely) at the State Capitol, both in the legislature and in the Governor’s office, are reconvening for a second week of special session to hammer out a budget they had four solid months to craft during the regular session. The failure to pass a budget, then and now, is disgraceful enough. But what’s even more disgraceful is that the debate between Republicans and Democrats is not about whether they should raise taxes. The conversation is about which taxes they should raise. How did it come to this? All roads lead back to an absence of genuine leadership. Republicans have lost the last three special elections in Oklahoma but that should not come as a surprise. Notice I didn’t say Democrats won these races. Republicans lost them. | "Republicans have failed |
| Despite all these problems I still remain overwhelmingly optimistic about Oklahoma’s future. All we need is the right leader determined to resist the Capitol culture and dedicate his service to the people rather than himself. Ships don’t sink because of the water around them. They sink when the water gets inside them. Self-serving politics work the same way. Nothing erodes trust like a broken promise. It’s time for state government to stop floating in circles and choose a clearly-defined direction. That begins with our own dedication to elect effective leaders who put into practice the politics they preach. The definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over then expecting different results. That’s why I am asking voters to dedicate themselves to new leadership by electing an outsider, Gary Richardson, to be the next Governor of Oklahoma. I’m not in this race to make Oklahoma great again. I’m in this race to make Oklahoma and the Republican Party greater than it has ever been. How? By actually leading with the principles of conservative government. Otherwise, if we continue doing what we’ve done, we will keep getting what we’ve gotten. Gary Richardson is a former U.S. Attorney and current Republican Candidate for Governor of Oklahoma |
Richardson is not alone in his disgust. Other candidates for elective offices are making the same expressions of outrage that the Republican elective officials are proving no more conservative than the Democrats of the 1980s. And perhaps they're even more morally compromised and ethically corrupted.
