And, while they are at it, voters might as well ask their House member: Who did you support in the speaker’s race, Kyle Hilbert or Tom Gann? And even more importantly, who will you support in November?

That look of terror in their eyes as they instantly recognize the implications of their answer?

It will tell you everything you need to know.

There is an old lesson that every wise observer of human nature eventually learns.

Those who live capriciously — guided by impulse, emotion, personal loyalty, social pressure, and the crisis of the moment — tend to drift from bad decision to bad decision. They move from project to project, relationship to relationship, cause to cause, never pausing long enough to develop the system of judgment necessary to learn from their past mistakes.

It’s a problem that’s only gotten worse in the era of social media as society now has a collective case of ADD.

The result is predictable. They do not live so much as they react. They spend their lives managing the fallout from their last bad decision while preparing, usually unknowingly, to make the next one.

The secret to avoiding this fate? It is a system. You must have a system.

A person who intends to live wisely must develop a set of criteria, refined over time, tested by experience, and applied consistently. The criteria do not make every decision easy. They do not remove every uncertainty. But they do give the decision-maker something more reliable than feelings, instinct, fear, or social pressure.

This same principle applies to elected officials.

A constitutionalist legislator who hopes to survive the Oklahoma Capitol without being swallowed by its corruption must have a system. He must have a checklist. He must have a standard that exists before the vote, not an excuse invented after the vote.

Did the bill grow government?

Did it create a new bureaucracy?

Did it increase regulation?

Did it raise fees?

Did it carve out another exemption from transparency laws?

Did it exempt an agency from shared-service protocols?

Did it spend money that should not have been spent?

Is it, in effect, a special law? Did it transfer wealth from taxpayers to a favored political interest?

If so, the answer should usually be simple: no.

A consistent decision-making process keeps a legislator grounded. It gives him something to point back to when lobbyists rage, bureaucrats whine, leadership threatens, and the Capitol’s professional excuse-makers begin their work.

Without that system, the legislator becomes easy prey.

He starts rationalizing. He starts explaining away. He starts convincing himself that the big-government vote was actually conservative, that the transparency exemption was harmless, that the corporate welfare giveaway was economic development, that the lobbyist-funded dinner was appropriate, and that the betrayal of principle was really just the hard work of governing.

At that point, the brain is broken.

And once the brain is broken, the Capitol has him. The assimilation is complete.

Most regular readers of this publication will understand this problem instantly. Many will ask the obvious question: Why can’t my legislator do this? Why can’t they govern according to clear criteria, published for all to see?

But there is another question that must be asked first.

Why can’t the voter?

The voter is the higher authority. The legislator works for the voter. The legislator is hired by the voter. The legislator is retained by the voter. The legislator is promoted, excused, rewarded, or replaced by the voter.

If legislators must apply clear standards to their votes, then voters must apply clear standards to their candidates.

Otherwise, the voter becomes the political equivalent of the aimless legislator: guided by feelings, personal relationships, name recognition, last-minute mail pieces, church friendships, chamber-of-commerce applause, and the intoxicating flattery of politicians who know exactly how to tell grassroots conservatives what they want to hear.

So the question is simple.

What are your criteria?

What will govern your vote?

And when the 2026 Republican primary arrives on June 16, will you source your candidates with the seriousness the moment requires, according to clear, defensible criteria? Or will you be guided by those other co-opting factors?

Regular readers do not need to be told that the foremost criterion should be the abstinence pledge: the raising of the standard, the refusal to take the lobbyist and special-interest money that has so thoroughly corrupted state government.

A first-time candidate may find it easy to say he will not take lobbyist money before it is offered. The real test comes after election, when the money arrives in force.

It comes in campaign contributions. It comes in independent support. It comes in fundraisers. It comes in invitations. It comes in relationships. It comes in food, drink, entertainment, access, and the Capitol-city lifestyle that slowly transforms a citizen-legislator into a creature of the system.

The candidate who signs the pledge and means it is making a sacrifice. He is giving up thousands of dollars for his campaign account. He is giving up the social circuit. He is giving up the easiest path to political survival.

That does not make him perfect.

But it does mean he understands the disease.

If a candidate is willing to refuse that money, he is at least attempting to be part of the solution. If he is unwilling to make that commitment, then he is asking voters to send him into a corrupt system while refusing to take the most basic precaution against being corrupted by it.

And voters do such candidates no favors by sending them into Oklahoma City unprotected.

But, for the first time, there are a double-digit number of candidates who are making this commitment. And all across Oklahoma, Republican primary voters will have opportunities to support candidates who are attempting to raise the standard. They should take those opportunities seriously.

If the candidate has already held legislative office, the voter has another advantage: a record.

The Oklahoma Constitution’s Conservative Index has long served as one of the state’s traditional measurements of legislative conservatism. OKGrassroots.com has developed another important scorecard, built through detailed review of legislation and judged through the lens of Republican platform principles. The Oklahoma State Capital’s People’s Audit provides another layer of scrutiny, reviewing 93 of the worst votes of the 2025 session and explaining why those votes mattered.

If an incumbent legislator scores poorly across these indices, the voter must take that seriously. If a statewide candidate previously served in the Legislature and compiled a poor record, as almost all of them have, the voter must take that seriously as well.

The great danger in politics is not ignorance. It is rationalization. The voter sees the record, knows the record, understands the record — and then excuses it because the candidate is friendly, familiar, well-connected, personally likable, or skilled at performing conservatism before grassroots audiences.

This is how bad politicians survive. The most dangerous politicians are the best at getting you to convince yourself to betray your own values, the very motivation for why you are sacrificing to become involved in the first place, even when you don’t know that’s what you are doing.

Those sleazy politicians do not survive because voters lack information. They survive because voters explain the information away. There are simply too many resources now available to let the politicians get away with the scam.

And when voters excuse the same betrayals they once condemned, they become part of the problem they claim to oppose.

For State House candidates, one other question should always be proffered:

Do you support the Gann plan?

The Gann plan would change everything.

It would transform the Oklahoma House of Representatives from a centralized power structure — where the real decisions are made behind closed doors, dominated by the politics of special interests and protected by the pretense of deliberation — into a more open institution where ideas must be heard, debated, voted on, and judged by the people.

Under the current model, too many members live in fear of the speaker’s power. They function less like representatives and more like utilitarian lemmings: show up, press the green button, avoid angering leadership, attend the lobbyist dinners, and leave the hard decisions to the few people operating behind closed doors.

That is not representative government.

That is managed government.

The Gann Plan would give members real responsibility again. It would return the budget process to the open. It would force legislators to own their votes. It would make the House more accountable to the people who created it and less obedient to the leadership structure that captured it.

The day the Gann Plan wins adoption will be the day the House begins its return to the people.

Until then, every House candidate should be asked where he stands.

If a candidate refuses to support meaningful reform, refuses to challenge centralized power, and refuses to restore transparency to the House, then voters should understand what that refusal means.

He may talk like a reformer; but, until he says that he supports the Gann Plan, he is protecting the system. And it’s a very corrupt system.

And, while they are at it, voters might as well ask their House member: Who did you support in the speaker’s race, Kyle Hilbert or Tom Gann? And even more importantly, who will you support in November?

That look of terror in their eyes as they instantly recognize the implications of their answer?

It will tell you everything you need to know.

Candidates should also be asked whether they support Jim Shaw’s Save Oklahoma plan.

The strength of that plan is its simplicity. It gives candidates a clear policy structure through which they can show whether they are actually willing to confront the green energy, international-corporation, corporate welfare machine, the bureaucratic class, the taxpayer-funded-lobbyist industry, and the other monied special interests that dominate state government.

The question is not whether a candidate can say “limited government.”

The question is whether the candidate will apply limited-government principles when the Chamber wants money for its green energy members who are destroying rural Oklahoma, when agencies want more power by means of taxpayer-funded lobbyists, when the turnpike authority decides to raise toll rates yet again, when foreign interests want to buy up farmland for the latest cyanide-treated black-market marijuana farm that destroys the lives of so many, or when statists want to force the identities of Oklahoma citizens into the REAL ID sharing system but refuse to require illegal aliens to have their identities verified, allowing the modern-day labor exploitation market to continue to thrive.

A candidate who cannot oppose corporate welfare in plain English now will certainly not oppose it in office after Election Day.

Every candidate should be asked another question:

Have you ever signed a nondisclosure agreement related to public policy, public spending, economic development, or government negotiations?

And will you pledge never to do so?

The NDA has become one of the most disturbing tools in modern Oklahoma government. It allows politicians to sign away transparency and then claim they cannot tell the people what is being done in the people’s name.

It is government secrecy by contract.

When a legislator does this, he surrenders. He has betrayed his constitutional oath to the people, and he is acknowledging a higher power than his constituency.

This abuse became especially visible during the era of corporate welfare on steroids, when state leaders negotiated massive incentive packages in secret, withheld the identity of potential recipients, and then rushed the public process once the deal was already functionally complete.

The pattern is now familiar.

The deal is developed behind closed doors.

The public is told almost nothing.

The Legislature is brought in late.

The pressure campaign begins.

The vote is rushed.

And by the time citizens understand what is happening, the decision has already been engineered.

A key example is the massive incentive package connected to the UAE-backed aluminum smelter project. As more Oklahomans began to understand the proposal and its implications, opposition began to grow. But by then, the process had already been largely shaped. The machinery was already moving, and introduced over the weekend, and up for a final vote in the House by a Tuesday, the public-facing vote was a mere show.

That is not transparency; it is not deliberation, and it is certainly not constitutional self-government befitting our republican system of governance.

It is rule by secrecy, wrapped in the language of economic development.

And any candidate who cannot say, clearly and without hesitation, that he will not participate in that system is not ready to represent the people.

All of this returns to you: the voter.

It is easy to blame the politicians. And much of the blame belongs there.

But politicians do not promote themselves. Voters hire them, and as the employer, you are the highest authority.

If voters keep rewarding the very people who built this corrupt system, the system will not change. It will become worse. The secrecy will deepen. The spending will grow. The corporate welfare deals will multiply. The lobbyists will become more powerful. The speaker’s office will become even more imperial.

You can never allow your vote to be denigrated into a mere social gesture.

It is not a favor.

It is not a reward for friendliness.

It is not an expression of who shook your hand, remembered your name, attended your event, or spoke convincingly at your Republican grassroots group’s meeting.

It is so much more than that.

It is an act of self-government.

It is the tool given to the citizen by the design of the American system and our founders, and preserved by the sacrifice of so many who came before us. To truly honor this sacrifice, your vote must be governed by reason, principle, evidence, and a clear standard.

So build your checklist.

Ask whether the candidate has signed the abstinence pledge.

Ask whether the candidate takes lobbyist or special-interest money.

Ask how the incumbent scored on the big three indices: The Conservative Index, the gold standard of Oklahoma conservatism since 1979; the incredible OKGrassroots.com Republican Platform index, so thorough and complete and the work product of many hours of dedicated volunteer labor; and The Oklahoma State Capital’s People’s Audit, nicely capturing the worst votes that lawmakers never expected to be held accountable for.

Ask whether the House candidate

Your Vote on June 16th Is Not a Favor. It Is an Act of Government. Are You Doing it Right?
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




April 28, 2026 at 05:24PM - J Murphey

As with all things good, when they start to catch on and when the grifters who make their money begin to realize the value of this proposition they want to get in on the action.

This election cycle is the breakout year for what is the real answer to the problem of a big state government that only gets bigger, more inefficient, and, frankly, more corrupt—even as we elect “small government” Republicans who campaign on the principles of Adam Smith and Ronald Reagan, only to deliver on the concepts of Keynes and Krugman.

That solution? Well, regular readers will know it well; it’s what I have commonly termed as the abstinence pledge. It’s the expectation that our elected officials will move into the 21st century in terms of ethics and apply the standard that applies to all professionals: that they will not take monetary benefit from those who depend on the decision-making ability of those who make the policy and take the money.

And as the state prepares to publish the official ballot, we can now say that, for the first time ever—for the very first time—there are a double-digit number of candidates making this commitment.

And for the very first time, ever, every Republican primary voter in the state will have the opportunity to vote for a candidate who has taken this commitment, as one of those candidates is at the very top of the ballot: Jake Merrick campaigns for the governor’s position with this as one of the foremost points of his platform, and due to that role, he has been able to go statewide promoting the concept and spreading the good news that the people of Oklahoma no longer have to settle for the status quo, for the legalized corruption, and for a system that has created so much cynicism in the general electorate, who have rightly concluded that most of their politicians are no better than crooks, leeches upon society, running a big grift, and the sleaziest of the sleazy.

When Jake Merrick asserts that he can run and hold office on a platform of refusing the obvious conflict of interest that the great majority of other candidates gaslight the public into believing is not a conflict of interest, he is restoring the people’s belief in a broken system—and in the idea that that system, maybe—just maybe—could be fixed.

And though Jake Merrick faces long odds—and even if he does not win—he has already been a historic pioneer. By going on stage time and again and spreading the good news about this concept to listeners who did not even know it was an option, he is giving that message for the first time and sending a signal of what is to come in the next few years: a new generation of candidates yet to raise the standard. Win or lose, just by accomplishing this, and putting the no lobbyist pledge on stage for all to see, he’s already laid claim to a historic first and an amazing legacy. It is a calling for him to be in this place at this time, spreading that word, letting people see the light, and showing that it is possible to realize a higher standard and to reform the broken system.

But that’s not all. For what I believe is the first time ever, the number of legislative candidates who have also made this commitment reaches into the double digits.

In some parts of the state, there will be ballots where voters, for the first time ever, will have the privilege of picking no-lobbyist-money candidates in no less than three distinct races, where a Senate candidate and a House candidate are joining Merrick in making the commitment to raise the standard.

But here’s where things start to take a bit of an interesting turn.

As with all things good, when they start to catch on and when the grifters who make their money begin to realize the value of this proposition they want to get in on the action.

This isn’t a bad thing, in that it shows the great value of this commitment, and that even those who make their living playing the corrupt political game recognize the intrinsic value of once again being able to inspire people back to a mindset where they can believe again—that their vote has value, that they really can make a difference, and that not all politicians are corrupt.

But of course, those of us who have advanced this concept as the leading tool by which the people can reclaim their government from the legalized corruption that dominates it today must do what we can to protect the integrity of our valuable proposition. For those who would abuse the trust of the people—who would inspire them to once again believe that they can make a difference, and then, subsequent to that, betray that trust—will do far more harm than those who just tell the same old lie: that “it doesn’t make a difference when I take the lobbyist money because it won’t affect me.”

In the future years, we will no doubt be challenged to specialize and finally craft the tools, the means, and the methods by which we protect the integrity of the commitment. More on that to come; but in the short run, it’s important to explain and expose the scam by which those who would seek to draft on the commitment, without actually making the sacrifice that’s required to really reject that special interest influence, are perpetrating. To understand how to defeat this particularly devious scam, we must first understand the scam.

It works like this.

A consultant advises the candidate that they should take the no-lobbyist pledge. However, the consultant subsequently explains that after the election, that candidate can quickly form their re-election committee for the next time, and the re-election committee will be able to take the dirty money.

Of course, this defeats the whole purpose. Few lobbyists are going to contribute to a new candidate who is competing in either an open seat or challenging a co-opted incumbent. For the most part, lobbyists are going to stay out of that fight, wait to see who the winner is, and then forever pledge their support to that winner, immediately hedging their bets and then, once they have corrupted the newly elected office holder, keep them as the new co-opted incumbent in office for as long as that incumbent keeps doing their bidding.

For a first-time candidate, refusing lobbyist money is hardly a sacrifice. Done right—by informing and inspiring voters—it will deliver a five-to-ten-point boost, creating a major advantage with virtually no downside, since their lobbyist support was never significant to begin with.

Should they win, however, the commitment becomes far more significant. A candidate who has pledged to refuse lobbyist money must then follow through when it begins to arrive in two forms: first, tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds—money that can be used for personal “officeholder” expenses, and to deter future challengers; and second, the steady stream of perks—fine dining, entertainment, and social access at Oklahoma City’s most exclusive venues—where professional relationships with lobbyists quickly evolve into personal ones, and with them, a level of influence that shapes that legislator’s actions and best explains the many, many betrayals of our values.

So, those candidates who have been advised by their consultant to take the pledge and then subsequently, as soon as the day after the election, to in effect betray that pledge do much more harm to the integrity of the system than those who just straight-up admit to the fact that they will be taking the lobbyist money.

No, the real abstinence commitment isn’t that the candidate will refrain from taking money prior to election day, when the lobbyists aren’t going to give it anyway, but rather that throughout the next term of office, at no point will they take either the campaign contributions or the personal gifts, and thus they will be immune from the number one co-opting influence of officeholders: money. Thus, by making this commitment, they are making it clear that in a world of legalized corruption, they will not be corrupt, and the standards that apply to just about every other profession—that the decision-maker does not take monetary influence from those who depend on that decision-maker for their livelihood—are applied in this most important of arenas: the public trust.

So when you are approached and solicited by a no-lobbyist candidate, it’s important to ask the questions that determine if this candidate is a part of the new scam to take advantage of the trust of the voters.

Will the candidate agree to refrain from all lobbyist largess throughout the entirety of their next term of office?

If they can’t make this commitment, then this candidate has either knowingly or unknowingly become a part of the new, great scam to take advantage of the greatest tool that we have for returning our government back to the conservative values of the people and to a world where legalized corruption no longer thrives.

The true and actual commitment requires that the candidate make the commitment to refuse all lobbyist political contributions from both the lobbyists and the principals—in other words, the employers of the lobbyist—for the entire term during which that person holds office, whether or not the person is running for reelection and has a new committee.

To make any other commitment aside from this is simply to draft on and scam the very best hopes and beliefs of the voters.

Secondly, we’ve now reached the point where there are those who have made the commitment in the past to refuse this money, and they have no doubt inspired the voters and inspired a new belief within them. But now those office holders are under tremendous pressure to give up the exceptionalism, to take the easy path, and to give in to the temptation to take that dirty money. They see so many other politicians taking the money, and they can’t help but give in to the pressure.

When one makes this bad choice, it’s truly heartbreaking. But we must come to terms with the fact that these types of betrayals are sure to happen, and when they do, the grassroots who dedicate their time and energy to these various candidates are well advised to place that time and energy with the other candidates for office—that ever-growing number of candidates for office that are still intent on keeping this very special commitment.

Those who would support the candidates for office who have betrayed the pledge, and help them get re-elected, perhaps because of personal loyalty or relationship or because they are unable to come to terms with the betrayal, are propagating the same corrupt system that will never end so long as we the people allow the big grift to continue.

There are now plenty of other no-lobbyist-money candidates now that desperately need the support and the energy of the grassroots.

So with very rare exception, my best advice to those who want to make a difference with their time and money is to find and identify the no-lobbyist-money candidates and then get on board and build a relationship, and ensure that not only does that candidate win on election day, but they know that as long as they keep their commitment and as long as they vote in accordance with constitutional principles, your support will always be there for them, and they will never have to get scared, get fearful, and give in to the temptation.

This is how we take our government back.

Help spread this important message; share it with your personal network. And, if you have yet to subscribe, don’t miss the opportunity to get your free or paid subscription, and support this work. We are just getting started.

The No-Lobbyist Money Movement Hits Critical Mass
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




April 18, 2026 at 11:13AM - J Murphey

Brian Hill had a problem. As a newly announced candidate for lieutenant governor, the Mustang House member had set out on the obligatory “Gaslight the Grassroots” road tour to convince Oklahoma’s burgeoning Republican grassroots crowd that he, Hill, was really a “conservative.”

As Hill concluded his presentations to what is perhaps Oklahoma’s most dynamic grassroots group, the Logan County 2nd Amendment Association and Logan County GOP, his gaslighting endeavors were almost immediately exposed with one question: “Can you explain your 43 score on the 2023 Conservative Index?”

As Hill stumbled through his answer, attempting to excuse his poor performance on the gold standard—since 1979—of exposing the dark art by which Oklahoma legislators pretend to be conservative at election time but govern as liberals, he had become the latest victim of a grassroots savvy that has exposed the duplicity of so many special-interests-co-opted legislators turned statewide candidates.

These are politicians who believed they were skillful enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the patriotic grassroots—voters who, desperate to save their nation, the greatest in the history of the world, are eager for heroes and are wanting to trust those who claim to understand American principle and thought.

Time and again, these ambitious legislators, now seeking higher office but handicapped by the fact that they have governed as institutionalists, who have long been funded by and done the bidding of those who are using the power of government to cash out to their personal benefit, have been exposed by the grassroots gauntlet.

Put simply, the grassroots are becoming ever more sophisticated, and with the advent of a free and open X following Elon Musk’s purchase, and any number of tools such as The Conservative Index, have had the power to expose just about all of them, starting with gubernatorial hopeful Charles McCall, whose support has fallen back as wise Republican voters have become aware of his legislative record.

There has been, in fact, just one very noticeable exception: a termed-out legislator whose liberalism was repeatedly and frequently documented by The Conservative Index, who averaged a 57 score, firmly in official RINO territory, in his last nine years of officeholding.

It’s a cautionary tale, as this lawmaker held one of the best scores, a 90, in his first three years; but, unfortunately, this is what made him so dangerous: he never lost the ability to talk conservative and to make conservatives believe he shared their values. But after those first three years, his scores tell a very different story. By 2017, his first year in leadership, as he advocated for tax increase after tax increase, his score plummeted to a 10—an all-time low that, until then, would have been inconceivable for a Republican legislator.

In fact, his scores are lower than Hill’s—the fellow establishment lawmaker whose low score was highlighted at the Logan County meeting.

During the last nine years of the legislator’s tenure, I would challenge anyone to point to a time when the House Republicans did what they did best—betraying the conservative, free-market principles of Bastiat’s The Law, or the special law principle in Crockett’s Not Yours to Give—and when this legislator could be found on the right side of the vote.

Put simply, the system had changed him, and he’s very different than when he was a new House member, as so often happens to most of those who play the game. But, because he never lost the talent for talking the talk, his ability to make all of those betrayals go away—well, that’s all pure politician skill, a clear inability to feel shame, like almost no one in the modern history of the state has possessed; it’s an amazing study.

It’s the same statewide candidate who has filled his campaign coffers with the generous donations of the whos who of the lobbyist scene, and the liberal scions who led the transformation of the House to its modern-day configuration of institutionalist domination, to include liberal former legislators Carol Bush, Marcus McEntire, and the great purger of legislative conservatives himself, who some may say is Oklahoma’s modern-day answer to Gene Stipe, Chris Kannady, while still expecting, and worse, receiving, the very public support of far too many grassroots conservatives.

And it’s the legislator who didn’t just, time and time again, vote for both the tax increases and the biggest corporate welfare giveaways in the history of the state, in the era of Corporate Welfare on Steroids, but who, as majority floor leader, ran the floor, facilitating the process by which all of this happened in the least transparent of ways, moving from concept introduction to final approval in the tightest of windows of public purview—an abuse that Tom Coburn took to the State Capitol to rightly express his dismay at and liken to the corruption of Washington, D.C.

As he now campaigns for statewide office, his mailer portrays the scope and scale of this incredible willingness to gaslight, as he purports to have “stood with Trump when it mattered most.” While, in fact, this politician was in very public opposition to Trump when it mattered most: as the Biden Justice Department and the radical left sought to bankrupt Trump and put him in jail, establishment Republicans recruited Ron DeSantis to stage the coup that would move the party past Trump. This legislator? Well, he became the highest-ranking Oklahoma legislator to sign on with the effort, in a public endorsement of DeSantis. Today, he rewrites that history with seemingly no sense of shame.

And, as the era of social justice peaked, this liberal legislator was there for it, voting time and again to diminish our values, including the notorious HB 1835—perhaps the Democrats’ greatest wishlist item of choice—aligning counseling standards with woke national groups, an unconstitutional restriction on free speech that would have allowed the state to take away the licenses of Christian counselors who sought to save the lives and souls of innocent children whose corruption is the obsession of the woke left, something one would expect in the atheistic Soviet Union, but never in the United States—and HB 3088, another Democrat initiative, the implicit bias training mandate, designed to force Oklahoma’s health professionals to be trained on their “implicit bias.”

And in 2020, as the Democrat establishment conspired on making a joke of the election system, it was this legislator who voted for the Democrat effort to more than double the notary cap on mail-in ballots, HB 3317, that analysts have rightly attributed to be the Democrats’ foremost tool for election fraud.

From the proposal that appeared set to enable FedCoin, to the proposal to allow legislators to stay in office for 20 years instead of the current limit of 12, to the $3.8 million waste of taxpayer dollars to study turning every Oklahoma road into a toll road—tracking and taxing Oklahomans for every mile they drive—to his repeated authoritative performance on KWTV, where, as a guest panelist throughout the COVID era, he repeatedly instructed viewers to “wear their mask,” an authoritarian order that this writer gleefully refused, with extreme prejudice, now, as I review what I affectionately call the “insane votes” document, I have found this legislator to be not only on the wrong side of history, having only scratched the surface of the betrayals in this article, but to have demonstrated a judgment so bad as to disqualify him for the future support of any thoughtful conservative who has the intellectual honesty to care about principle and to put that principle above personal relations—because, at the end of the day, that’s the only skill which will allow one to withstand the advances of this incredibly savvy politician.

For to fail in this task—well, it’s to become the victim of that previously mentioned verb, and to find oneself in a state of having been “echoled.”

If you’ve been “echoled,” don’t feel bad. You are far from the only victim of Oklahoma’s most savvy politician. But now, you know the truth. The question is, do you have the courage to recognize it?

Because if not, one can certainly make the case that no consistent moral standard remains by which future legislators can even begin to be held responsible.

If you’ve found this update insightful, there’s much more like this coming. You don’t want to miss it. If you’ve yet to subscribe to weekly updates, sent directly to your email, you may do so at OklahomaStateCapital.com.

Introducing Oklahoma's Most Shameless Politician
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




April 9, 2026 at 11:39PM - J Murphey