OPINION: On David Ralston (RIP) and Politics

Sub­mit­ted by George McClel­lan

Sad­ly, Amer­i­ca’s longest serv­ing Speak­er of any state house, David Ral­ston, my friend and my 7th Dis­trict assem­bly­man from Blue Ridge, Ga., just died caused by some health issue he saw com­ing. Speak­er Ral­ston announced a week ago he would not seek a return to the speak­er­ship for rea­son of health and it caught up with him yes­ter­day, Nov 16, 2022, age 68, far too young for my likes. Love him, like him or hate him, David, a staunch Repub­li­can was a cen­tral char­ac­ter in keep­ing Geor­gia’s Repub­li­can Par­ty rel­e­vant par­tic­u­lar­ly his stance against mail in bal­lots he saw as a dan­ger to Repub­li­can can­di­dates espe­cial­ly as nation­wide, the Demo­c­rat Par­ty is sus­pect­ed of win­ning elec­tions by mail-in bal­lot fraud. He was no fool!

Polit­i­cal­ly, it is an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­na that most vot­ers in Geor­gia basi­cal­ly remain unaware of what tran­spires under the gold dome of Geor­gia’s capi­tol unless they see a spe­cif­ic need to be there to make their posi­tion known on some bill or anoth­er. Most often, bills pre­sent­ed by politi­cians that meet both the Gov­er­nor and the Speak­ers approval will pass thru com­mit­tee to the whole Assem­bly for a vote. If he approves, it invari­ably will pass. Thats the pow­er of the Speak­er of Geor­gias Assem­bly. Assem­bly­men who buck the Speak­er and do so pub­licly, quick­ly find them­selves with­out a com­mit­tee, their dis­trict basi­cal­ly with­out a rep­re­sen­ta­tive and look­ing for­ward to a long and bor­ing career rarely if ever inter­rupt­ed by pro­mo­tion.

Theres anoth­er weak­ness here because vot­ers tend to let their politi­cians do every­thing, secure in the belief that what will pass is good for the state or their area of the state. David rec­og­nized that and opined once when, I was in atten­dance, that until vot­ers decide to take their duty and respon­si­bil­i­ties in a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment seri­ous­ly the nation will con­tin­ue down the road to Com­mu­nism with the loss of lib­er­ty and free­dom that comes with it. Geor­gias TEA Par­ty a few years ago exer­cised enough influ­ence to keep the polit­i­cal ship on a straight course. I do not dis­par­age David Ral­ston with that com­ment. If he saw storm clouds on the hori­zon, he bent with it. He was a lawyer and politi­cian after all and saw the rea­son in todays Amer­i­ca why Democ­rats are able to manip­u­late elec­tions so eas­i­ly in Red states. Its because Repub­li­cans fool­ish­ly agreed to change elec­tion laws that allowed Democ­rats to con­trol receipt of the bal­lots, the Covid 19 pan­dem­ic being the urgent excuse. Joseph Stal­in once said he did­nt care who vot­ed or how, but who count­ed the bal­lots. Like Stal­in, the Democ­rats dis­cov­ered that the vot­ers wer­ent impor­tant, the bal­lots were. Con­trol of the bal­lot process, whether bal­lot har­vest­ing, absen­tee or mail in bal­lots so long as they have the bal­lot count­ing devices they can win most elec­tions. That con­trol includes the hack­able soft­ware used on elec­tron­ic machines. It was Geor­gia’s Sec­re­tary of State Raf­fensperg­er, who stu­pid­ly per­mit­ted the Democ­rats to take con­trol of bal­lot count­ing con­trary to Geor­gias polit­i­cal leg­isla­tive process. Quite ille­gal but it hap­pened! This recent mid-term elec­tion, espe­cial­ly in Cal­i­for­nia and Ari­zona, are still count­ing bal­lots as I write.

It would seem fair­ly con­clu­sive that Democ­rats in some juris­dic­tions still have their thumb on the scale so we end up see­ing spikes going up and down basi­cal­ly as a show to reflect vot­er count­ing nor­mal­i­ty. Democ­rats claim elec­tion deniers are racists except when they lose and claim some Repub­li­can skull­dug­gery afoot. Its shock­ing lis­ten­ing to fraud deniers claim spikes are per­fect­ly nor­mal. Count­ing votes is sim­ply a mat­ter of adding and sub­tract­ing and most states got theirs done overnight. Not Ari­zona or Cal­i­for­nia and maybe one or two oth­ers. It is no won­der that peo­ple are com­ing to fear the out­come of elec­tions, espe­cial­ly when a stroke vic­tim in a Blue State wins over an edu­cat­ed med­ical doc­tor, or when a geri­atric for­mer Sen­a­tor and fail­ure as a politi­cian, who nev­er left his base­ment cam­paign­ing, wins the pres­i­den­cy over the most suc­cess­ful non-politi­cian Pres­i­dent who ever came forth to save his coun­try.

David Ral­ston will be missed but at least he sur­vived the recent elec­tion. I won­der how he vot­ed? Last elec­tion my mom and dad both vot­ed Demo­c­rat. They nev­er did that when they were alive.

Remem­ber, free­dom is the goal, the Con­sti­tu­tion is the way. Now, go get em! (17Nov22)