It’s not murky for me at all. Mike DeWine screwed up as governor of Ohio. He must go. He needs to be primaried, and the Republican brand in Ohio restored to honor before a general election where a Democrat will have to be defeated at the ballot box for control over our state. The behavior of Democrats in the House and Senate indicates that they have a plan. That plan is to exploit Ohio as the number one state in the category of corruption and to use that to implement their changes toward even more progressive agenda desires, which ironically has caused most of the problems so far. DeWine has been hiding his vast incompetence behind the Covid crises, like many in government have, and now it’s gotten Ohio Republicans in trouble, and that situation needs a fast solution. And one of the first Republicans to offer that solution and throw his hat in the ring has been Jim Renacci. I was happy to have a chance to talk to Jim Renacci a bit this past week one on one. It’s the first time I’ve had that chance since his run for Senate against Sherrod Brown a few years prior. Renacci has an exciting story which I touch on in the video above, and I had thought for a while, well before he announced that he would officially run for governor, that Jim would be suitable for it. His pitch is essentially to be the Ron DeSantis of Ohio, open up markets and opportunities, and bring to the state good management that is no-nonsense and productive. But more than anything, he wants to clean up the corruption and repair the Republican brand tainted by Mike DeWine and John Kasich, both progressives who opened the door to all this corruption, to begin with.
I thought Jim was joking when he told me that Ohio was the number one state out of all 50 states in corruption. That didn’t seem possible to me, but sure enough, I went home and looked it up, and that is the case as of 2021. When DeWine was running for governor, many Tea Party groups were already saying that DeWine would be a corrupt governor, but people were willing to give him a chance. As it turned out, they were right, and DeWine has essentially run as a Democrat most of the years that he’s been in office. To hide his many missteps, he has turned to Covid to rescue him as many blue-state governors have, and that was, of course, to conceal the underlying corruption. That is the obvious problem when a governor who is supposed to drive on the right side ends up on the left. A collision with oncoming traffic is inevitable, and that’s what happened with the FirstEnergy debacle in Ohio that Mike DeWine has his hands all over. The net result is that Democrats are currently planning to exploit these collisions and take seats in the House and Senate because of the corruption and capture the governor race with a damaged DeWine. So Democrats currently aren’t willing to make any deals with Republicans as they wait out the next election because they can smell the blood in the water.
I’ve said it before, House Speaker Larry Householder and other Republicans did wrong when they allowed FirstEnergy to pour a lot of money into the Republican Party. That allowed the FBI to make a bribery case out of the tragedy involving a few nuclear power plants being pushed to shut down. But things are not always the way they seem. FirstEnergy was fighting for its life as the Obama administration targeted traditional forms of energy such as coal and nuclear in favor of solar and wind. I found a few of those ridiculous wind power turbans in Greenville, Ohio, in the video above. I had seen them all over the United States this year, and it was insulting to see them in Ohio. A more significant push is going on that is far more corrupt than FirstEnergy trying to buy off politicians like Larry Householder for their survival. Jim Renacci understands that kind of corruption because he’s been a victim of it himself. He got into politics as a businessman who had lost his Chevy dealership by that same administration who tampered with the markets to create a change state at GM. The collapse of General Motors into bankruptcy meant that the government could help restructure them into producing eco-friendly cars, which is what they are presently doing. The bailout they received from the government was just as corrupt as anything FirstEnergy was involved in. The difference was that the Obama administration controlled the DOJ. And when Trump was president, the same radicals were still running the DOJ because he refused to act in such a corrupt way and call them out on their activism. So now the FBI, run by those prominent government activists, wants to destroy companies like FirstEnergy unless they embrace these new wind and solar Obama initiatives. They are picking winners and losers, which led to the corruption that eventually involved the many Republicans caught taking money from FirstEnergy so that they could keep their nuclear power plants open.
I would say that this kind of corruption is going on in all states, and all their legislators are involved in some way or another. But in Ohio, it’s a Trump state, and it has a target on its back for progressives that go way beyond reasonability. That means we have to take a stand with this governor race and clean things before the general election vote for governor takes place. Republicans have to take that step with a governor prospect that can rebuild the party behind an anti-corruption platform, and for me, Jim Renacci is just the right kind of guy for the job. President Trump likes Jim quite a lot, and a Jim Renacci ticket that is pro-business, anti-corruption, and knows how to stand up to progressive tricks is just the ticket for the current challenges. I’m against corruption of any kind. I don’t want my state tarnished with any corruption, let alone being number one in the entire country. That is just embarrassing. Not acceptable. So when Jim Renacci sat across the table from me and looked me straight in the eye and told me what he wanted to do with being the Ron DeSantis of Ohio, I was just a little encouraged. Ron DeSantis is the new gold standard for which all Republican governors should aspire, and if Renacci has that kind of scope for the governor job in mind, well, then that’s something I can get excited about. So far, other candidates haven’t announced themselves for the governor race, but I don’t think this is something we need to fool around with. Republicans need to understand the battle plan. We need to retake the House at the Federal level, and we need a leader to do that. We need to unite behind that cause and the people who can make that happen. And we have to repair the corruption problem left in DeWine’s wake. That will take someone like Renacci, who is dedicated to the cause, can get Trump behind the effort, and is willing to do the job in two steps, repairing the Republican Party, then defeating the Democrat challenger. It helps when you can talk to someone like Jim to see if they are up for such a big job, and based on my experience, he is.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 