The Darbi Boddy Playbook: Breaking free of the invisible fence that has always held back Republicans

I’ve always watched dogs confined behind an invisible fence and thought of them as Republicans. Why don’t the dogs just run through the zapper when they get near the parameter of the fence? There is no physical barrier to hold them back, just an emotional one set off by a little physical pain that they learn occurs by a wire buried under the ground that gives off a bit of pain when they get near it. When you first set up an invisible fence, you put little flags in the ground so the dogs know where the limits are. Then once they learn the limits, the flags can be removed, the dogs will stay behind their “invisible fence,” and the yard can look like an open space when really there are barriers only the dog knows about. In a liberal society, that is what Democrats call bipartisan relationships. That’s how it looks to the outside world. But really, the deal is that only Democrats get to run free across an open yard. Republicans get zapped if they get too close to the edge and dare cross a line. My advice to Republicans for over three decades is to ignore the silly zappers liberals have set up to contain Republicans. Put up with a bit of pain, ignore the signal of woke limits they have politically imposed on everyone, and just go beyond those barriers because they have nothing else in the playbook. Either the dog stops with the invisible fence, or they have nothing else. And when we say stop, we mean the little fears of pain and social castigation that Democrats apply with name-calling to keep Republicans behind their own version of an invisible fence. And after three decades of watching this ridiculous behavior, I am very proud to say that the first conservative politician I have ever seen prove this point is Darbi Boddy, the first-year school board member at Lakota schools. She has broken through their barrier and is loose, and all the liberals are lost as to what to do. 

Ultimately, that forced Matt Miller’s resignation, the very controversial superintendent of Lakota schools. Liberals expect to live a life of no accountability for their social life, and conservatives hope for accountability for everything. Those relationships just don’t go together. For many years, conservatives have been stuck behind an invisible fence of social parameters that Democrats controlled, and the relationship of free expression was clearly one-sided. It remained that way in national politics until President Trump came along and showed politicians that they could just step through that stupid invisible fence and there wasn’t anything that Democrats could do to convince everyone to stay within the barriers they created through social rules they controlled, the kinds of things you can say, the topics you could cover, the way things were communicated to the public. But with Trump, it was experience from show business that he brought with him into politics. With Darbi Boddy, a local school board member for Lakota schools, she has brought that same kind of effort to ground up politics, and the results are obvious. On Monday, the 23^rd of January, 2023, I saw one of the best school board meetings I’ve ever seen; there were plenty of community members and supporters of Darbi Boddy who voiced their opinions and did some really good, articulate work that showed the liberals of that progressive government school that the dogs had broken free of the liberal invisible fence, and were now just as free to roam around in society as Democrats always have been. Pay particular attention to the public comments around the 55-minute mark included on this article.

I would call what happened at Lakota schools the Darbi Boddy playbook. At the start of her term as a school board member, essentially the moment she was sworn in by my good friend, Senator George Lang, the radical progressives of Lakota schools, the kind of people who are always causing all the trouble, and making everything too expensive, tried to get rid of her.   In just four months on the job, the alignment of the school board, Matt Miller’s radicalism, and their media partners, the Michael Clarks and the Karin Johnsons, turned up the heat on that invisible fence to keep Darbi contained from investigating CRT in Lakota. And they pushed her hard to force a resignation. But Darbi kept plowing forward; she did not resign, she did not play by the liberal woke rules, and she stayed tough in the pocket under a lot of pressure. More pressure than most people could ever hope to handle. And the result has been a complete collapse of that liberal invisible fence network. And now that one Republican has survived it, others are seeing how to do it themselves, which led to a parade of protestors speaking in support of Darbi at the school board in front of a very messy crowd that isn’t used to people beating them with their liberal playbook. There were radicals there with t-shirts trying to inspire people to sign a petition online to remove Darbi from the board, and they were pretty vicious at the meeting away from the microphones. But essentially, they were like those owners of the dogs who yelled and screamed at the escaped animals hoping to terrify them into submission. Meanwhile, the freed dogs are just jumping around and playing like nothing in the world matters because now that they know they can escape the invisible fence, nothing in the world does. They are just as free to communicate as the radical Democrats who run all government schools. 

If this were indeed a debate over what’s good for kids or not, we might call all this effort “childish.” For instance, many who spoke against Darbi Boddy at that school board meeting want to convince themselves that the people who support Darbi are only 30% of the community. They want to believe that they are the ones in control and that there are more of them than Republicans who care about these matters. They keep saying to the escaped dogs, “let’s just get back to teaching the kids. Let’s get back to meetings where nobody shows up, and we just give out awards and happy stuff that makes education fun.” They really intend to get the dogs back behind the invisible fence with a treat or a dog toy; then they plan to turn up the zapper to keep anything like this from ever happening again, where they lose control. But the truth of the matter, and I’ve told this to Lynda O’Conner, the school board president at Lakota, many times, most people in the community support Darbi. They don’t like liberalism and are upset that Democrats have been running the public schools for years and are looking for something to rally their minds to the problem. And for them, Darbi is that person, that rally point they can believe in. They have watched her escape from the clutches of the invisible fence that Democrats have always controlled, and they now have someone to cheer on. And now more people are joining Darbi, which was on full display at the Lakota school board meeting. The best one I have seen yet after all these years. And now that Republicans can see from the Darbi Boddy playbook how to fight back against those invisible fences they are always confined to, maybe they can do some good work in the world as well.  And remember the most important thing, it’s not that we just say we are teaching kids that matters.  But it’s what we teach them.  If what we intend to teach is liberal behavior, then that’s a no go on all fronts. 

Rich Hoffman