Friday 29th March 2024

Home » Frontpage » Currently Reading:

Pro-Life Cause Cheered At Arizona Meet… But Is Sen. McCain Hiding Behind The Curtain?

February 7, 2017 Frontpage No Comments

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — It seemed plain that the pro-life cause was welcome at the Arizona Republican Party’s gathering here to elect its state leadership for the next two years, but whether John McCain was influential in calling the shots over choosing officers was a subject for dispute.
These days, pro-lifers are recognized as an essential element of the winning GOP coalition. However, some opinions differed on whether McCain has been marginalized in leadership politics or still played a strong role from behind the scenes in tailoring the top level of the Grand Canyon State’s GOP.
McCain knows how unpopular his “mavericky” ways have been with party committeemen here — who officially censured him in recent years for being untrue to the GOP’s platform principles. However, the Tea Party philosophy of activist conservatism never has been his cup of tea. Nor has a strong pro-life position.
State party chairman Robert Graham, retiring after two terms, noted to the assembled GOP committeemen at their January 28 meeting that new President Donald Trump issued an executive order cutting off taxpayer funding for international abortion groups. Graham admiringly exclaimed, “Man!” as committeemen applauded.
Getting to know Trump personally “has blessed my life,” Graham said.
Graham’s 13-year-daughter, Faith, who apparently has a bright future as a polished public speaker, had just told the audience why she likes Trump. One of her reasons was protecting “the life of the unborn.”
“There’s love and there’s humanity in Mr. Trump,” Robert Graham said, describing the determined billionaire as “a citizen servant leader.”
Arizona Fourth District Cong. Paul Gosar was cheered by the crowd when he mentioned the previous day’s March for Life in Washington, D.C. Gosar is a Catholic conservative and dentist.
Andy Biggs, the state’s new Fifth District conservative congressman, was applauded when he said, “I had the privilege yesterday to stand on that stage for the March for Life” in the nation’s capital.
Saying he had looked out at “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people” at the march, Biggs added, “I am grateful to be living in a pro-life America. God bless a pro-life America.”
The state’s most populous county, Maricopa, where Phoenix is county seat, elected its county Republican leadership two weeks earlier, on January 14.
The race for new state chairman came down to two men — Jonathan Lines, the state party’s treasurer, who foes said was McCain’s preferred candidate, and Jim O’Connor, whose campaign literature attacked “shadow control by the Establishment” and “the back room.” One of his handouts said, “Jim is the actual grassroots conservative, not an establishment pretender.”
Outside the meeting hall for this election, there were plentiful yard signs erected for Lines, but this writer didn’t see one for O’Connor.
The popular “Seeing Red AZ” conservative blog, which had declared O’Connor to be “the conservative candidate for Arizona GOP chairman,” was disappointed at Lines’ victory in the January 28 voting by state committeemen, winning narrowly, 596 to 562.
Headlining that this result means “more of the same” by the establishment, Seeing Red AZ wrote on January 29, “In a continuation of the establishment control of the Arizona Republican Party, Jonathan Lines follows in the footsteps of Robert Graham and his mentors John McCain and Jeff Flake.”
Flake, Arizona’s other U.S. senator, is pretty much an echo of McCain’s stands for open borders, the establishment, and distaste for Trump.
Graham, who often doesn’t sound like an echo of McCain, still seems careful not to get crossways with the state’s senior senator.
The blog added, “Although the well-qualified O’Connor was defeated, members of his team were victorious. (Gabriela) Saucedo Mercer was elected state GOP secretary and Robert Lettieri was elected party treasurer.”
Conservative Arizona political consultant Constantin Querard, sporting a Lines badge at the gathering, told The Wanderer that some conservatives are so used to getting into fights, they can’t be comfortable without one.
“The one major negative in the GOP race was the nonstop proliferation of ‘he’s a McCain guy’ lies,” Querard said. “Some in the party are so conditioned to the fight against Team McCain that they can’t comprehend a convention where there are no actual McCain candidates. As such, they readily buy into candidate A’s accusations that candidate B is the McCain guy.
“In truth, what we call the McCain folks are only important in races where conservatives divide their own vote and turn the McCain bloc into the swing vote,” he said. “It will probably be a few more years before conservatives realize that they’re dominant in Arizona GOP politics and that they can stop fighting shadows and ghosts.
“They have the numbers, they just need to learn how to govern. The best thing conservatives can do is to stop lying to each other about imaginary ‘McCain candidates’ as a tactic to literally scare up votes,” Querard said.
During the GOP meeting, it was announced that the Arizona Democratic Party had a smaller turnout as it held its own leadership election elsewhere the same day.
Querard commented: “It seems both the Democratic and Republican meetings featured hard-fought battles, but, as usual, Republican attendance was double the Democrats’, and the GOP came out of it with a better chairman.
“The Democrats re-elected the chairman who presided over their party’s 2016 losses and they can’t feel very good about their lack of quality statewide candidates. Republicans got a chairman who is capable of building on the party’s successes and taking advantage of the GOP’s deep bench,” he said.
However, Rob Haney, retired chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer that McCain’s influence was plain.
“Here are a few of the more salient points describing how McCain does significantly influence state committeemen,” Haney said, listing these bullet points:
— “It is common knowledge that McCain has spent much time and money in the past 15 years to depose conservative committeemen and replace them with liberals who would support him, as opposed to censure him;
— “One of his efforts was called ‘de-kookifying’ the Republican Party, during which one of his operatives described in the far-left Arizona Republic newspaper how liberals should contact her to learn how to replace conservative, kooky precinct committeemen;
— “The McCain-selected candidate for state chairman, Jonathan Lines, who was elected January 28, was recently pictured ensconced at a dinner table for four, with Senators McCain and Flake on each side of him. No self-respecting conservative would be caught dead at that table;
— “Arizona Congressmen (Matt) Salmon, Biggs, (Trent) Franks, and Gosar endorsed Lines for chairman, even though none of them lived in Lines’ congressional district. No congressman endorsed Lines’ opponent, Jim O’Connor. How’s that for influencing committeemen?”
(Although Salmon had been the Fifth District congressman, he stepped down last year, and Biggs was chosen in the November general election to replace him.)
— “The previous state chairman, Robert Graham, who also supported McCain, tried to have O’Connor and his District 23 committeemen disqualified from the election. It cost the district $20,000 in legal fees to fight the attempt;
— “Numerous articles have been published this past year in state blogs and papers detailing the influence McCain and his operatives have exercised over state committeemen who are also precinct committeemen.”
Moderate conservative Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also spoke to the January 28 committeemen’s meeting to celebrate how successful the GOP was in November’s elections.
Like former party chairman Graham, Ducey has seemed cautious about getting crossways against McCain.
Ducey added that he wanted to thank former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for making the state “a better and safer place to live.” Describing Arpaio as “a cop’s cop,” Ducey drew applause when he urged that people let Arpaio know “how grateful you are to his service to our state.”
The 84-year-old Arpaio was defeated last November in his bid for a seventh consecutive term as sheriff of Arizona’s most populous county. Arpaio had been hounded by biased federal Judge G. Murray Snow and Barack Obama’s Department of Justice, while the open-borders Arizona Republic, the state’s largest daily, amplified their assaults against the sheriff.
Although Ducey’s belated praise for Arpaio was nice, the Seeing Red AZ blog said, it would have been nicer “if he stepped forward with that warm endorsement before Election Day. We now have a George Soros-funded Democrat as Maricopa County sheriff.”
That sheriff, Paul Penzone, was the establishment choice to go soft on illegal immigration. The corrupt establishment burned with resentment for years against practicing Catholic Arpaio because of his opposition to lawbreaking border crossing.
Standing just outside the meeting hall, local pro-life activist Joe Perron told The Wanderer he was disappointed that Ducey didn’t mention the pro-life cause in his remarks, although Ducey is pro-life. “It’s got to be Number One on the list” of important causes, Perron said.

A Dangerous World

Two other interesting comments at the Republican committeemen’s meeting:
Arizona Cong. Martha McSally, whose Second Congressional District borders Mexico, said, “Those who live along the border are tired of the cartels” and the illicit movement through their areas.
As for the wider world and not only the border, McSally, a military veteran, said, “This is a very dangerous world, more than I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan said that during a five-hour window last November, a person could text a certain number to have a taxicab pick up his early ballot. “Not very good ballot security,” Reagan said.
An Arizona law had gone into effect against “ballot harvesting,” a person’s collection of multiple early ballots for unsecure delivery to a polling place, but that five-hour window of opportunity for liberals occurred as the fight to enforce the law went through the courts.
By coincidence, two days after the state committeemen’s meeting, a conservative writer who’d covered the March for Life in the nation’s capital was on the phone with Phoenix’s conservative Seth and Chris Show on KKNT Radio (960 AM).
The writer, Marjorie Jeffrey, expressed puzzlement that conservative, illegal-alien-troubled Arizona has mavericks McCain and Flake for its two U.S. senators.
Now there’s a story of political corruption she might want to look into.

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Abortion Advocates No Longer Consider It “A Necessary Evil,” They Celebrate Killing Babies

Last week, Kamala Harris became the first vice president in U.S. history to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. Though the Democratic party’s support for abortion is nothing new, Harris’ Planned Parenthood appearance does illustrate how that support has become a flagrant celebration of abortion as a public and personal good, essential to both “freedom” and to “healthcare.” At the appearance, Harris proclaimed,  It is only right and fair that people have access…Continue Reading

Wisconsin Supreme Court says Catholic charity group cannot claim religious tax exemption

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a major Catholic charity group’s activities were not “primarily” religious under state law, stripping the group of a key tax break and ordering it to pay into the state unemployment system. Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) last year argued that the state had improperly removed its designation as a religious organization.  The charity filed a lawsuit after the state said it did not qualify to be considered as an organization…Continue Reading

Walgreens and CVS Will Start Selling Abortion Pills That Kill Babies

The two largest pharmacies in America will start selling abortion pills this month that end the lives of unborn children by starting them to death. Walgreens and CVS will both sell the abortion pills despite the fact that they kill a developing human being and have killed at least dozens of women and injured tens of thousands more. They plan to initially roll out abortion drug sales in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, California…Continue Reading

Cardinal Burke announces novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’

VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — Raymond Cardinal Burke has announced the start of a global, nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, calling on Catholics to beseech Mary’s intercession on the Church and the world in the face of the “crises of our age.” In a new endeavour published online over the weekend, Cardinal Burke announced a novena beginning in March, and culminating on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

Texas attorney general targets Catholic nonprofit, alleges it facilitates illegal immigration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 21, 2024 / 21:15 pm Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down a Catholic nonprofit organization in El Paso based on allegations that the group may be facilitating illegal immigration, harboring immigrants who entered the country illegally, and engaging in human smuggling.  Paxton filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Annunciation House, which has operated in the state for nearly 50 years. The lawsuit asks the District Court of El Paso…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)