AZ GOP Brand? What Brand?

If this primary election season demonstrates one thing, it’s the wanton disregard of the Arizona Republican Party brand. Five out of six gubernatorial candidates are far off the Republican Party platform reservation, and so are many, many other so-called “Republican” candidates for public office.It is not that the Republican brand has been tried and failed. For many, it’s never been tried.That’s especially true for some of our highest-ranking elected officials, such as U.S. Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake and current candidate for governor Scott Smith. What they’re talking about, and the way they legislate, is currently motivated by self interest -- in no way consistent with the written word of the Republican brand.It’s not a recent phenomenon. It stretches back for quite some time.If you just listen to elected officials and candidates for public office speak, you’d think being Republican is a 360-degree range, including views from pro-life to pro-abortion, from pro-family to redefinition of the family, from big government to limited government. You quickly hear situational ethics by candidates, promises and yarns spun just to get elected -- detached by miles and miles from the GOP national platform.The 2012 Republican Platform preamble begins as "a statement of who we are and what we believe as a Party and our vision for a stronger and freer America."Sen. McCain blazes a John McCain trail unlinked to much of what the GOP platform states. He has spent thousands of dollars to remove platform-aligned Republicans from his pathway. They are an impediment to the arbitrary and unwritten "McCain Platform." He fights conservatives much harder than he fights radical Democrats, much harder than he fought against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Sen. Flake is his hand-picked puppet, now in the tank for the radical homosexual agenda. Retired Sen. Jon Kyl is his first lieutenant. McCain seldom shows his face at AZ GOP events, but make no mistake he is pulling the strings from behind the curtain, through his surrogates.Do you hear many Arizona candidates heeding this from the party platform?

This platform affirms that America has always been a place of grand dreams and even grander realities; and so it will be again, if we return government to its proper role, making it smaller and smarter. If we restructure government’s most important domestic programs to avoid their fiscal collapse. If we keep taxation, litigation, and regulation to a minimum. If we celebrate success, entrepreneurship, and innovation. If we lift up the middle class. If we hand over to the next generation a legacy of growth and prosperity, rather than entitlements and indebtedness.

Scott Smith, the entire Mesa City Council, and numerous Republican legislators, like Bob Worsley and Jeff Dial, and numerous city councilmen and women are champions of big government.State Sen. Michele Reagan is a virtual Planned Parenthood activist and also a friend of the homosexual agenda.Smith and former Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman are in the tank for the radical homosexual agenda, supporting policies that ensnare Christians trying to freely live out their faith and their consciences. The platform calls for preserving and protecting traditional marriage and family -- not undermining it.It's clear that Sen. Worsley, McCain, Smith, Hallman and others establish their own personal brand as they go, bending every which way but Republican. It's just helpful to tack on the Republican identifier to fool some voters at election time.The GOP platform speaks of reforming government to serve the people. Many Republicans in Arizona are drafting policies to make people serve government. They love spending other people's money, and they are very, very good at it. For those leaders offended by this admonishment, the platform includes a phrase about "protecting the people's money." That means safeguarding the hard-earned dollars of the people you serve, not gulping up their money to dream up non-essential ways to burn through it.It is not only the elect who stray from GOP branding; it's many of the citizens, too. Few bond elections, raising your taxes, ever lose. And over-rides extend the taxes that the wise elected so often under-estimated the original costs. It's time to learn the value of a dollar, the public's dollar.Arizona Republicans are too often lacking in principle. Governor Jan Brewer opposed Obamacare at first, then caved in and said let's grab that money -- the taxpayers' money. The platform talks of repealing Obamacare.The platform discussed building great schools. Our Republican education superintendent of public instruction, John Huppenthal, abandoned his conservative roots and took us down the road of Big Government Common Core "education" and now claims he didn't do such a thing. Common Core's brand is so trashed the name has been changed in Arizona in an attempt to cover its true identity.The Republican Party says it values the sanctity of human life. Our de facto state Republican leader, Sen. McCain, is in favor of cheapening life to the point of supporting destructive embryonic stem cell research. He speaks the leftist talk of choice.The platform is conservative to the core, but the political director guiding Doug Ducey, one of those candidates for governor, trashed conservatives. Among the other GOP candidates for governor, Christine Jones praised Hillary Clinton to the hilt, Ken Bennett is pro-life but bashed a bill aimed at strengthening religious freedom, Frank Riggs did the same and his time as a California congressman wasn't quite as conservative as he wants us to believe. Only Andrew Thomas resonates as a true conservative, despite an outrageous judge taking him down for exposing county corruption during his time as Maricopa County attorney.Sen. Worsley says he needed to run in 2012 because his district was divided over harsh rhetoric. This from a man calling conservatives "extremists" and "haters" and labeling Arizona "a police state." That's hypocrisy at its finest.As you cast your ballots for the primary election, again in the November general election, and in future elections, the following list of brand violaters should prove helpful:Sen. John McCainSen. Jeff FlakeGov. Jan Brewer (term limited out)State Sen. Bob WorsleyState Sen. Steve PierceState Rep. Doug ColemanState Sen. Jeff DialState Sen. Michele Reagan (Secretary of State candidate)State Rep. Heather CarterState Rep. Frank PrattState Rep. T.J. ShopeState Rep. Bob RobsonState Sen. Adam DriggsState Sen. Steve PierceState Rep. Ethan OrrCongressional Candidate Andy TobinFormer Tempe Mayor Hugh HallmanFormer Mesa Mayor Scott SmithArizona Corporation Commission candidate Lucy MasonFormer elected officials/candidates Susan Bitter-Smith, Betsy Bayless, Carol Springer, Carolyn Allen, Randall Gnant, Steve Huffman, Pete Hershberger, Slade Mead (now officially a Democrat for all to see), Steve May, Linda Binder, Sue Gerard, Jane Hull, Fife Symington, Toni Hellon, Mike Hellon, Carol Somers, Jim Kolbe, Kris Mayes, Bill Konopnicki, Neil Giuliano