Alabama’s Republicans need to get back to principles, House Speaker Mac McCutcheon (R-Monrovia) told the Madison County Young Republicans last week.
McCutcheon talked to the group about the importance of getting the vote out for the upcoming midterm elections.
“Our political system is getting to a point to where it’s almost upside down,” McCutcheon said. ” … Our incentives that we’re getting now is more about the dollar more than the principle of what we are as Republicans.
“We need you to get involved, especially when we talk about the young Republicans.”
The speaker blamed many of the current issues in local, state, and national politics on the amount of money being pushed by different political action committees.
“Now, we’ve got what I call these ghost PACs that are pumping money into our state, into state elections, from people that we don’t even know where some of that money is coming from,” he said. “And they’re picking out certain issues and certain things on candidates and they’re just hammering those candidate.
“Some of this information is not even true.”
McCutcheon also lamented the lower than usual voter turnout in the primaries this year.
“First of all you got to vote,” he said. “Our voting percentages were as low as 20-something percent in the primary election across this state. That’s a crying shame, it’s a crying shame.
“Please, find out who your representative is, find out who your senator is on that ballot, find out who these elected officials that are running for office, find out who these candidates are, find out and please, please get out and vote for them because that is the foundation of our democracy.”
The Alabama lawmaker, who is retiring from the House this year, said one thing he would like to see end is some of the divisiveness in the Republican party itself.
“By goodness, let’s stop trying to to beat each other up as Republicans,” he said. “Let’s work together. We may have 10 issues in Montgomery, maybe 10 issues that we’re working on and nine out of the 10 we may have passed and you liked all nine of those, but maybe there was one you liked that we couldn’t get passed. Then, all of a sudden, the next thing I know, somebody’s calling the Speaker of the House a RINO because he didn’t pass all 10. Well it doesn’t mean that I didn’t believe in it. … Because of the process, it just didn’t happen.”
“We need to learn to talk to each other. We need to learn to agree to disagree so that we can keep our party strong. We depend on each other and having a respect for each other so that we can move this party forward. Let’s quit fighting with each other and let’s join hands and let’s join arms and let’s stand up with each other and let’s make a difference.”
He also warned that other parties and movements will fill the gap if Republicans don’t unite and stand up against them.
“The opposite party, the opposing party, the Libertarian party, the Democratic party, they are gaining support,” he said. “Make no doubt about it … we’ve got a woke society out there, no support for law enforcement, everybody wanting to blame everything on racism, and we’ve got transgender issues that we’re dealing with … and these are some of the things we see moving in our society and they’re becoming very, very strong.
“You all we’ve got to stand up. We’ve got to stand up, we’ve got to make a stand, and we’ve got to stand for what we know and what we believe to be right.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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