By Ted McCarron -
Former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh (R) had long been an icon in the conservative movement but his meteoric decline in the last few years has both disappointed and infuriated nearly all of his staunchest supporters. I was not only a strong supporter of Joe but to this day I still consider him and his wife personal friends of mine. For a long time I've been biting my tongue about the changes he's made in the last few years but after his recent article slamming Rush Limbaugh in the liberal left-wing leaning Time Magazine I felt that I could no longer be silent.
I first met Joe about 10 years ago at a tea party meeting. I was extremely impressed with him and when I learned about his stellar conservative voting record I became an instant supporter of his. When it came to being an actual conservative he told me "I'm the real deal," and he was. His record in Congress was conservative on pretty much every issue and when I say conservative, I mean perfect. He absolutely never strayed from principle, unlike so many other Republican congressmen that voted like Democrats about half the time. He consistently was the only Illinois Republican congressman to vote against funding Obamacare and he fought like a tiger against it. He broke a record in Congress for having more town hall meetings in a year than any other congressman. The tea party group that I'm on the board of invited him more than once to be a public guest speaker at our meetings and his annual get together parties were legendary.
Every June we would meet at his house where about 600 conservatives would gather to enjoy food, fireworks, a DJ, sometimes a bonfire and of course the speeches from Joe himself that we all were longing to hear. I worked feverishly for his re-election campaign and remember standing next to him the night of his disappointing loss when he got the bad news that Obama had won re-election as well. That election night in 2012 I was the very last person to walk out with him, helping him carry some of his signs out the door as he exited. We were both in a depressed mood, but I could see a fire in his eyes that he wanted to salvage something from the ashes, and he did.
Soon after his failed re-election attempt he became a syndicated conservative talk show host and launched "Walsh Freedom," his movement to promote conservative candidates. Besides his legendary parties he would also start drives to distribute literature for good candidates and do other things to help them as well.
Although Joe was a Ron Paul supporter, he did support Trump in the early years of his presidency as did the vast majority of his supporters. In fact at Walsh's annual parties at least one partygoer could be seen waving a Trump flag. Then about two or three years ago something changed. He saw Trump on TV dismissing FBI allegations about Russian collusion and Russian campaign interference in the 2016 presidential election. Joe was so extremely put off by this that he instantly became a Trump foe. He felt that Trump was disrespecting those who are watching out for our national security.
From then on all he could do was slam and bash Donald Trump. He ignored the duplicity of James Comey and promoted the later discredited Russia collusion story as if it were gospel truth. All of this eventually led to his decision to run against Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries.f
I was uncomfortable with the way that Joe was increasingly latching onto Democrat talking points but nevertheless saw this is a possible opportunity to support a more conservative candidate than Trump. I kept rooting for Joe and supporting him, hoping that he would push the theme that Trump was less conservative than him. I wanted Joe to talk more about his perfect record in opposing funding for Obamacare and Planned Parenthood and compare that to Trump consistently signing budget bills that funded those monstrosities.
There were many examples of Joe's record being much more conservative than Trump's, but Joe didn't want to talk about those things. All he ever talked about was Russia, Russia, Russia as well as a few other Democrat talking points. Joe's supporters began falling away like autumn leaves in a windstorm but I still stubbornly defended him on social media, pointing out his much more conservative voting record and comparing it to Trump's semi-liberal legacy. Soon friends of mine began privately complaining to me about Walsh and my support of him but I still stood by him, hoping that something for the conservative cause could be promoted out of it.
The point where I realized that it was hopeless was after Joe withdrew from the primary due to having almost no support and then publicly supported Joe Biden for president. I pleaded with him not to do that and to at least support a Libertarian or other third-party candidate instead that represented our values. But he said that he needed to vote for Biden because he was "the only one who could beat Trump."
But why did that matter? Was beating Trump all that matter to Joe? What about the conservative agenda? By any logical standard Trump was much more conservative than Biden. Why on Earth would a good conservative promoting conservative beliefs and values support a left-wing liberal over a much more conservative president? That's when I realized that the conservative agenda no longer mattered to Walsh. His vendetta against and dislike of Trump was all that mattered, conservatism be damned. He accused Trump of lying on more than once and when I examined what he was talking about I found out that Trump indeed had lied on more than one occasion.
But if that was so important to Joe, then why would he vote for a liar like Biden? Biden publicly claimed that he graduated at the top of his class with three degrees when in fact he only had one degree and graduated near the bottom. He plagiarized not only other people speeches but an important college paper as well. There are countless other examples of him lying but Walsh ignored those and voted for him anyway. Clearly Joe does not really care about a candidate's honesty or he never would have voted for Biden.
As Joe proclaimed his support for Biden he increasingly talked more and more like a left-wing liberal on social media and on his radio show. In the Time Magazine article he said that Rush Limbaugh "pushed the false narrative that Joe Biden and his supporters stole the election from Trump" and he referred to that belief as "the stolen election lie." Yet when it came to his own election in 2010 against Melissa Bean, he accused her campaign of fraudulently getting votes for her and said that even wanted to write a book about it. Clearly he's familiar with Democrat election fraud and to claim it happened to him in 2010 but did not exist in 2020 is ludicrous. Although he himself had been a hardcore conservative skeptic of global warming theories he now complained that Rush Limbaugh "rejected the scientific consensus on climate change." That must be the same "scientific consensus" that he himself once denied.
Despite my disappointment and disillusionment with Joe Walsh none of this exonerates hardcore Trump fans who might be tempted to say "I told you so!" Many of them have rightfully claimed that Joe is leaning way too far to the left now but they never complained once about Donald Trump's many left-wing actions. Their only real complaint about him is that he opposed Donald Trump. If he had been a complete left-wing liberal applauding Donald Trump they would still support him.
I have long contended that both hardcore Trump fans as well as diehard "never Trump" conservatives have both betrayed the conservative cause. The Trump fans make excuses for and justify every left-wing action of Donald Trump and the Never Trumpers will go as far as to support Democrats like Biden just due to their hatred of Trump. Only a small minority of us conservatives are conservative first and then evaluate Donald Trump secondly based on conservative principles. This is a real shame and a big part of the reason our national debt is so high.
I hope in the future in Illinois another Joe Walsh comes along who remains permanently like the Joe Walsh of 2010, not the Joe Walsh of 2021.
Ted McCarron is a board member of the DeKalb County of Illinois Tea Party.
