‘Act 77 Amnesia’ strikes
I know you missed me. I kind of missed you, too. Polarized politics, or maybe just a failure to communicate, might have caused our separation, but I’m back with a vengeance, and I have a whole herd of sacred cows to kick (now in 450 words or less)!
It’s been raining variants of the virus since the last time we kicked it and wouldn’t you know, there’s a new variant infecting a lot of people here in Fayette County. I refer to it as “Act 77 Amnesia.” So far, it only seems to infect Republicans. Democrats have a natural immunity to this disease.
Do you realize that Pennsylvania’s Act 77 and similar bills in battleground states caused the obscenity of Jan. 6, 2021? Republicans call it a “stolen election,” but Democrats and the MSM call it “the big lie.” Whatever side of the argument you’re on, surely we can agree that no-excuse mail-in voting brought all those people to Washington, D.C., to try to get Congress to not to certify that election’s vote. I wanted to go, but had to work. Talk about dumb luck. Of course I didn’t want to lynch anyone and wouldn’t have tried, but chances are I’d still be sitting in jail waiting for my speedy trial.
A lot of stuff has happened since. I got kicked off the Fayette County Republican Committee because I posted a help wanted ad on social media, trying to solicit candidates to primary our local Republican legislators who supported Act 77. For the record, all of them did. I’m just not pretty enough to be a cheerleader or dumb enough to let the Pennsylvania GOP/swamp tell me to learn to live with Act 77 and move on.
In my heated conversations with those legislators, only Bud Cook publicly “owned his mistake” at a Reagan Republican meeting, but now his district no longer includes Fayette County. Everyone makes mistakes, but none of our remaining local legislators have even made a good “Act of Contrition” to the voters. Instead, they rely on the “Act 77 Amnesia” variant, or depend on the “R” behind their names on the ballot. “The Lesser of the Two Evils” will make a pretty lame campaign slogan in the general election.
Locally, the popular Republican primary candidate for governor also voted for the Pennsylvania Senate’s version of Act 77/SB 241. Yep, “Act 77 Amnesia” has infected a lot of Fayette Republicans.
There is a vaccine for this variant, but there’s no mandate forcing you to take the jab: “You just have to recognize what you’re looking at.”
John Lucas
Vanderbilt