Why won't they tell us what they really believe and why is Chip Keating the worst of them?
On the day Chip Keating announced he was entering the race to become Oklahoma’s next governor, KOCO-TV’s Abigail Ogle stood in front of a screen that gave us Keating’s smiling mugshot over her left shoulder and these words over her right.
PLATFORM PLANS
• Protect families
• Crackdown on crime
• Grow economy
• America First agenda
I know what you’re thinking:
Finally a gubernatorial candidate who will protect families.
At last a candidate who gives a @$#% about crime.
Grow the economy, yes, this guy gets it.
Absolutely, because aren’t we all tired of governors putting Madagascar, Djibouti, Laos and Papua New Guinea first?
Of course, because you have a brain, that’s not what you’re thinking.
Unless you lead with sarcasm, as I often do, and that’s exactly what you thought.
But it’s pretty much not what anybody’s thinking, even Republicans, who may respond to the familiarity of the terms as (lack of) virtue signaling, but who can’t possibly define them because neither Chip Keating nor the consultants who came up with them can either.
Nor should we let KOCO off the hook.
Ogle presented the list with no context, no explanation, no critical analysis, no nothing. Instead, she simply presented it as Keating’s platform, as though any of those bullet points tell us one single thing about policy.
Do better, Channel 5.
Does every candidate get a freebie?
I digress.
Though it might make a good one, this column is not about that.
Instead, it’s about Keating and what he represents. It’s about how to judge candidates based upon the nature of their campaigns, and you can see it in each Republican bid to replace Kevin Stitt.
From Gentner Drummond, who appears to care nothing about the terrific anti-corruption work he’s done as attorney general, nor his fighting to keep church and state separate; choosing instead to focus on any tiny way he can align himself with Donald Trump despite previously giving money to anti-Trump causes.
From Mike Mazzei, who in a creepy grooming tone tells us he has a plan for everything, while also telling us he can’t wait to kill the state’s largest revenue streams.
From Charles McCall, who chops bananas and says “You first,” because Oklahoma’s real problem is a tiny trans community trying to exercise its civil liberties, not a 50th-in-the-nation public education system he, perhaps more than anybody else, helped decimate.
But let’s get back to Keating, who I’m pretty sure is a real person despite appearing to be an A.I. rendition of a real person, constructed by right-wing political planners to tell Republican voters what those planners think they want to hear.
As an Oklahoma State Trooper, Chip Keating chased down violent criminals. He’ll work with President Trump and ICE to deport illegals.
That’s the opening of this ad and let’s start there.
Did he really chase down violent criminals in his three-plus years as a state trooper? Maybe somebody should look into that. Will he really “work with President Trump” on deportations, because that would require two things.
One, the sitting president knowing anything about what ICE is doing instead of leaving the entire policy to Stephen Miller, whom nobody likes, Republicans included. Two, his own willingness to crush state industries that rely on undocumented workers, like construction, hospitality and agriculture.
We must eliminate the income tax and fix our broken education system that ranks dead last, or we’ll get left in the dust.
Same commercial and you’ve just got to love it.
In the same sentence, Keating claims getting rid of one third of all state revenues to be a “must,” while also claiming he’ll “fix” education, but how’s he going to do that after breaking the state?
He won’t, of course, because it’s the type of politics that has nothing to do with policy ambitions, but with what he can sell to voters and for most of two decades, Oklahoma voters have proven they’ll buy just about anything.
“Fix” education?
Outlining a plan that might actually work is not why he’s here.
Becoming the next governor is why he’s here.
How it happens is immaterial.
As a husband and father of three kids at home, Keating will protect families from the woke trans agenda.
Would you believe the same commercial?
It’s a classic.
I’ve never been a Republican and even I have no idea what the “woke trans agenda” is, or if there even is one, though I might have some clues on treating everybody with respect and meeting them where they are.
And, like me, Chip Keating has no idea about that agenda either, only that his handlers really like getting “woke” and “trans” into the same sentence before the word “agenda.”
Finally, the whopper:
Oklahoma has powered America. Now we will lead her future. As governor, I will launch the most ambitious economic and national security initiative in Oklahoma history, the Trump National Laboratory for energy and national security headquartered right here in our state. We will turn energy into innovation, innovation into strength and strength into freedom.
Different commercial, and here it is.
What does it even mean?
The United States already leads the world in oil production.
We already have the largest military in the world, outspending China more than three-to-one.
A laboratory?
As big as that picture up there?
Who’s going to pay for it, the state?
Before or after we do away with the state income tax?
If it’s about biofuel and wind, cool beans, because we’ve got petroleum covered in Oklahoma and the nation, but that’s not what Keating and Republicans are about.
Who would pay for their campaigns if that’s what they were about?
The whole thing only makes sense as a signal to the energy sector Keating will never cross it, raise its taxes, or keep it from lying about how many billions it’s given to education on various billboards and basketball scoring table facades, so maybe it will throw millions at his political ambitions.
It works, too, as yet another way to push Trump’s name into the campaign, just as his primary opponents race to do the same.
Sheesh.
No shame.
No need to solve real problems.
No need to be for anything that might actually happen.
Only the need to be elected, which begins with a lack of seriousness and no respect for the voters, whom they’ve never tried to convince so much as enrage into not voting for the other side.
Maybe we’re getting tired of it.