Utah Senate race: the patriot vs. the seditionist

Utah Senate candidate Evan McMullin (left) and incumbent and seditionist Mike Lee (right)

Once per week leading up to the mid-terms, I will focus on one individual member of the fascist menagerie of weirdos, criminals, wife abusers, liars, insurrectionists and conspiracy loons who have put themselves forward for high office and the life and death responsibilities that come with it.

So far, I’ve written about Herschel Walker, JD Vance, the California “Yale-billy,” Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano.

Utah is the 45th State of the Union. It has been my home since 2014.

I have been to every corner of this magnificent state. I have rappelled into its slot canyons, and watched the sunrise over Lake Powell. I have fished her waters, and hiked through the Grand Escalante, Zion, Bryce Canyon and the Uintas. I have skied off of her magnificent summits, and watched in awe as thousands of elk carve a path through a mountain pass.

Utah is Zion for the Mormon people, who came to the American West fleeing persecution and death. Chances are that if you are reading a story about the American West, it was shaped by Mormons. John Sutter, who unleashed a great westward migration in 1849 with his discovery of gold on the American river outside of Sacramento, was one of them.

Salt Lake City and the Heber Valley are exploding. Many Washington, DC, political reporters cover Utah the way a traveller on a Goodall expedition to Africa might have written of the experience. Modern Utah is a pluralistic society with world-class cultural, medical and scientific institutions. It has world-class universities, and a first rate newspaper in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Far from being the hub of a religious autocracy, Salt Lake City is a vibrant mountain city that, until recently, had a lesbian mayor and a majority gay city council. There is a vibrant South Pacific Islander community in the Salt Lake metro area. The belt that runs through the ski and adventure towns from Park City to Moab and Kanab are filled with people who are relaxed and friendly. Mountain biking and Michael Franti seem like a better mix for most people in these parts than civil wars and violent insurrection.

The population of Utah will nearly double in the next 25 years. There is a lack of water across the American West. There are vast geographies that lack fast and cheap internet. These places have been abandoned and left behind.

The state of Utah has come to an hour of choosing around a very important issue. There are two people who Utah can send to represent it on life and death issues to the United States Senate. There are two people who can vote on the great questions of the day, and make sure Utah gets its fair share. They may be called on to make votes about matters of war and peace.

One of the two senators, Mitt Romney, warmed up for the job by saving the 2002 Winter Olympics, and turning Utah into a world-class destination. Additionally, he had been the Republican nominee for president, as well as a successful one-term governor of Massachusetts, where he invented what became Obamacare.

Mitt Romney is a perfect senator from Utah. Here is what it means for Utah: of the 100 senators in any combination, our guy is probably the smartest one in the room. He is a good negotiator, basically principled, thoroughly decent, and he will never do anything to embarrass himself or the state. In fact, I can’t help but think that, if ever I was creating a “Turnaround America” team, I’d want Mitt Romney on it. Simply put, I approve of the job he is doing. He’s a keeper, as they say. There will be momentous days ahead for America, and Willard Mitt Romney should be at the ready because there is a lot of stupid out there.

Lee is an appropriately seditious name for the other senator, Mike Lee. The traitorous Robert Lee quit his post, abandoned his duty, betrayed his oath, and disgraced himself in a plot to destroy the United States. Mike Lee was a principal architect of the fake elector scheme that had as its goal the toppling of the peaceful transfer of presidential power, and thus the end of American democracy.

It is an astounding, and yet somehow entirely predictable path for Lee — the Alito clerk, turned senator, turned conspiracy wacko, turned insurrectionist. Lee lacks the character to control his impulses. He is no different than a young missionary from Salt Lake City, who walked into Trump Tower through the gold leaf trashiness and towards the bright and tempting sun of Trumpian excess. It would be too much for some people. It definitely was for Mike Lee, and he succumbed.

I love Utah, but I’m not from here. I grew up in New Jersey, where Donald Trump first permeated my frontal lobe in the early 1980s. There is one thing I know for certain. When Trump and his family look at Mike Lee, they see a chump.

The moment of truth for Mike Lee came when he compared Trump to the Mormon hero Captain Moroni. Why would he do that? He did it because he is weak and shameful. He sold out everything he professed to believe with all of his heart to make another man happy for a moment. The most amazing part of it is that Trump obviously had no idea who he was talking about when referring to Moroni.

Evan McMullin is running against Lee as an independent. The former Republican has the endorsement of the Democratic Party in a race that requires the assembling of a coalition to defeat MAGA extremism. That coalition is forming, and the first poll has come out that shows McMullin taking the lead over the contemptible Lee.

McMullin is a former CIA officer who deployed into harm’s way during the 20 years of war that followed the 9/11 attack on America. His fate has brought him into direct political confrontation with another man who was party to the cause of attacking American democracy.

Removing Mike Lee from political power is an urgent imperative for Utah, the United States and free people everywhere. It will require the embrace of a concept that is elemental in a free society and upon which the entire foundation of the American experiment rests: compromise. You don’t always get everything you want. You sometimes don’t get everything you need. Differences are a good and healthy thing. Wanting to kill your political opponents is not normal in America, but it is a lot more normal than it used to be — thanks to the extremism of the profoundly unfit Mike Lee.

Upon what planet would the seditionist rise to power over the patriot?  That is the story on planet Utah. Evan McMullin can win the Utah Senate race. I can’t wait to vote for him, and see people come together in common cause under a banner of friendly American disagreement. We need to fire one of the absolutely worst and most despicable men who has ever served in the United States, bar none. Lee has disgraced himself, his state, country, faith and oath.

“Good riddance to Mike Lee” would be a nice way to ring in the Utah New Year.

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Defend democracy by supporting Evan McMullin, Utah Senate candidate: Vote seditionist Mike Lee out. Take some initiative, volunteer, donate here, and get other people involved.