Wednesday's Oklahoma City District Court hearing was a pyhrric victory for the four Central Committee members. Going in we knew just how tough it is to get a temporary injunction, you have to literally be certain to win the case and have an immediate need before a judge will prior restrain someone or an organization from going on about their business. When the motion for Temporary Injunction was filed, the October meeting was billed as the second State Committee meeting which then was turned into an Executive meeting so that took away some of our moral high ground.
These Executive meetings are rarely a big thing, the notice goes out to a few dozen people that are either appointed by the Chair and Vice Chair or have a seat as a consequence of an office they hold. They are not big positions, more of a peacock position. Among their abilities or duties are announcing a County Chair or other County GOP slot abandoned or open, advising the Chairman, or advising the Chairman for the next State Convention time, location, or advising on organizing the convention. A quarter of them at the County level can call a vacancy in an office and call for a County committee meeting. At the state level the executive committee can advise the Chair and provide advice and consent to the Central Committee meeting on the running of the day to day activities. .
Which is all soundly ignored in most administrations. The reality is that the executive board has been a no work peacock post for a long time, a symbolic post that does telegraph to everyone where your loyalty lies. Bennett has few actual executive meetings but a lot more partial meetings, many times at Leslie Nessmith's house, at least the dependable ones in Nessmith's opinion it seems. Those executive directors placed by the Vice Chair aren't as …. shall we say... notified or present or wanted.
But I drove us off into the weeds, didn't I? Back to the court hearing.
There were four attorneys present, three for Bennett and the GOP, and one representing Pollard, Jemision, and Curry. All the attorneys ought not to have been there as none of them had the required conflict waivers needed from the State Committee. We were offered to hear the motion to disqualify which we filed against Ferate but it was scheduled to be heard in very late December. We simply were not expecting to or ready to do a good job of it. And the other three bozos, well they just entered Entry of Appearance late last week, no time to do multiple motions to disqualify.
So despite having zero path to become legal counsel they just ignored the fact that they owed their allegiance to the Party first before any new client. Ferate by virtue of being a current executive board member and his recent past as a GOP executive director and despite the other three legal beagles attempting to represent Bennett and the Party who have very different interests. Bennett is accused of breaking the Bylaws, the Party's interest is in following the Bylaws and not causing liability.
I would speak for two to four minutes, then usually three of them would speak for two to four minutes in turn. Point being, they had three to four times the opportunity to get their point across. As you can imagine our one hour hearing done by the excellent judge on her lunch hour, was over before we got to introduce our witnesses and exhibits. There were some exhibits filed with the initial complaint, another few dozen that the court didn't have time to hear due to time constraints.
And not unsurprisingly we lost the temporary injunction battle with all six injunctions being turned down. The judge did allow us to go over what our witnesses would say and what the exhibits would prove but she ruled that none of it would change her need to not approve the temporary in junctions. On that point, knowing the time constraint, we asked for just one temporary injunction: follow the GOP rules and by a simple reading of the text. And didn't get it. Not because our request wasn't moral and right, but because the four stinking lawyers said she couldn't.
Why? It seems that we were somewhat wrong about some unincorporated associations. Congress and the Courts ruled long ago that political parties were under limited jurisdiction of the Court. If the state had state laws that directed political parties to appoint vacant positions so they were filled then the state was allowed a minimal amount of questioning and supervision of the Party by the Judiciary. And the Supreme Court recognized that individuals possessing offices are valuable property, a contract by right even, but the Court also realized that since taking sides in a political party fight over another side caused strife, there was simply little time in a busy docket to to deal with normal cases and even less for dealing with party squabbles.
The bottom line after the hearing was ended? John Bennett, Shane Jemision, Pam Pollard, and Steve Curry can do as they damn well please and the Court won't interfere. If married volunteers were sexually harassed, too damn bad, it is a political issue to solve the Central Committee is saying.
If the Bylaws aren't being followed, tough cookies, the Central Committee says it is up to the organization to sort things out. If Bennett or one of his staff decides to throw you out of the Party, too bad. If Jemison has been missing in action along with our two National RNC members, too bad. If Bennett or some of his staff decide they won't allow Nathan Damn to run as a Republican, too bad. If they want to tell the governor of the state to piss off and strip their right of association to run as a Republican, too bad sister.
When this became apparent, that we were not to be allowed to hold Bennett and crew accountable using the temporary injunction orders, I asked the judge to consider the consequences of the ruling That it is saying that there is no rule of law and it is the strongest that will come out on top. Why bother with recruiting delegates when you can just gather or rent fifty strong men with baseball bats and take over the convention. Giving a people no way of making peaceful change is to invite disorder and anarchy. If they cannot petition to follow the rules, well they can riot.
Rex Duncan came out of his seat when the idea of someone using force if there were no way to get the rules followed, finding it offensive. Then after the judge was out of the room he had the gaul to give friendly advice in a wavering voice not to say such things in front of a judge. No Rex Duncan, YOU were advocating that anarchy was the only way out when you fought to prevent Bennett and his crew from following the Bylaws of the GOP. You Rex Duncan were advocating to hide sexual harassment allegations.
Yet, it turns out that if Chairman Bennett wants to throw you out of the Party he now has a clear path to do just that. You or anyone he dislikes can be unilaterally removed from a meeting, from the email list, from the Party or convention itself and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. If the Vice Chair cowers in fear, unwilling to stand up and call for a State Committee meeting or if he does and the State Committee meeting is unwilling to do the right thing, you have zero rights despite the Bylaws and despite the contract between you and the Republican Party because Rex Duncan says the Party and the leadership team cannot be held accountable using the law.
So John Bennett wants to stick to politics instead of following the Bylaws? Has the dumb son of a Biden thought that through?
There were many years I admired Chairman John Bennett and fought to keep him in office and protected. I always knew he wasn't the brightest bulb in the string of lights but I thought he was smart enough to act in his best interests. He had other attributes that made up, he was thought to be loyal and honest, and was certainly a passionate speaker.
But since early June I first began to have doubts then realized the boy was more than a few bricks shy of a load. Some of the people that helped put Bennett in office still try to cling to a shred of hope that perhaps he is being misled by some of his corrupt and self promoting staff but when you point out that it is obvious they are speaking wishing to believe, not in belief , they figure out that is true.
I suppose it is time to go all out against John Bennett. After all, he turned on the man that got him elected in his first race and kept him safe for ten years, what the hell are a dozen people that got him elected as Chair? I think it is time to use twelve years of inside knowledge and not just peel the skin off him till he does the right thing, I think we need to get down to the bone.
John Bennett, you have been warned. You are out of time to do the right thing and Sunday night your sins of the past are going to rain down upon your sorry lying ass. You think the Sooner Tea Party was rough on the RINOs and Democrats? Wait till you see what we can do to a traitor that sheltered in our foxhole and stabbed us in the back. By the time we are done you will wish you were back in Afghanistan surrounded by horny,syphilitic Taliban soldiers and you were armed with just an October 2021 copy of the Official Navy Chief Petty Officer coloring book of the month and a box of half eaten official issue Marine Core crayons.
