A week ago here at PJ Media, I criticized New Hampshire State Representative Steven Smith and his colleagues in the Sullivan County Republican Party for being cowards and fools and allowing the Left to dictate the parameters of what they could do and could not do. And here they go again, providing yet another demonstration of why the Republicans deserve the sobriquet “Stupid Party,” and why the Republican establishment is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans.
It all has to do with a lecture I gave up in Smith’s neck of the woods several weeks ago. According to New Hampshire’s Valley News, a man named Randy Britton, who is described as “a retired Navy captain with 25 years of active duty and Navy Reserve service, had raised concerns about the impact of Spencer’s appearance on a Muslim family who lived near the original proposed venue for the fundraiser in the Eastman Community Association.”
Britton’s political affiliation isn’t listed, but he is unlikely to be a Republican. Even though many Republicans are, like Smith, cowed and subservient to the Left, it is usually only Democrats who outright oppose resistance to jihad terror and call it “anti-Muslim.”
In the face of Britton’s silly objections, Smith, showing he has a promising future among establishment Republicans, immediately folded: “Smith said he had not heard Spencer speak so didn’t want to make a judgment about his content, but also apologized on air to the Muslim family. ‘That family in Eastman should not have to have gone through this,’ Smith said. ‘They came to this country to be Americans. And that is one of the values that we want to support. We don’t want to make these people feel not welcome.’”
That’s right: Smith didn’t see me speak, and so he says he doesn’t want to judge the content of my speech, and then he apologizes to this Muslim family for it.
What a weasel. If he didn’t see it, what is he apologizing for? If he doesn’t know what I said, how does he know there is anything to apologize for at all?
Essentially he is apologizing because the left was unhappy that I spoke, and he believes leftists uncritically. If he had watched the video, he would have seen that I didn’t mention this Muslim family. I didn’t know this family existed. I never said that they were not welcome, or that Muslims were not welcome in the United States. Nor did I say anything to the effect that non-Muslims in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, or anywhere else should be unkind to their Muslim neighbors. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
If he cared anything about facts, Smith could watch the video of the speech, and he would see that there is nothing “hateful” in it at all. Here it is:
The reality is that all I do is oppose jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women and others. The idea that there is anything wrong or objectionable about what I do is an invention of leftist and Islamic supremacist propagandists, and Smith is voluntarily buying into their claims, without examining them or giving me the opportunity to clear my name. Keith Hanson, the former Sullivan County Republican Chairman who brought me in to speak, had me in the meeting during which he was ousted, via Skype from California. But these cowardly Republicans, ever submissive to their Democrat masters, voted down a motion to allow me to speak. It figures. (Meanwhile, “journalist” John P. Gregg didn’t bother to contact me for comment. Once again, it figures.)
Objecting to Hanson’s language, Randy Britton also says: “Personal attacks are not the way to do business.” Yet New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley called me a “white supremacist” and as far as I know, neither Britton nor Smith uttered a syllable of protest, despite the fact that Buckley’s claim is outright libel. Apparently personal attacks are not the way to do business unless the Democrats engage in them, in which case cowardly, spineless, clueless, self-defeating Republicans such as Steven Smith and the Sullivan County Republican Party of New Hampshire will eagerly fall into line.
If Steven Smith and his friends in the Sullivan County Republican Party of New Hampshire – and many others like them around the country — think that opposition to jihad mass murder cannot be aired because it will somehow threaten kind and friendly local Muslims, then no opposition to jihad mass murder will be aired. Then the jihad will be able to advance unopposed and unimpeded, with everyone afraid to say a word against it, for fear of this kind of treatment. Steven Smith and his sorry ilk appear to be completely oblivious regarding that possibility, or blithely indifferent to it.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member