Don Dix, the radio personality who hosted this year’s Unite Inland Empire Conservative Conference, thinks Republicans need “a clarion call to get off the couch and get onto the field.”
He went searching for a special keynote speaker with the heft to buoy an audience of California Republicans who, for years, have been beaten down by the state’s Democratic majority.
And he found it in GOP provocateur Sebastian Gorka, the former White House strategist, who traveled to Riverside on Sunday with a special message: Yes, the Republicans can take back California.
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“I am here to tell you that it’s possible, even here,” Gorka said. “And I’ll tell you why. Because all the rules have been broken. Donald Trump took the rulebook of the elite and then shred it, burnt it, and jumped up and down on it.”
He chided “the fake news industrial complex” for portraying Trump as a racist and bigot and for claiming the White House associates with white supremacists and anti-semites. He said these accusations were particularly “disgusting” because the president’s grandchildren are orthodox Jews.
He described President Trump using the analogy of an “icebreaker.”
“For thirty years, we’ve had this giant permafrost layer of political correctness that has enveloped everything; it enveloped our schools, our media, our politics, our films, the swamp, everything,” Gorka told the crowd of about 900 Republicans gathered at the Riverside Convention Center on Sunday.
“Political correctness had won,” Gorka said, until President Trump, “cut through that political correctness like a five thousand ton ice-breaking ship and blast a passageway through that frozen sea that was our nation.”
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The crowd, which included dozens of Riverside County conservative organizations, cheered in response.
Gorka condemned sanctuary cities and undocumented immigrants. He spotlighted Agnes Gibborney, an audience member whose son was allegedly murdered by a man who Gorka said was “an illegal alien.”
Gorka lambasted President Obama’s order that required public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their gender identity. Because of “political correctness,” Gorka said, “the federal government [under President Barack Obama] was telling us that boys could use the girls’ locker room, the girls’ restroom, the girls’ showers in public schools.”
“I don’t become a bowl of petunias if I say I’m a bowl of petunias,” Gorka said, explaining his position on transgender students and bathrooms to an applauding audience.
The crowd booed at mentions of Democratic lightning rods Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and applauded for condemnations of California’s sanctuary cities and high taxes.
Among those in attendance were Andrew Kotyuk, who is running against Assemblymember Chad Mayes in California’s 42nd Assembly District; Chad Bianco and Dave Brown, who are running for Riverside County Sheriff against incumbent Stan Sniff and Kimberlin Brown Pelzer, who is challenging Rep. Raul Ruiz in the 36th Congressional District.
In an interview with The Desert Sun, Gorka said local candidates for Congress should embrace, “an American First platform like the one that got President Trump elected.”
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“America is a special nation,” Gorka said, explaining that an “America First” foreign policy platform is “the only one founded on the principle of individual liberty endowed by our creator.”
“We will not apologize for being the ‘shining light on the hill’ that came to rescue of Judeo-Christian civilization repeatedly during the 20th century,” Gorka said.
Brown Pelzer, the actress-businesswoman who is running for Congress in the Coachella Valley’s 36th District, called meeting with Gorka prior to the event “wonderful,” although the two didn’t get a chance to talk about specifics, she said.
First-time candidate Brown Pelzer spoke along with Sean Flynn and Aja Smith, two Republicans running for Congress in nearby districts. She said appreciated the opportunity to address Unite Inland Empire’s audience, which was the biggest crowd she has spoken to since the 2016 Republican Party Convention, where her speech in support of then-candidate Trump put her on the political map.
On Sunday, Brown Pelzer structured her remarks as a response to Michelle Obama, who earlier this week used a parenting metaphor to call her husband President Barack Obama “responsible” compared to “the other parent,” President Donald Trump.
Brown Pelzer criticized Obama’s “parenting” for the growth of the opioid epidemic, ISIS and the Affordable Care Act. She commended Trump’s “parenting” for ending regulation, increasing military funding and appointing conservative judges. “If those are signs of bad parenting,” she said, “then, by God, that’s the Papa I want.”
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Riverside Tea Party Patriots’ John Berry, who has been organizing Unite Inland Empire’s Conference since its inception, said he was pleased to see Gorka “fire up” the crowd.
“Conservatives are looking for a way to rebel,” he said. “And rebels have all the fun.”
Outside the convention center, protesters from the local chapter of Refuse Fascism staged a rebellion of their own. Facing off against a contingent of Travis Allen supporters across the street, local organizers stressed, “this extreme nationalism is not welcome in our community.”
In a remark that could apply to both the audience and those protesting, conference host Dix said: “The number one response I hear is ‘I didn’t know there were so many people in the Inland Empire that felt like I do.'”
Author: Michael
Handsome Devil..... and Smart too.
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