DAVID BELLAVIA FOR CONGRESS
David Bellavia for Congress.
That’s it.
No dog and pony show, no crap sandwich, no whizzing on your leg.
This one is straightforward and simple. David Bellavia for Congress. This one is nothing more than a stand for freedom, a case of doing what the country needs done, not what the politicians want done.
It was supposed to be my seat.
At least it was in my fantasy land. Tom Reynolds was going to serve another several years, I was going to make some friends in Buffalo, I was going to make some more money, and if I was still in the district when Reynolds retired – if redistricting didn’t slice and dice the 26th out of existence – I was going to take a run at it.
But Tom Reynolds has decided to bail out early, and somebody better than me has come along.
This one isn’t even hard – David Bellavia for Congress.
The background is this. The 26th District of New York has been represented in recent congresses by Tom Reynolds, Bill Paxon and Jack Kemp. That’s a pretty good line-up. It gets better if you consider that part of it was also represented by the great Barber Conable.
What all that means is that this little piece of upstate New York, a swath that generally extends east from Buffalo, has had an unbroken string of unusually powerful and unusually talented congressmen. Tom Reynolds was in the thick of the House leadership, Bill Paxon should have been speaker of the House – on the way to the presidency – Jack Kemp was a party star and vice-presidential candidate, and Barber Conable was one of the most powerful and noble men of his time.
That’s big stuff.
And big shoes.
And David Bellavia can fill them.
He’s a young guy, 32 years old, with a wife and a couple of little kids. And a Silver Star. He got that for a whole lot of GI Joe stuff over in Iraq.
He got New York’s highest military decoration and he wrote a war memoir and he formed a group for veterans.
Which is all kind of secondary.
The real strength of David Bellavia – as a man and as a candidate – is that he’s got American values to the core. He’s a plain-old Yankee Doodle Dandy with a John Wayne view of right and wrong and what it means to be an American. He’s about waving the flag and living the life. He can stand up and tell you, three ways from Sunday, what this country is about and what it stands for and what liberty means and what we need to do to get back on the right track.
And he’s just what the Congress needs.
Because the Democrats will probably hold the House. And the Democrats will probably hold the Senate. And nobody will be surprised if the Democrats take the White House.
In other words, we’re in real danger of entering a Twilight Zone of leftist anti-Americanism and Democratic scorched-earth partisanship. When the Democrats hold all the reins of power, they’re going to bring out the long knives.
And it’s going to take somebody with a pair of brass ones to stand up to them.
No Republican in the House is going to have any legislative power, but David Bellavia can have rhetorical power. He can take his few minutes a day in the well of the House and let freedom ring. He can be a guest on the talk shows, he can be in the debates, he can call a spade a spade.
His demeanor, his verbal skills, his shiny medal, his cockiness will all give him a platform, and he will make sure that platform gets used. No mealy-mouthed go-along to get-along, he’ll go toe-to-toe with anybody of a matter of patriotic principle.
He’s a fighter and a patriot.
And that’s what the Congress needs. That’s what the 26th needs. That’s what America needs.
The problem is, there’s a little bit of foot dragging. It sounds a little bit like some in the Republican Party leadership through the 26th District aren’t that keen on David Bellavia.
Part of the problem is that he hasn’t paid any dues or kissed any backsides. Order is maintained in a political organization by doling out perqs and positions to sycophants. That’s not the way David Bellavia operates.
Some Republican leaders are worried that, at his young age, if they accept him as their candidate, they are possibly giving out a very valuable position that he may hold for decades.
It’s no fun being a king maker if you don’t get to make a king. David Bellavia isn’t beholden to the party’s leaders, and he has skipped the entire process the party uses to groom and produce senior politicians.
And that’s too bad – for them. For people outside the small rooms of the Republican leadership, however, it means nothing.
Personally, I think the choice district Republicans have is simple: Run David Bellavia or lose.
There is no rationale for voting for a different Republican. In a House that will be dominated by Democrats, a freshman Republican – if the 26th were to elect one – would be frozen out. No money, no legislation, no nothing. Such a congressman would be essentially useless to the district. David Bellavia is different because he takes a voice. He will be heard from.
And he’s the only Republican who can win.
This one is simple.
David Bellavia for Congress.
This is a gift New York can give the nation.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2008
