Chairman Arshinkoff is keeping the faith

Well, you can't say that Alex Arshinkoff isn't fully aware of his party's Limbaugh-like code words.  In a letter to his  Republican mailing list to announce the party's finance committee dinner,  the first words out of the echo-chamber are a reference to Barack Hussein Obama.  How clever!  Or should I say, How childish.  And shopworn  for an alleged  clear-thinking Ryanista soldier.    (We can only guess whether it's time to refer to Alex as a Romneyista, but I don't know because he won't talk to me since he says I'm an "ass-kicker" - which, of course, he's never been.)

Anybody  out there who thinks I'm too harsh as an Arshinkoff critic should know that as long as the chairman in perpetuity  of the Summit County Republican Party does childish things,which includes his unending tantrums on the Board of Elections,  I will continue to treat him as an incorrigible child.  And there are many in his own party who would agree. Let his friends say that he is not.

Meantime,  his announced speaker for  the Sept.18 dinner continues his shift to the party's religious right.  Past speakers included Mike Huckabee, who is vigorously defending Todd Akin on his broadcasts these days, as well as Rick Santorum, guys whose New Testament Biblical  affiliation ranges across  the entire social landscape.

Now coming to dinner is Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota senator, known as a professed evangelical Christian (with a Canadian mother) and graduate of Biola University  near Los Angeles. The school,  Biola boasts,  that has all Christian students.  It's doubtful that Arshinkoff has ever heard of Biola, so Thune was probably hand--picked by one  of his party's candidates for sainthood.

In his letter, Arshinkoff goes all out with  his superlatives, saying that Thune is "one of the Republican Party's most dynamic and engaging leaders...a solid no-holds-barred conservative".  It wasn't that long ago that  a Republican leader in a Democratic town would rather boast of candidates  whose fathers were rubberworkers.

I know.  Times change, so the Republican brand hereabouts is less discreet about its acquired faith.