My Point of View, By Ebenezer Howe

First, a little recap from the fair. We were so happy to score the Fairlane Building with the air conditioning, but alas, no sweltering days — frost warnings instead. I was able to see part of the farm team show. Being the first year for the event, none of the drivers or teams of horses were familiar with the games. But the older gentlemen with the teams, even though they try to hide it, are quite competitive. Next year they will have done some practice runs, hoping their buddies don’t catch ’em at it.

In 2015, the Republicans held a corn poll for president. As of fair time that year, there were 18 candidates running, and the first debate occurred on Wednesday evening of the fair — there was a lot of excitement. This year we tried the corn poll for governor, but not much excitement. The common comment was, “I know I should be paying more attention, I just don’t know enough to pick one now.” Well folks, it is past time to start looking at the candidates who are running. The governor can adversely affect you as much or more than the president.

We had a cutout of Donald Trump for our fair booth. The cutout is on its second year and required some extensive reconstructive surgery for this year, but it was not that bad, considering he worked two local fairs, a picnic and 11 weeks with the college Republicans in Mankato before returning for 2016 election evening. Not one tweet from our Donald cutout during his eight months in storage — amazing.

Don caused a small amount of pushback by those from the other persuasion, but overall we were able to have good dialog with the loyal opposition.

Consensus of Republicans is that Donald J. Trump has been net beneficial, and I think he uses some of those tweets to keep the media offguard so his team can get things done.

Donald promised to slash federal regulations, removing or relaxing two for every one added or expanded. I read an article last week saying it was 16 deleted or relaxed to one added or expanded. I am inclined to think the writer of that article may be overzealous in his scoring, maybe cherry-picking the stats to use; I would expect eight to be closer to the actual number, but anything over two is great.

Another promise kept is the private White House veterans hotline used to find nonperformance by employees of the VA. There have been close to 500 terminations of VA employees for non-performance.

As promised, he appointed a judge from his list of justices released before the election to replace Antonin Scalia.

He has kept Guantanamo Bay Detention Center open.

Cancellation of the Paris climate agreement is huge. Just in the last few weeks the climate folks fessed up to the fact that their models do not know how to account for the power of nature, so they have just been leaving that out of the model. And there were the reports of the folks altering data to match the assumptions of the models that did not take the power of nature into account. Oh, this is huge.

Next Monday, Aug. 14, the Freeborn County Republican Party will hold its annual summer outing — or picnic as some call it. We will be gathering at the Edgewater Bay Pavilion at 5:30 p.m. for social time with food being served at 6 p.m. for a $10 donation. Speeches will start at 6:45 p.m. or a bit earlier if folks are ready to listen. RSVP to Katie at 373-3522 or Ebenezer at 874-3442.

All of the known declared candidates for state House, the 1st Congressional District, governor and other statewide offices have been invited to come woo future 2018 delegates to the CD1 and state conventions.

Also, we will be celebrating the 207th day of Donald Trump’s administration. Come and join us.

Alden resident Ebenezer Howe is chairman of the Freeborn County Republican Party. His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the local party members.