Eating Your Own
NEW VIDEO! A Republican Civil War has broken out in Mongomery County Texas, one of the reddest counties in Texas. Even the Sheriff is speaking out against the purity test being pushed by party bosses and voters will have a chance to send a message. It’s no secret I am a conservative in my personal life. I vote Republican. Here’s my view… EATING YOUR OWN is a waste of ammunition. Chasing away Republican voters is a way to lose.
Eating Your Own
“I want to invoke the name of Ronald Reagan, and what’s become known in politics as the 11th Commandment. Remember this?” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“You contest you have your differences with regards to policy and opinion and you don’t raise personal attacks against individuals and when it is over you rally around the choice of the party,” Ronald Reagan said.
The folks running the Montgomery County Republican Party these days have clearly forgotten that message.
“To see Republicans attacking Republicans, it should disturb most folks,” Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said.
A political civil war is literally tearing one of the reddest counties in Texas apart, and in my view it’s a horrible waste of ammunition.
“They betrayed us, absolutely flat-out betrayed us. They betrayed us. They betrayed the voters. They betrayed everybody.”
Precinct chairs attacking their own incumbent politicians.
Paranoia has gripped party meetings.
“There’s a faction of people in this room and in this county that want to destroy the Republican Party,” Wendy Yockey said.
The county’s only local newspaper is asking the right question.
What has happened to the Republican Party in Montgomery County, Texas?
“I’m asking you to be quiet or you’re going to leave.”
“Gary Reynolds, thank you.”
“Whatever.”
And this is supposed to be a meeting of fellow Republicans.
The 121 precinct chairs of the Montgomery County Republican Party.
“Because you have an R on your name doesn’t mean you really are an R.”
You’re about to witness another round in an intraparty fight that threatens to destroy a ruby-red stronghold.
“They don’t care about the party or the people, haven’t we had enough of these people.”
“So as you head to the pole this spring in Montgomery County starting this month, you should ask yourself a question, should party bosses be allowed to have some kind of purity test? Which means you have to agree with them all the time of you’re not a Republican anymore,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“This is a slippery slope, folks. We should not be doing that.”
“Basically it’s a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, right,” Scott Baker said.
The finger-pointing has gotten personal. They see spies even among fellow Republican Party precinct chairmen.
“It is time to find replacements for these traitors.”
The word RINO, in my view, is terribly overused. Here’s an example. Some Republicans want an aggressive foreign policy. Some don’t.
Aren’t they both Republicans? Listen as one candidate claims many Republican precinct chairs in that room are actually Democrats in disguise.
“Well there’s a lot of people in this room that just want to put on a Republican costume because that’s the power in Texas,” Jon Bouche said.
Montgomery County party leaders wanted to censure Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows.
The party bosses in Austin and Conroe had wanted another guy to win.
It was just the latest effort to punish politicians that may not always toe the official party line on every single vote.
“I went to Conroe a couple of months back to watch the political dysfunction I’ve been hearing so much about, and for a few seconds I chatted with a guy sitting right behind me,” Dolcefino told the camera.
That guy, I had no clue what his name was or why he was there.
Turns out he was the lawyer sent to represent Speaker Burrows, who didn’t bother to show. The folks in Conroe aren’t even his constituents.
“Is it against the rules for him to be able to speak?”
They didn’t even want to let him talk.
“Everybody could please be quiet.”
And when he was finally allowed to speak for three minutes, some of the precinct chairs were clearly counting the seconds until it was over.
“Time’s up, time’s up, time’s up.”
After he talks, watch what happens. A precinct chair named Wendy Yockey runs up to me and puts her iPhone square in my face.
Demanding to know if I’m a spy for the House speaker, because I was seen associating with the enemy.
“I told her she was acting like a freak, to get away from me. You know me, I ain’t shy. But that one moment spoke volumes of the paranoia that has gripped the Republican Party leadership in Montogomery county,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Critics say the vestiges of the Montgomery County Tea Party are to blame.
A group that has gone from fighting high taxes to demanding a purity test from Republican candidates.
Actively attacking their own.
One precinct chair calls it a seditious conspiracy.
“That’s what we’ve spent the last six years fighting these folks on. They’ve absolutely torn up the party,” Scott Baker said.
It is a Sunday morning in Willis, Texas.
And there’s Scott Baker and his dad leading worship at the Fellowship Church.
“I am an elder and a worship leader. I sometimes preach at church as well,” Scott Baker said.
His unfiltered faith is on full display.
But that’s not why we came here. Baker is running for chairman of the county party, frustrated with what a lot of precinct chairs see as a far-right coup.
Baker is trying to unseat the current party chairwoman, Gwen Withrow.
She wouldn’t interview with us, and our only phone call, well, it didn’t go so well.
As I tried to understand why the party was trying to censure its own veteran lawmakers.
“I feel like that you were trying to do something very devious. And so I really don’t think I should continue the conversation with you. Thank you,” Gwen Withrow said.
“I’m doing something devious?” Dolcefino said.
We got a dose of this bitterly divided political party when we went to a meeting of Republican precinct chairs in Conroe.
These folks are not elected. They volunteer time in their neighborhoods. But there are clearly some in this room that believe others in this room are actually traitors.
From a makeshift studio, Baker has been fighting to warn Republicans in Montgomery County through Facebook to stand up to party leaders.
“They seem clear that their goal is to purify the Republican Party that they deem not Republican enough,” Baker said.
“The Montgomery County Republican witch hunt, that’s what I’m calling this.”
It was during the Republican State Convention in 2024 that Rule 44 was adopted. It allowed the party bosses to vote to remove Republican candidates from the ballot that didn’t toe the party line on every single vote.
“It’s my opinion that what they’re doing is going to kill the party,” Baker said.
It coincides with the ongoing fight over whether to close Republican primaries.
“Would Donald Trump pass the test to be a Republican primary voter in the state of Texas under the new closed primary system? I don’t think he would,” Baker said.
Jon Bouche was on the rules committee that helped pass Rule 44.
And he wanted to use it to censure state representatives Will Metcalf and Cecil Bell.
To try and remove them from the ballot.
Bouche had another agenda, he was planning a run against Metcalf too.
The effort to take Metcalf and Bell off the primary ballot failed, but the local party censured them anyway.
And then the party voted to deny the two incumbents the right to even keep campaign materials at party headquarters.
Boy that’s petty.
“We are not going to be forced to use our resources and limited space to store their campaign stuff and work for them because they were censured,” Wendy Yockey said.
And the local party has voted to spend money to condemn a voter guide put out by Republican Voters of Texas PAC, suggesting those Republicans aren’t real Republicans.
They refused to condemn the Tea Party voter guide.
Ignoring the fact the president and the governor have endorsed both incumbent state lawmakers, Cecil Bell and Will Metcalf.
“Whenever I was in high school, I drove a white Chevrolet pickup truck, Conroe High School. I had every Republican bumper sticker on that truck. I’ve been Republican to the core since day one,” Will Metcalf said.
A sixth-generation Montgomery County resident, Metcalf led negotiations to lower property taxes, co-authored a bill mandating schools display the Ten Commandments, to stop state investments by our enemies.
“I have brought you the largest tax cut in the United States history session before last, thank you,” Metcalf said.
“I will tell you that I believe the party’s in trouble,” Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said.
Now the Republican county sheriff is weighing in.
After party officials even warned attendees to the local Republican gala to be careful when leaving, just in case Doolittle had deputies follow them.
“To think that they would intentionally follow people away from places to do surveillance on them or whatever they were accusing me of, it’s just a disturbing lie,” Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said.
His post on Facebook went viral, a sign the Montgomery County party is turning off a lot of Republican voters they will need in November.
“It shocks my conscience and I made that post because we have to call out bad behavior by people when they take part in it,” Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said.
The sheriff isn’t the only law enforcement officer who has raised questions about what the county Republican Party bosses actually believe when it comes to fighting crime.
The county party recommended voting against bail reform, even though it allowed judges to keep bad guys in jail and off our streest.
Rapists, murderers, and if Bouche had his way, police officers would need a warrant to even search a suspect. They would not be able to seize assets from drug dealers.
“I do think it’s a problem with warrantless searches. How do you balance your Fourth Amendment right to asset searches? That’s a challenge.”
“It’s almost soft on crime,” Dolcefino said.
“I would agree that it’s a Democratic approach to what law enforcement should be doing,” Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said.
“I know some of my conservative friends will send me angry messages after this report, but that’s ok. I want Republicans to win in November, and the way to do that is to grow the party with our good ideas, not shrink it in someone’s view of a purity test, not to push fellow Republicans away,” Dolcefino told the camera.
It was a mistake to even try and deny voters the final say. They are the bosses, not a political party.
Republicans roundly criticize Democrats for allowing party bosses to pick winners in their primaries.
Hillary Clinton. Then Kamala Harris.
Sound familiar?
“Are these people crazy?” Dolcefino said.
“I would think there’s a couple of them. They shocked me with the tactics that they use against good people in our community,” Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said.
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