Bryan Shupe (36th RD) is NOT a MAGA Extremist
This project is about removing the grey area and discovering if the Republicans in the Delaware legislature are MAGA Extremists or Regular Republicans. The complexities of life don’t typically favor binary sorting, so I tried to write the questions as simply as possible and in a way that could only illicit simple yes or no responses.
Rep Bryan Shupe replied “yes” to all of the questions and is therefor, judged to be NOT a MAGA extremists. He thinks Biden was lawfully elected. He thinks that the Jan 6th people are criminals and he thinks that it is a crime for an ex-president to posses top secret documents. His responses are at odds with MAGA extremist orthodoxy. That’s great.
And yet, he couldn’t resist carving out a little unique space for himself in an attached comment (see below). I’ll leave it to you to decide if you think Shupe’s carved out space means that he is MAGA Lite. My verdict is – Normal Republican.
1) Do you consider Joe Biden the lawfully elected President of the United States?
YES
2) Do you think that it is appropriate for law enforcement to charge the people who entered the US Capitol on January 6th of 2021 with a crime?
YES
3) Would you say that an Ex-President, Ex-Vice President or Ex-Secretary of State possessing top secret documents in their residence is a crime?
YES
A large stumbling block to meeting our major challenges in this State and nationwide is individuals, of both parties, using government platforms and offices as political warfare that divides people into groups of us versus them. As Americans, the enemy is not a political party or even a section of that party that leans more to one side of the political spectrum or another. The enemy is illiteracy, generational poverty and dependency, lack of government transparency, and so many other restrictions that do not allow people to choose their own destinies.
Bryan Shupe
From: Jason
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2022 9:59 AM
To: Shupe, Bryan (LegHall) <Bryan.Shupe@delaware.gov>
Subject: Re: DE GOP Candidate Questionnaire – 3rd Request
Hi Byran,
I realize you are busy and I hate to be a pest but you are considered a moderate Republican by many people I speak to and I wanted to be sure to make sure your views are represented accurately on DelawareLiberal.
Your fellow moderates Ramone, Hensely and Smith had no problem quickly replying to the original email but if a call would work for you better than an email, my cell number is 302-XXX-XXXX. Please feel free to call me on that number to let me know whether or not you consider yourself the kind of MAGA extremist that President Biden has warned us to be wary of.
Thanks for considering it.
– Jason
On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 3:46 PM
Hi Bryan,
It occured to me that the wording of the questionnaire might be problematic for some. So I’ve rewritten it to make it a little clearer.
Thanks for getting back to me with your responses.
1) Do you consider Joe Biden the lawfully elected President of the United States?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO
2) Do you think that it is appropriate for law enforcement to charge the people who entered the US Capitol on January 6th of 2021 with a crime?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO
3) Would you say that an Ex-President, Ex-Vice President or Ex-Secretary of State possessing top secret documents in their residence is a crime?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO
————————————————
On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 11:46 AM
Hi Bryan,
As you know, President Joe Biden recently enlisted all Americans who believe in democracy to be on guard against “Extreme MAGA Republicans”. The President noted that MAGA extremists “refuse to accept the will of the people,” and said “they threaten our very democracy.”
President Biden pointed out that all Republicans are not dangerous MAGA extremists, so we at DelawareLiberal.net we are eager to find which DEGOP elected officials are “extremist MAGA Republicans” and which are regular Republicans.
If you could please respond to the very simple questionnaire below we would sincerely appreciate it.
BTW –
You may be gratified to hear that 40% of the Republican State Reps who have replied so far are NOT MAGA extremists.
Thanks,
Jason
DelawareLiberal.net
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
1) Do you think Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO
2) Do you think rioters that broke into and vandalized the US Capitol on January 6th of 2021 are criminals and should be treated as criminals?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO
3) Do you think stealing top secret documents and leaving them exposed to discovery by the agents of governments hostile to the United States is a criminal act that should be treated as such?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO
You have to wonder what life as an elected Republican must be like for someone like Shupe.
I envision day after day and hour after hour of having to entertain the screwball ravings of people who are bristling with hatred for whoever Fox News just told them to hate.
Next Up – Briggs King the 37th RD. Long Neck to Georgetown, if I’m not mistaken.
Bryan Shupe has worked diligently to carve out a tiny space for himself. He must have experienced a sleepless night or more wondering how deep and broad Patrick Smith’s grasp of the Milford electorate was, prior to the lopsided vote on September 13. I knew Bryan before he ran for anything, even working for him on his first non-partisan mayoral campaign. Now, as vice-chairman of the 36RD Democratic committee, it’s my job to find a way to remove him from office. This year we came up short, finding no one to challenge him for his seat. So be it. I’m not surprised you rated him as a non-MAGA representative. I agree. But we Americans face dual GOP threats, one from the election denying MAGAS, and one from the 99% Oligarchs, who threaten to end democracy by virtue of economic collapse. The signs of collapse are all around us, labor shortages et. al. 300M Americans cannot sustain a decent standard of living on 1% of the nation’s wealth. Oligarchs don’t give a fig about us. Shupe has had NOTHING to say about workers, which becomes more intriguing when he argues a big problem is generational poverty. On the education committee, he proposes only a fringe remedy for funding and not anything like a full throated response. So Bryan might be a puzzle wrapped in an enigma of his own making, but the bottom line is that he is failing the voters in our district,
“300M Americans cannot sustain a decent standard of living on 1% of the nation’s wealth. ”
^^this.
Thanks for taking the time to break that down. And yeah, I hate that “Regular Republican” indicates that they are somehow better than MAGA Republicans.
They are just as fucked up and sick but in a slightly different way.
This from LGM made me think about the project:
A key dynamic in American politics at the moment is that almost all normie Republicans have turned out to be A-OK with crypto-fascist — the “crypto” part of this is rapidly disappearing — candidates, if the alternative is voting for a Democrat, or even just not voting. As the linked article points out, Lake may actually be the least unhinged, relatively speaking, of the major GOP candidates in Arizona this fall:
“ The enemy is illiteracy, generational poverty and dependency, lack of government transparency, and so many other restrictions”
I don’t think that is why a violent mob tried to overthrow our government.
But I have to ask, are there a lot of illiterate people in his district?
Delaware falls in the middle of the pack on literacy, but it would be good to know which books we should ban from our schools in order to improve it.
Yeah, it is a bit of a paint by numbers statement that hints at some typical GOP grievances without filling in much.
“government transparency, and so many other restrictions”. That could mean anything, and I guess that is the point.