Clay Lightfoot

Christian | Conservative | Writer on republican politics | Former Senate staffer | O&G analyst.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

In politics, persuasian > provocation.

Check out my latest post on why the #GOP should be inspired by Orpheus, and subscribe for more like it!

https://t.co/AVnFdFgQme

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

@whignewtons @dilanesper Yes! Yes, to all of this wisdom!

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

This is, w/o a doubt, the most critical need in election politics - that more GOPs vote in their own primaries. BUT, we also have to field decent candidates with character and civility. Good candidates won't run if there's no pathway to victory. Thoughts @whignewtons?

[Sarah Isgur @whignewtons]

Bad guys often agree with your politics.

We need more people voting in primaries who think a person’s qualifications to hold a position of public trust include more than angry vitriol directed at our political opponents.

Character matters. Vote like it.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

And yet, 6+ years later, every Oklahoma GOP gubernatorial candidate is still desperately trying to be seen as Trump's biggest fanboy. These are grown men who have decided their highest and best vision of their own personas is to embrace and mimic Trump and his foolishness.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

This is unhinged. If a family member behaved this way, you'd worry about them. If a CEO behaved like this, the board would meet. He's living in an alternate reality and furious when a person won't indulge his fantasies.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

@RobertHefnerV Yes, completely valid point. Elected office is a sacrifice almost any way you slice it. The only counter to the risk aversion (from your quote) is to accept the possibility of slander and speak truth boldly anyway.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

My latest column is live:

"This is not a full-throated pitch for open primaries. It’s a plea to voters to insist on higher quality candidates & an acknowledgement that the current closed primary system discourages them from running in the first place."

https://t.co/521vatI8Qr

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

These are much needed words from Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch. I hope the Trump Administration and the entire GOP in Congress mediates on them over the weekend and will restore the First Branch back to its rightful place in the legislative process.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

This is fantastic. Ben Sasse’s enduring legacy in the Senate won’t be legislative as some GOP have complained. It will be his leadership: He stood apart from MAGA as a Christian & conservative. He did it well & when no else would. https://t.co/kgeQM2NvHA

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

No American should vote for any candidate who doesn't publicly acknowledge and rebuke the events of that day as well as all the propaganda and intellectual dishonesty before that fueled it.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

Quick reminder: 5 years ago today, MAGA republicans foolishly believed the 2020 election was stolen. Their mob violently attacked its own govt while sitting Pres Trump stoked it. The VP & others hid while lunatics defaced the Capitol. It's now the party running our govt today.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

Thoughts and quotes from this year’s reading…

https://t.co/F52wuMibpG

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

This is heartbreaking news. Sasse is a top mind with incredible integrity and candor. He'll be known for lots of things, but proving that a principled Christian conservative can exist in the Senate and be influential will be a powerful example for decades to come.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

What’s stranger than James Madison University making the college football playoff? Their mascot is the Royal Duke Dog. What could be more antithetical to its founder? Should have been the Constitutionalists or the Factions, etc.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

If MAGA republicans are fixated on securing our cities, shouldn’t it include an assessment of our gun laws?

2A is valid & important. But our founders knew the relationship Btw freedom & security is not fixed. Laws must adapt for liberty to mean anything

https://t.co/lq7r8cSqE8

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

What's the first tenant of conservatism? Limited government. What is the Trump Administration doing? The opposite. Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

https://t.co/TqlYX0RjV3

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

This is inexcusable. @RyanWalters_ is turning classrooms into platforms for MAGA propaganda. His attention-seeking, performative politics are poisoning public education, & student education will be the collateral damage. He has no place in public office.

https://t.co/MBOP4ghPpY

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

Chaos and “just trust me” governing are no way to lead. If trade negotiations are needed, enter into trade negotiations. But don’t create unnecessary market uncertainty while undermining relationships with allies.

[Heath Mayo @HeathMayo]

If you’re praising an arsonist for putting out a pointless fire he started with a blowtorch and a smile, you look ridiculous.

He shouldn’t be starting pointless fires.

And yes, it was pointless because it accomplished nothing. We are right where we would’ve been if he had announced a single tariff towards China from the jump and invited allies to join us—except now our allies have less reason to trust us and cooperate.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

It’s appropriate this article about the increasing irrelevance of the Senate was published this week. Congress has failed to wield its power to override the president’s poor judgment in imposing tariffs, which are staunchly anti-conservative.

https://t.co/2T0LmlydZB

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

Exactly, on both accounts. The president trying to eliminate the Dept of Education is like a sheriff trying to eliminate the speed limit. Doesn’t matter if we agree or not, the question is about constitutional powers.

[Gregg Nunziata @greggnunziata]

I fully support eliminating the Department of Education. (Also Commerce, Labor, and probably DHS). Obviously, many functions of these should be maintained under other departments.

Oh, and all of this requires Congressional action.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

The extent of any president’s good works can never match the potential depths of their bad ones. No good policy can positively impact everyone’s lives that much. But undermining institutions and the checks and balances of government would be detrimental to everyone.

[Clay Lightfoot @LightfootClay]

It’s right the fed govt should cut waste, fraud and abuse. But without Congress leading it with agency IGs, DOGE is operating akin to a fiercely pro life advocate who insists on delivering the baby w/o medical training. This is not the democratic constitutional approach.