Jon Bramnick is a Republican in name, Save Jerseyans, but the long-time Christie ally and recently-minted LD21 State Senator never criticizes Democrats. Ever. In fact, his only meaningful contribution to the epic 2021 contest between Phil Murphy and Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli was hosting a backyard barbecue starring Murphy, a not-so-subtle “fuck you” to the Ciattarelli campaign which Bramnick had clearly concluded was going to lose and therefore not worth damaging his perceived capital with the Murphy Administration.
Nothing has changed over the past two years.
Just this morning, Bramnick took a shot at Tucker Carlson for releasing never-before-seen footage of the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill.
“The Fox News reports denying that January 6 was a violent riot are absurd,” said Bramnick. “We, as Republicans, must stand together and speak out against this nonsense. We shouldn’t fear extremists.”
Bramnick is a first-term state (!) senator in the minority party. His political influence is roughly on the same level as a College Republican chapter president on a large purple statue university campus, and that might be exaggerating Bramnick’s political heft. “Why weigh in at all?” is a fair question.
We can conclude without stretching our collective imagination that Bramnick does, in fact, believe what he’s saying. At a time when Democrats are advocating drag queen story hours for pre-K kids, outlawing gas stoves, censoring opponents on social media and offending our basic liberties (and bank account balances) in a million different way, he sincerenly believes that a handful of assholes cosplaying as vikings on Capitol Hill a full 2+ years ago are THE ultimate “threat to democracy.” He’s posted a crime bill or two, but aside from that, he’s ignored most of the major issues arising in Trenton which put Republican coalition voters on edge. He never calls out the Murphy Administration for its excesses, and even went as far as vocally endorsing Murphy’s pick for attorney general who played a central role in Murphy’s lockdown regime.
A silly outlook for a GOP official? Sure, to any truly reasonable person.
But let’s not forget that Bramnick also hails from the Union County woke suburban enclave of Westfield, a former GOP stronghold that’s dramatically changed over in recent years as the country club class has unflinchingly adopted the cultural values of the Left. Bramnick’s virtue-signaling over national issues with no real correlation to his job is also clearly calculated to convince his neighbors (and voters) that he’s really on their side in the culture wars. Aside from the cumulative value amount of taxes levied by Trenton? There’s little daylight between Bramnick and Murphy.
The only real question in my mind: at what point does the NJGOP state committee grow a pair and censure Bramnick for his gross displays of naked fealty to the Murphy Democrats who decimated our nursing homes, corrupt our children, and make no apologies for turning the Garden State into a socialist nightmight that near-retirees of all parties can’t wait to escape for warmer, redder states?
At some point, being a Republican needs to mean something if we’re ever going to retake the majority in Trenton and across all 21 counties. It’s not about agreeing on EVERY topic. That’d be ridiculous in a two-party system across 50 states housing 330+ million souls. We should, however, demand that our elected standard bearers at least PRETEND to share the electoral defeat of the radical Left as a core guiding principle.
