A.G. Gancarski
At a “town hall” held in a claustrophobia-inducing small meeting room in an office park in Jacksonville’s Southside, GOP U.S. Senate candidate Carlos Beruff made news by avoiding making news.
Unlike his visit to the St. Johns County REC last month, he avoided calling the president an “animal.”
Indeed, he avoided much quotability at all, as he made a cogent case for his “businessman/outsider”-styled run.
He discussed his history of donating to candidates, and how that led him into runs for elected office.
“Too many times over the last 23 years,” Beruff said, “they let me down.”
And he drew a meaningful distinction between himself and the career politicians he is running against.
“If I can’t get anything done in 12 years,” Beruff said, regarding his two-term pledge, “I’m a schmuck.”
Beruff believes the fathers of the country “never intended for people to spend 20, 30, 40 years up there” in Washington.
And he brought out a new anecdote about a conversation he held at some point with a politician, who said “the little people don’t know what’s going on.”
“You SOB,” Beruff said, “I am the little people.”
A great line for a Tea Party-inflected crowd, in which multiple Benghazi Matters-type graphics and an Iron Cross tattoo were spotted, along with a unique car with a Rebel flag license plate out front.
Beruff hit the expected tropes, including “the military has been underfunded for the last seven years” (which will be news to the 14 or so countries America has bombed in that period) and “Donald Trump has to be our next president,” as “the country can’t survive another Democratic president.”
Beruff warned, also, against embracing Euro-style socialism: “If you [went] to France 30 years ago, go today. You can see the decay.”
Beruff also made points about the federal budget and internationalism.
“If you think we can continue to run a $500 billion-a-year deficit,” Beruff said, before pivoting off that dependent clause to say “wage growth is dead.”
And then there was the requisite foreign policy piece: “the only way to be safe in this world is to be so powerful that no one messes with you.”
Beruff noted America is “no longer able to project force around the world,” again a surprise to those at war with American forces in Africa and Asia.
The candidate wants the border closed, in part because of “heroin and fentanyl.”
Apparently, in Louisville, Kentucky, heroin is available for $5 a dose these days.
What was notable about Beruff’s remarks was the bait he didn’t take.
A audience member called Hillary Clinton “the wicked witch of the west.”
To the disappointment of media on hand, Beruff didn’t riff on that.
Nor did he improvise after an audience member said, “McConnell’s no answer. He’s gotta go.”
After the speech, Beruff passed on an opportunity to comment on Trump’s “Mexican judge” comments also.
Again, well-played.
Beruff has done an effective job this campaign parlaying a media buy into a double-digit position in most polls.
It looks as if his campaign has moved to Phase II, where he is avoiding the kind of verbal gaffes that got media interest and pushback earlier in the spring.
