Delaware County, Pa has been reliably Republican for a long time, but that’s been shifting of late. Curt Weldon fell to a scandal and Joe Sestak, and the county even elected a Democrat to the PA House in Bryan Lentz. But the Republicans have still held a tight grip on local offices, such as the County Commission and particularly in Newtown. That strong local Republican leadership is now fracturing. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

John “Jack” DiPompeo, a Newtown Township supervisor and lifelong Republican, took an emotional trip to the Delaware County Bureau of Elections in Media last Friday.
Fed up with what he considers bullying by county Republicans, DiPompeo switched parties, making him the first Democrat in recent memory to sit on the Board of Supervisors in Newtown.

“It’s a very hard thing personally to do,” DiPompeo said. “I’m walking away from stuff I’ve believed in all my life. But my feeling is, really, I didn’t desert the party. The party deserted me.”

DiPompeo and John Custer, a former Republican supervisor who says the Delco GOP forced him off the board two years ago, are now running for two open supervisor seats as Democrats. They also want to convince like-minded Newtown Republicans to jump ship and follow them to the Democratic Party.

“We have hundreds who say they’re just dying to do it,” said John Battista, 62, another new Democrat who has been involved in Newtown local politics for decades and who plans to run Custer and DiPompeo’s campaign. “None of us have anything to gain from what we’re doing. If we didn’t think the people were behind us, we wouldn’t do it.”

It is important for Democrats, of course, to make headway both with national elections and with local elections, so this is good news. What’s interesting is the response of the Republican bigwigs in the area. Michael Gillen leads the Newtown Republicans, and he had this to say:

“It doesn’t sound like they’re really committed to the Republican philosophy they claim they were,” Gillin said.

If the Republican philosophy is that Custer and DiPompeo should not be allowed to think as they wish, to back candidates they agree with, but must instead follow the exact party line, even if that means backing the corrupt Curt Weldon, then the Republican “philosophy” out there is going to cause a lot more losses than these two minor officials. Heck, that philosophy has cost a whole bunch of voters in the county as well.

In other news, there’s a Utah GOP whack job on the loose. This time it is Utah state senator Chris Buttars, who thinks gay activists are the biggest scourge our country has to face. Forget Al Qaeda, forget a dismal economy, and forget anything else. Buttars is afraid of the gay, and he wants to make sure that’s the focus of his constituency. Yes, he’s a whack job. Here’s the lead from ABC4.com in Salt Lake:

Utah state senator Chris Buttars is now comparing some in the gay community to radical Muslims.

Buttars makes this strong comment in an upcoming documentary about Prop 8.

And they come just a year after remarks by Buttars greatly offended many African-Americans.

In late January of this year, Senator Buttars sat down for an interview with documentary maker and former ABC 4 reporter Reed Cowan.

Cowan’s documentary is called, “8: The Mormon Proposition. “

In it, Buttars not only makes the comparison to radical Muslims, but also suggests that gays could pose the greatest threat to America.

I remember reading the recent Rolling Stone interview with Sean Penn and how the interviewer tried to tie the present to the past of Harvey Milk, where he battled such dimwits as Anita Bryant. Bryant was always saying that gay and lesbian citizens were a monstrous threat to our society. This kind of hyperbole and rabvid hate is exactly what ruined Bryant’s career. We can hope decent people in Utah, if there are enough of them, will bring Chris Buttars to the same end. Heck, the guy is old and looks like a frog, though, so maybe he’ll retire before they vote him out. That seems to me the fate of opposition to gay and lesbian civil rights – it is going to age itself out of business. It is a matter of time. Let’s just hope the party of hate goes the same direction.

Finally, it seems that Eric Cantor wanted to celebrate GOP solidarity against the stimulus package, so he put together a video. The tune in the background is Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle.” As reported on Huffington Post, Aerosmith is asking the Republican Whip Cantor to cease and desist. From Talking Points Memo:

Aerosmith wasn’t feeling the love. Cantor’s clip has been pulled from YouTube after a copyright infringement claim made by Stage Three Music, which owns the rights to “Back in the Saddle.”

The GOP’s use of the tune “was something we, as the publishers, didn’t approve and would not have approved without going to the writers,” Connie Ashton, director of copyright and licensing at Stage Three, told me. “Aerosmith did not approve of its use and also wanted to have it taken down,” she added.

Ashton added that House Republicans never contacted Stage Three to put in a request for use of “Back in the Saddle.”

The whack job Cantor didn’t even bother to get permission to use the song. Republicans feel such an entitlement that they think they can use the product of anyone’s labor. Watch your house and car, folks. They voted against a middle class tax cut, they now stole the intellectual product of Aerosmith, and they could be after your property next.