Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
Podcast Episode #19
This week we talk with Scott Czasak, the Executive Director of the Escanaba Downtown Development Authority about small-town economic development and the future of the Republican Party.
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News and Politics
February 2021 Republican Presidential Power Rankings: Away we go with the 2024 Presidential Election.
Hogan Traffic Relief Plan Moving Forward: Marylanders tired of being stuck in Capital Beltway traffic recently received good news from the Hogan Administration.
Sports
55 Prop Bets for Super Bowl LV: Just like Aristotle Onassis' whale-foreskin-stool filled yacht, this ship runs on props.
The 10 Least Important People In The Super Bowl: See how accurate this was compared to last nightâs game.
Culture
Can the Super Bowl Halftime Show: This one trick can save 18 minutes of our lives.
Jeopardy! Guest Hosts Jump The Shark: With the addition of Dr. Oz, things are taking a noticeable turn for the worst.
Shameless Plugs
My latest column for The Capital: The Maryland General Assembly finally arrives in the digital age.
On Tuesday I had the opportunity to go on The Jim Bohannon Show to talk about the 2024 Presidential Election and more with a nationwide audience. Click here to listen.
Thanks to Maryland Reporter for publishing my op-ed: What Kind of GOP Do We Want?
The Monday Thought
So you may have heard, but the Super Bowl last night.
The Tampa Bay Buc that had the most ink coming into this season was Tom Brady. After 20 seasons with the New England Patriots, Brady decamped for Tampa Bay.
For those of you who may not totally be football fans, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had won exactly one Super Bowl, nineteen years ago. They had not made the playoffs since 2007. Theyâd had two winning seasons in the last decade. It was a completely different culture than what Brady had in New England.
So he did what any established leader does; he worked to bring in new people and started to build a culture of winning. I think he did an OK job of that.
It wasnât all Brady, obviously. Head Coach Bruce Arians helped Brady in establishing the culture and let Brady cultivate that culture. Brady was able to convince established starts to come in and help the team develop. He convinced Rob Gronkowski, who a year ago was doing thisâŚ
âŚ.to come out of retirement.
So what can we learn from all of this?
If Tom Brady shows anything here is that organizational culture is established from the top of the organization, either its leader or its most prominent member.
When you think about it, that explains a lot about the Republican Party when a boorish liberal like Donald Trump is the face of the party. Iâm pretty sure this guy on the field would fit well in the modern GOP.
(OK thatâs probably not true; I just wanted an excuse to use that audio)
But in all seriousness, look at the last five years of the GOP and what do you see? The victimhood. The conspiracy theories. The delusional behavior. The glorification of political violence. The demand for government handouts. QAnon. The attempted coup. The rejection of the Constitution. The demonization of free elections. And you can trace every single one of those behaviors back to Donald Trump, who has been the Republican lodestar for the last four years.
If Republicans want to change the organizational culture of the party, theyâll need to find a new leader to change the culture.