With instant face recognition for North ….
The National Riffle Association looks to increase its membership ….
Incoming National Rifle Association President Oliver North said Sunday that he wants to expand the powerful group’s membership by millions as it looks to fend off gun control efforts amid an outbreak of fatal school shootings.
North outlined his plans in a “Fox News Sunday” interview after 10 people were killed Friday in a shooting at Santa Fe High School near Houston. The massacre has again prompted calls for Congress to take action.
North, best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal during the 1980s, said Sunday that he is looking at ways to more than double the NRA’s membership of 6 million — an expansion aimed at boosting the group’s political clout.
“My goal is a million more members,” he said. “Then I’m going to go out and ask every NRA member to recruit one more. That will put 14 million activists on the street — not the types [billionaire philanthropist] George Soros is fielding, not the types that showed up down there in Dallas to protest our right to gather. But those who are going to vote for people who support the Second Amendment.”
In discussing Friday’s mass shooting, North reiterated the NRA position that guns are not to blame….
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I remember when Republicans were popping boners about this crook getting elected to the Senate, thinking it would be the springboard go him running for President in 1996.
It scared the hell out of me and was one factor in me quitting the GOP.
Republicans have been wack for a while. Trump just took them to a new level.
I never heard of Oliver North talked about as a Presidential candidate in 1996. He was just going to be a freshman Senator had he been elected in 1994. There were plenty of other prospective candidates that cycle.
I remember watching the 1994 Virginia Republican convention on CSPAN and it was all very exciting to me as a relatively new political junkie on the Republican side with the huge crowd and all the signs and the contested nomination fight with the various speeches and then the votes and the acceptance speech, and Ollie walking out to “Eye of the Tiger.”
It was very exciting, although I can’t quite remember if it was as exciting in the way that Scott said it should have been.
These were College Republican types who imagined that a Sen. North woukd be a “take no prisoners” type who woukd stick it to the liberals and the media. To them the less political experience the better and they weren’t concerned about his wrongdoings because it was all lies anyway.
Sound familiar? Trump didn’t cone out of nowhere to take over the GOP. They’ve been trying out mini Trumps for years.
If Ollie is anything like Trump?
The organization is in deep trouble
Oliver North served his country. He is much braver and much smarter than Trump.
This is the first day I have ever heard that Oliver North was being talked about as a potential Presidential candidate.. ever. Had he been elected to the Senate, he would not have run in 1996.
Chuck Robb, the LBJ son in law, and incumbent Senator who narrowly beat North in a four way race that year, was the one who had been talked about as a potential future Presidential candidate, but he had a bit of an extra-marital problem (pre-Clinton) that nixed that. (One of the other Senate candidates in that race was former Governor Doug Wilder who had run for President as a Democrat in the 1992 cycle.)
I should clarify that Wilder dropped out before the voting and a split Republican vote in the three way race allowed Robb to beat North by 3 points.
Yes Ollie North served his country. He’s also a crook and a right wing wacko.
I don’t know how serious any talk of him running for President in 1996 was-but had he been elected to the Senate I don’t see why he wouldn’t have run. Hell Alan Keyes ran that yeae, as did the homophobic bigot Bob Dorman.
He ran a serious, mainstream Republican campaign in 1994. I remember following the election and I never heard any talk of him setting himself up to run for President. There was a documentary made about it and that topic never came up. I suppose I don’t know exactly what got Mizzou College Republicans sexually aroused that year.
North showed genuine bravery during the Vietnam War and was highly decorated, which of course makes him very different than Trump. I was too young to follow Iran-Contra, but all indications from the time is that he came across favorably when he testified before Congress (in full uniform) and of course it is also a fact that his convictions were overturned and charges were dismissed, clearing him of any criminality.
It is also true that he may have lost in 1994 because Nancy Reagan went public in the final days of that campaign and said that he was a liar.
Of course Scott is correct, there was lots of chatter about what a bright future Ollie North had in politics once he was elected to the Senate. But some people, as I recall, thought George Allen was going to be our next President too. How wrong they all turned out to be.
Amazing, I haven’t checked in much since we have been in France. The connectivity here at the house we have been renting is slow or down much of the time, and we have a house full of guests. Twelve of my oldest friends are here for a belated birthday party in French wine country. Lots of fun.
I find in hypocritical and amazing that our resident Republican would try to defend Ollie North (a drug dealer) on any level. But, he pulled the same whataboutism out of his ass the other day when he defended (in a backhanded fashion) Trump calling people animals.
The Nazis used that type of language to describe Jews back in the 30’s and there were lots of people that made excuses for them too.
Sorry, the Republican Party has sold its soul and the return of Ollie North only underscores how the conservatives have been taken over by fringe elements of the Party. The Party’s only function these days, now that they have given millionaires tax breaks, has been to protect Trump at all costs.
But, yes, there is no doubt that Ollie North was the darling of the Virginia GOP and they dreamed of sending him to the White House. So happy to say that the vast majority of the GOP office holders from Virginia have simply been sent home.
North was involved in illegal activities per the Boland amendment. The charges against him were dismissed on what what largely a technicality. But I guess when a Republican helps out Iran, CG is willing to completely forgive him.
Oliver North and Bob McFarlane were helping Iran against Iraq, and the Contras against the Sandinistas *. So I doubt that any sympathy that CG might extend to Lt. Col. North would come from a shared antipathy towards the Ayatollahs.
* A weird Hobson’s choice for me in a contest which others saw in blinding clarity, one way or the other.. One wing of the old Socialist Party, Social Democrats USA, favoured the Contras and hated the Sandinistas like poison as Castroite Stalinists, while the other wing, Democratic Socialists of America, saw the ugly fascist side of the Contras and backed the Sandinistas. As a member of DSA who fell somewhere between the two camps, I could never pick a clear side in either the Nicaraguan civil war/revolution/counter-revolution or the parallel struggle in El Salvador. The deterioration of Daniel Ortega’s presidency — as of the Chávez/Maduro/Bolivarian régime in Venezuela, doesn’t particularly surprise me — as I’ve never trusted Stalinists, even of the Cuban flavour. Daniel Ortega wants to pass the Nicaraguan Presidency on to his wife, while thousands of Nicaraguans protest against him in the streets.
I had forgotten that Irsn was still at war with Iraq at that time. That war lasted forever.
The Bush efforts broke the balancing of that fight and destabilized the region….