A UtahNews Special Report
SPENCER COX: “MR. CIVILITY?”
Not long ago we were greeted with the news that America’s most “Woke” Republican governor, our own Spencer Cox, was named the new chair of the National Governor’s Association. When asked what he is going to concentrate on as head of the Guvs, he went to his “go to” issue, “civility.” This was as predictable as the sun coming up over the Wasatch. It was a safe pick for Cox because 1) it helps him avoid more controversial issues, and 2) he has a lot of experience talking about how civil he is, lecturing you on how civil you should be, while he smears and labels his serious opponents at will, anyway. So his fellow governors will be treated to his new initiative “Disagree Better,” and to his condescending tone when he discusses dealing with difficult people like a mythical “MAGA” uncle who is imparting “baseless election conspiracies.”
His constant lecturing on civility and the “Utah Way” of everyone being nicey-nicey is somewhat of a mystery to those who watch Cox closely and don’t fall under the spell of Utah’s corporate media. He is not nice to those who mount actual opposition to him in key issue areas. Cox, who cultivates the good boy from the farm persona, has lost his temper in public more than once, making a full public display. And finally, he is a politician who occasionally must seek votes from the public in Utah, which means taking some conservative positions to keep his job. Nonetheless, he works hard to overcome this impediment to continue to earn the accolades of the U.S. establishment media and the global power structure.
Several erstwhile citizens ran directly into the Cox M.O. in 2021 as part of the effort to put the restoration of precinct voting with hand counts on the ballot. Cox had been traversing the state with his Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson lauding the virtue of his position on nasty and divisive political rhetoric….. (he insists he’s against it!). But he looked on approvingly while the LG stated
There are people in Utah who have made it clear they want to get rid of mail-in voting and restrict access to the ballot for people who do not look or think like them.
So, if you have real concerns about Utah’s current election system (which was essentially designed by Spencer Cox) you are a racist. This might have been news to the black and Latino supporters of SecureVoteUtah. Mr. Civility himself assigned dark motives to his fellow citizens with concerns about our elections. They “are only interested in lowering the trust in the system so that they can make it harder for people to vote.” No “validation” of the right to have a different opinion. No “we can agree to disagree.” No, it was straight to his certain knowledge of his opponents’ motives, to cue up the ad hominem attack, the one the professor said in your Logic class was a tactic used by those who do not have facts, or logic, on their side.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox speaks at the National Governor’s Association White House meeting in February, 2023. He captured the attention of Governors J.B. Pritzker, Illinois, and Kathy Hochul, New York among others during his remarks. Cox has sought a bipartisan image at the NGA and claims his best friend among the governors is the covid authoritarian Phil Murphy (D-NJ). White House Photo
Cox has been “all in” in what many are now calling the Disinformation (or misinformation) scam. It’s a scam because making official pronouncements of “(dis)misinformation” is a great way to shut up your opposition. Cox has been quoted as saying that “misinformation is killing us.” At that moment he was referring to vaccine opponents. Ironically, as damning facts continue to come forward, many of them would agree with him. Government pronouncements and bought-and-paid-for “news” stories may have killed many who put their faith in a corrupt public health system.
Utah’s governor has stated that those who raise concerns about mail-in ballots, computer tabulation of votes, and cell phone voting are “playing a dangerous game,” charging the language up to the level that could justify suppression. Evidently, having strong views that are not his views is dangerous to the Republic. Oddly, years of Democrat criticism of the election system rolls right off the governor’s back. We should note that Cox has recently served, according to very partisan CNN, as a bipartisan prop for the highly partisan occupant of the White House, wandering Joe Biden, who is also a proven election denier.
Cox has spoken to meetings populated by members of Utah’s establishment lauding experimentation with “smart” cities. The problem is there are citizens of his state who look at Oxford’s smart “15 Minute City” and the aspirations of the World Economic Forum types and don’t want anything to do with this. So Cox was very unhappy when We ARE the People’s Jason Preston confronted him about it on the floor of the Utah Republican State Convention. This is a place where people can be found in large numbers who want nothing to do with “smart cities” or anything else from the World Economic Forum. Cox’s reaction: he cast aspersions on Preston’s motives, swore, lied, called Mr. Preston a liar, briefly lost his temper, and actually pushed closed fists into his questioner’s chest. Governor, is this “the Utah Way?”
Cox was found swearing and snarling on Twitter about a supposed racist incident at BYU which never happened. He continued to give preferential treatment to certain covid patients on the basis of race, even after his administration was admonished by the federal government. He sided with transsexual advocates before electoral politics and a potential legislative rebellion caused him to move in the other direction. Yes, and he did ask a Utah student about pronoun preference on a statewide virtual town hall. And let us not forget that the National Education Association, not a bastion of traditional values or Utah-style conservatism, or even “the Utah Way,” was Cox’s fifth largest donor in his last election campaign. He took $75,000 in campaign funds from this teacher’s union, a leading purveyor of gender, racial, historical and other nonacademic nonsense.
SPENCER COX: CONSERVATIVE?
Gov. Spencer Cox has assumed some conservative positions. When Utah Treasurer Marlo Oakes took a strong stand against ESG (Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance), Cox joined Mitt Romney and others in supporting him with a letter. He did more than that. The generally pro-Cox Deseret News tells us
Cox recently signed several ESG-related bills into law, including HB449 which prohibits companies from coordinating “to intentionally destroy certain companies” or industries, according to the bill’s text. He also signed SB96, which would require “a public entity to invest public funds in accordance with the prudent investor rule” and SB97, a companion bill to bar public entities from contracting with companies that “engage in certain boycott actions.”
The Deseret News story also states Cox complained to Fox Business News that ESG allows for “riskier investments because of political ideology.” But not so fast. Yes, Gov. Cox is on record opposing ESG, but soon we saw stories where he was “striking a more conciliatory tone.” In a speech at Gettysburg Cox said
We can either get a change of heart from politicians who are exploiting ESG or citizens can insist on finding better politicians who are willing to listen to each other and strive to work together…
Hmmm. Cox seems always willing to “work together” with globalist-connected leftists, who in this case are pushing ESG hard. What kind of conciliation is he talking about? You either force linkage of investments with a political agenda or you prevent that from happening. When we hear our State Treasurer Marlin Oaks talk, who warned the entire nation of the dangers of ESG, he’s not “striking a conciliary tone.” Is Mr. Oakes “exploiting ESG?” It is interesting to see who Cox is willing to have a talk with to hammer out a compromise. Not the citizens on the right flank who criticize his election system, that’s for sure.
The Governor made national news in standing up to the often-squeamish Utah legislature by vetoing a bill that would have protected girls sports from transgender competitors. Cox cited suicide rates among “transgender youth,” stating dramatically “I want them to live.” Time cites it as one of the reasons Cox is considered one of the top 100 emerging leaders in the world. But closer to re-election time, he struck a different chord. Well, kind of. Cox was widely understood as “banning” gender transition procedures for youth. CNN, NPR, CBS, the New York Times, National Review, and Yahoo News all used the term “ban” or “banning,” according to any search engine you look at. But if you read the transcript of Cox’s Face the Nation interview in July, he made it clear he considers his action a “pause” in these medical efforts, not a ban. Hmmm. In this case Cox laments that “it’s been impossible, I believe, to get good information here in the United States right now.”
Cox has been looking at Europe to get transgender wisdom, “where they don’t have the same culture war battles that we’re having here.” He tells CBS that he does consider America’s corrupted legacy medical associations such as the American Society of Pediatrics as politicized by the Left. At the same time, it’s hard not to conclude that the Governor is rebuking what a hostile mainstream media likes to call “culture warriors,” the folks with traditional values Cox is supposed to be allied with. In fact, among the so-called “culture warriors” there are brave voices who have stood up to oppose “gender re-assignment” who have faced threats of every kind. These include American scientists and medical experts who have not succumbed to “woke” requirements and are providing “good information.”
Gov. Cox signed a bill making Utah a “constitutional carry state,” dispensing with the requirement to have a permit to carry a gun. However, while he thinks there are other causes of gun violence not related to infringements on 2nd Amendment rights, he told the mainstream media relic Face the Nation that he is “having conversations.”
Well, we’re working as a bipartisan group of governors, we actually formed a subcommittee. I’m a part of that subcommittee. Several other governors, Republicans and Democrats, working together. We’ve been working with Congress having conversations, trying to figure out what we can do.
It would appear to be political suicide to sell-out Utah gun owners in concert with some of the most extreme leftwing politicians in the country (think Governors Newsom, Pritzger or Whitmer, or his buddy Phil Murphy). At the same time, I doubt Utah 2A advocates are brimming with confidence when thinking about our governor “having conversations” with those types, whether they are governors or members of Congress.
Cox has made a lot of political hay with a double bill-signing going after Big Tech and the negative effects of social media on our children, a laudable goal. But despite the media ballyhoo, is it actually significant? How is this going to be enforced? Is creating a hackable database of all adult and underage social media users in Utah a step in the right direction?
Meanwhile, on the not even close to conservative side, Cox’s leadership is plunging us headlong into WEF (World Economic Forum) favorite “decentralized blockchain” (see Toward Disaster: Utah’s Election Trajectory) which is a feature of his electronic ID project. Experimenting with ranked-choice voting, and voting on your cell phone (over the internet) continues. Let’s not forget those “smart cities,” despite his hazy memory on the issue. Cox pretty much has his way with the legislature, with one lobbyist telling us his vindictiveness and close alliance with Speaker Brad Wilson keeps most of the legislators in line. Cox has “tentatively endorsed” Wilson to replace departing U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, who Cox recently lavished with praise.
Spencer Cox is the global establishment’s favorite GOP governor. He is a frequent guest on mainstream network talk shows where he appears to play the role of an enlightened statesman who is keeping conservative Utahns in line. U.S. State Department photo
SPENCER COX: IN SUMMARY
Cox has a short fuse and is prone to profanity, odd traits for a “civility” advocate. He seems to be much more comfortable with liberal Democrats than those who occupy the right flank of his own party. He is real interested in building unity with the faction of American politics destructive of traditional values, individual rights, and a free market economy. The Utah governor exhibits little interest or intention of casting an olive branch toward his right flank. He has conducted himself as a conservative in some fashion, but there seems to be a dubious, vacillating quality about almost all of it. He has strayed outside conservative lines on several occasions. He regularly appears in the national corporate media with favorable coverage. Cox has garnered positive attention from the left-leaning, authoritarian, globalist elite and that fellow who currently occupies the White House.
Yes, we have highlighted the negative here because, well, there’s a lot of it. The Utah “mainstream” media has given us generally a glowing picture of the governor and surely some balance is in order. Unlike Cox, we claim no omniscience regarding the motives of others, so we don’t really know why he does what he does and says what he says. But we will close with an observation. Gov. Spencer Cox, Republican of Utah, has one big thing in common with his pal, Gov. Phil Murphy, Democrat of New Jersey. In today’s political climate each governs as far to the left as they can get away within their respective states. Will Utah’s conservative-leaning voters be tolerant of Cox’s record in his first term? Will serious competition emerge to challenge him? We shall see.