When you were in junior high school, did you know a guy who would do anything to get attention? Someone so desperate for validation he might eat garbage or insects or whatever at lunch? Maybe you met this guy a few years later, when he was working on his gender studies minor because he thought it would help him meet girls in college, but he quit when he realized it wasn't helping?
If you've never known that guy, come to Utah: because now that guy has — somehow — stumbled into our governor's mansion.
While the conservative majority of Utah has to look with jealousy at other state parties who are finding the iron to push back on the Biden administration and false priests of wokeness, Cox weirdly believes it's his mission to reshape us. He encourages gender dysphoria among Utah's youth, wants male athletes to destroy girls in sports, supports the Utah Jazz's policy of discrimination against white children, and evinces mask hypocrisy usually saved for California Democrats.
What's baffling is that Cox doesn't need to do this. He's not a Republican governor in a blue state; the last Democrat to win Utah was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. There's no reason for Cox to preen for the state's far-left, mostly anti-Mormon news media except his own desperate insecurity: He will eat garbage or insects or whatever he has to in order to get attention.
Cox might excuse his headline-chasing virtue signaling with the need to win over young voters, but if that's true, he's moving in the wrong direction: The violent extremism of the transgender movement is alienating young people — including actual sexual minorities, like this wonderfully honest YouTuber who insists the T needs to be dropped because it's a far jump from "love is love" to "let's mutilate little children for profit."
Yet Cox is leaning as hard as he can into the transgender movement, to the point of conjuring up crocodile tears recently on the need for underage gender reassignment because if we don't mutilate the body of a child experiencing what is probably temporary gender dysphoria, that person might kill themselves.
The unique gentleness of Utah politics has allowed Cox to sneak into office. Because so many kind, safe, conservative people here like to sit back and tell themselves all is well, it's become easy for liberals like Cox to slip past the goalie.
In last year's Republican primary, then Lt. Gov. Cox edged out a narrow victory over runner-up Jon Huntsman Jr. — beating him by just 1.2% in a four-way race. If the state demanded run-offs in photo-finishes like this, Huntsman would have crushed Cox head to head.
One of the reasons our politics are so relaxed is because the state is so well run. We rarely feel that politicians need to compete because Utah is arguably the best-run state in the country.
Utah has long championed traditional values while demonstrating the power of conservative leadership. The state is consistently ranked among the best state for business — something The Economist explicitly credits to Mormon culture — with USA Today naming Provo the city with the No. 1 economy in the country.
Utah is always ranked among the most fiscally responsible and best managed states, volunteering, and charitable giving. Utah is such an ensign to the nation of good governance that Gallup just called us "the best U.S. state to live in" while Bloomberg reported that "Utah keeps the American dream alive."
It also has the best income quality in the country — much better than, say, San Francisco.
Conservative, religious Utah doesn't need to get with the times — the times need to get with us. We surely don't need a pathetic, spineless man-child like Cox to try to "fundamentally transform" us into yet another blue hellhole like neighboring Colorado.
Utah natives are slowly realizing that mountains our ancestors fled to 170 years ago don't protect us anymore. Woke priest-crafts are everywhere, and "moderates" like Cox do us no more good trying to appease Democrat Socialists than Neville Chamberlain did trying to appease National Socialists 80 years ago.
If Utahns want to continue to live in the best state, we need to fight for it.
This week the Utah Republican Party is holding its annual convention. Because it's an off year, no one is seeking elected office, but people are running for party positions. Many of us are hoping we will get party leaders blessed with both the knowledge of what is and stake and the ardor to fight for it — even if that means fighting against the party establishment.
If spineless Spencer Cox can't stand up to the forces polluting our mountain home so dear, maybe he won't stand up to stronger members of his own party.
Who knows, if we get really lucky, Cox might resign to finish that gender studies minor.
Jared Whitley is a long-time politico who has worked in the U.S. Congress, White House and defense industry. He is an award-winning writer, having won best blogger in the state from the Utah Society of Professional Journalists (2018) and best columnist from Best of the West (2016). He earned his MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai. Read Jared Whitley's reports — More Here.