We reported earlier this week that Muncie City Council-member Brandon Garrett left the Democratic party to join the GOP. In a script that could not have been written by Garrett himself, the party continued its soapbox about “common-sense” and a continuing “realignment” happening locally.

If you’ve followed the party dynamics in the last few years, you know that since 2022 dissident Democrats have managed to take a bigger piece of precinct seats from the Old Guard, who took orders from corrupt Dennis Tyler and Phil Nichols. And, recently elected new Chairman Andrew Dale, who was considered a dissident against the Tyler folks in the 2019 campaign. But Republicans want you to leave that aside, and pretend that the current leadership is both too corrupt and too woke.

Beyond them trying to have it both ways with messaging, it’s Garrett who realizes that he could easily be primaried thanks to the new party cohort, and with no other choice has now decided to flip parties. And, along with that, has a reputation as a 214er himself, having been caucused in 2021 to fill the seat of Ray Dudley and having generations of his family in lockstep with the dominant faction of his former party. Those are the only two explanations why Garrett has rarely voted against Democrats in council and yet is suddenly switching. The only time in recent memory that he voted outside his party was on Ordinance 7-25 in April, where over half a million dollars in opioid settlement funds were used for pay raises for public safety, instead of going to addiction programs. Many people were immediately resentful with him and Jerry Dishman, another Old Guard 214er who has held his council seat since ’08.

When it comes to these Old Guards flipping, it’ll become predictable soon enough. I would bet $50 that Jerry Dishman does the same thing by the end of the year. It’s as pathetic as Eric Hoffman making his sobby “why I left the left” announcement and totally ignoring why he’s unpopular (for one because of conservative beliefs he’s held for years), and instead is out to attach himself to the irrelevant culture wars that the GOP is insatiable about. Hoffman will repeat slogans about the GOP all of a sudden being working-class, when conservatism fundamentally can’t do anything good for labor. Not with deregulation and privatization pushing unions out from the bargaining table.

Both Brandon Garrett and Eric Hoffman were better aligned with Phil Nichols and Dennis Tyler than they ever were with this new cohort. But thanks to new Republican Chairman Tim Overton, all they have to care about is culture war repetition, never about labor issues or for a better future for this city. Even in his short time being in the position he’s already been shown to be incapable of making decisions for his party, and he doesn’t seem to have a grasp of local issues.

In the public square, and by that I mean the community group psychos on Facebook, values of common sense have nothing to do with bringing labor halls back to Muncie, but internet memes about transgender swastika’s. And in which case, it sounds like it would have made more sense to point the finger at yours truly for bringing “rAdIcAl trAnzGeNeDR iDeOlOgY” to Muncie with Res. 14-24, but those Republicans never have. Why? Because it’s not in their interest to give any accidental promotion to the Post-Democrat, and Ryan Webb is a total pussy. Dan Ridenour has only ever referred to me as “naysayer,” but I’ve heard from enough people to know that our nervous wreck of a mayor stays up at night thanks to my articles.

I said earlier that they want it both ways, because on one hand the local GOP wants the case of the Tyler administration to be a continual, constant reminder of what happens if you don’t like their notion that “government is a business,” and yet even if a party evidently moves away from that, it’s still corrupt and gay also. In actuality, people like myself want a return to mass politics, home rule for our city, and above all power to labor. Many of us are done with opportunists and their slogans about it being “blue no matter who,” coming from people who can’t tell the difference between blue moonshine and a bottle of bleach. And there they go.

But on a broader level, it’s better described as class dealignment than anything else. Nobody actually expects their livelihoods to be impacted by who we vote for anymore, so the only thing you can draw from politics nowadays is owning the libs on Facebook and watching the world burn. I’ll take building coalitions any day over what the Delaware County GOP has in store this year.