On Day 1, plucky pioneer Patriots dazzled

Column

The day will come, predicts Bill DeClemente, when the newest pin in the Pasco Republican Party club map will outgrow its current cozy confines. After all, he says, "Everybody wants to bet the horse coming across the finish line. Nobody wants to bet the horse that's still in the gate."

In other words, when it comes to organizations, people are like railbirds at the track. Until they measure performance, they prefer the sidelines to commitment. But there's also a lot to be said for the thrill of charging out of the gate into the unknown.

The courage of pioneers thus established, Thursday morning about 20 plucky souls — plus six candidates and Bill Bunting — arranged themselves in the card room at the Timber Greens clubhouse for coffee, pastries and the chartering of the Pasco Republican Patriots, the county's 14th GOP affiliate.

About that. The rules of the Republican (and Democratic, for that matter) road are explicit. Even so, ink on the club's certificate barely was dry when DeClemente, the group's freshly-minted president, managed to violate his oath. Blinkered to the reality of life in a rigidly disciplined sect, DeClemente introduced West Tampa businessman Tom Castellano to gin up support for his challenge to U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa, a Democrat.

Castellano finished second in the District 11 GOP primary in 2010. This time he's running as an independent. Even as Castellano made his case, Bunting — as Pasco's Republican state committeeman, the state GOP's sheriff-in-residence — invited DeClemente out of the room to explain his misstep. (Briefly: The party platform is reserved for candidates officially waving the party banner.)

That minor stumble aside — it's not like the newcomers rejected the official party line on a major local tax issue — the launch was hitch-free and memorable, thanks to the enthusiastic rendering of "Happy Birthday" to club secretary Karen Fuller, and for Walter Golebiewski's impromptu monologue about coming to America after growing up in Warsaw, Poland, under Soviet Russia's boot.

One snippet: "Whatever else was said about (President Franklin) Roosevelt, the deals he made at Tehran and Yalta, after World War II, the whole world got freedom … except us."

Another: "Hitler and Stalin were the same kind of murderers. But when it came to the number of kills, Hitler was a schoolboy compared to Stalin."

And one more: "Watching the State of the Union address two weeks ago, I remembered seeing the same kind of images, on black and white TV, when I was in college, watching speeches of the politburo. All that clapping. Only then, the KGB would have someone in every row, watching to see who stopped clapping first."

If Golebiewski stole a bit of the keynote speaker's thunder, the speaker himself — Walter Andrusyszyn, former foreign service professional and NATO deputy chief, now an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida — seemed unperturbed.

In a navy pinstriped suit, hands clasped at the small of his back, Andrusyszyn ran through a brisk discussion of a nation that "converted poverty into prosperity" only to embark "on the process of turning prosperity into poverty."

The nation that twice "changed the face of the world in the 20th Century" — first winning World War II, then peacefully halting Soviet domination of Eastern Europe — now was rushing to the threshold of doom at the hands of dictators.

"People go after you not when you are strong," he said, "but when you are weak." He cited threats from caliphate-hungry Muslim extremists, the Russian shadow rising again over Europe, and Chinese leaders eyeing domination of the Pacific and beyond.

Alternately, the new club's Walters tugged at the Patriots' hearts and ran chills down their spines.

And that was just opening day. Imagine when the club really gets going.