The Same Old Song & Dance

Guest Opinion by Dean Odle

This American idiom explains what I am seeing in this 2025-2026 election cycle in Alabama, but I hope we have a miracle and the voters wake up. But let us first get a proper definition of the term “same old song and dance.”

The “same old song and dance” may sound like a great performance, something that you want to see over and over again. But it is not. Here, the “song and dance” is a repeated, tired, even predictable reaction to something. It is something we do or say over and over again for different reasons.

History and Usage of the Idiom

One online reference guide claims that Americans first began using this expression in the late 1800s. Around that time, vaudeville was a popular form of show business in the United States. In a vaudeville show, performers sang, danced and acted in short, funny skits. Some shows even had animal acts.

Often, a vaudeville show would open with a song and some dancing. But it often was the same song and dance night after night. And that is where we get the expression “same old song and dance.” Americans use this term in different situations and in each one, there is a slight change in meaning.

The Dictionary.com defines it this way, “a story or statement, especially an untrue or misleading one designed to evade the matter at hand.”

The Matter at Hand: Alabama’s Purple Politics

The matter at hand is that we have a very purple state. We vote red in big elections and sometimes we get the very real conservative Republicans that we want, but most of the time we Republicans get fooled by weak, moderate, (some even “former” Democrats) telling us what we want to hear, while they plan to govern in a completely different way.

How do these weak RINO Republicans keep getting elected? They simply make the circuit of Republican clubs, podcasts, and press stops where they give us the same old song and dance of conservative red meat speeches that they don’t really believe or plan to pursue once elected. They are funded by and endorsed by the same machine that churns out RINO after RINO after RINO. Then, we the people end up having to fight them to even get some crumbs of what we elected them to do. We have to get conservative organizations to rally their people to call over and over and go down to the state house to fight (sometimes for years) about things that should be done immediately by our so-called “Republican” supermajority.

Example: The Ongoing Battle Over Common Core

For those wanting an example, just look at the battle over Obama’s Common Core curriculum. Recently, 1819 News published an article by Colonel John Eidsmoe who serves as Professor of Constitutional Law for the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy. The title of the article is “Why is Common Core not a common corpse?” The Colonel points out all the ways the repeal of the liberal indoctrination tool called Common Core has been derailed by our Republican supermajority for over ten years though there is wide public support to get rid of it.

Of course, I could give many more examples, but I’m not writing a book here. I guess I’m just blown away by the constant game of deception by so-called Republican candidates. For instance, a few weeks ago I was in a Republican meeting to hear three candidates. One of them I know better than the others. He was asked about what he thought about Alabama elections. He told everyone in that room, “I think Alabama elections are great!” Afterwards, I asked him, “So you think Alabama elections are great? Are you familiar with Dr. Frank’s work?” He told me that he was familiar with Dr. Frank’s work and added that he does not believe Alabama elections are great at all, but he can’t say certain things like that to get elected. I said, “Oh that’s a politician’s answer.” I told him, “If you know and believe that our elections are not secure, but you tell the people that you think they are, then, you just lied to all these people.” He did not want to rock the boat on elections in hopes that would help him get elected. To put it plainly, he was lying to and deceiving Republican voters while claiming to be a true Christian conservative.

The Role of Voters in the Deception

However, deceptive Republican candidates are just one part of the problem. It seems the vast majority of Republican voters allow themselves to be deceived by these charlatans. There’s a passage in the book of Jeremiah that describes this very thing:

“A wonderful (Hebrew: horrifying astonishment) and horrible thing is committed in the land; The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” (Jeremiah 5:30-31).

Jeremiah was instructed by God to confront the corrupt priests, prophets, kings and elders of Israel. He warned them of things to come and they did not listen. In fact, they actually threw him in a dungeon prison and left him there to die. But God delivered Jeremiah from the dungeon and everything he warned the political leaders and people of Israel about came to pass. Sadly, there was only a very small remnant that listened and survived the Babylonian invasion and captivity. There were also false prophets that rose up to tell the King of Israel and the people what they wanted to hear and there was Jeremiah telling them the truth.

Why Politicians Avoid Real Fixes

I am convinced that most Alabama politicians do not want to really fix the problems in our state or prepare for what’s coming. And it seems that the conservative majority in Alabama is okay with the continual stream of broken promises from their groomed establishment candidates every election cycle. For instance, our K-12 public education is still ranked at the bottom after another four years. Why? Because nothing has changed. Even the “school choice” bill (aka the Choose Act) was a deception.

“Since Choose Act applications opened in January 2025, students in every county throughout the state have applied, totaling 36,873 students…According to the Alabama Department of Revenue, which administers the program, students from every grade level applied for funding this year, with over 23,000 students receiving approval.” 1 Only 23,000 students approved! Alabama has about 730,000 K-12 students. 23,000 students is ONLY 3% of students. How is that school choice? Why weren’t all 36,873 “accepted” or allowed to choose? I know why…

Critiquing School Choice Myths

In his book, School Choices: True and False, John Merrifield writes, “Perhaps the biggest myth about school choice is that current choice programs constitute a meaningful experiment. They don’t. Current voucher programs are limited to such a small number of students, and they have so many restrictions that they don’t look at all like a competitive school system. At best, current choice programs are escape hatches for a few students. But even these students would be better off under a fully competitive school system, because such a system would offer greater specialization of teaching styles and would benefit from continuous improvements (as is routine in other competitive industries). Public-school choice, including charter schools, will NOT transform our school system any more than the freedom to choose a state-owned store transformed the Soviet Union.”

Merrifield continues, “In contrast, a truly competitive school system would encourage the development of a large educational ‘menu.’ This would enable schools to better accommodate students with diverse learning styles or who could use special help to catch up to their private-school peers. Limited school choice programs, in contrast, have been too small to make this option feasible, resulting in some voucher students returning to their prior school.

Some choice advocates favor tuition tax credits instead of vouchers, because they believe that tax credits would be less susceptible to government regulation than would voucher-accepting schools. Tax credits would also serve as an escape hatch, but they are unlikely to transform education: Neither the size of the tax credit nor the number of participants would be sufficiently large to unleash market forces great enough to improve the education system. Low-income families, with little ability to supplement a voucher, would have to choose between a public-school system that has served them badly and the cheapest private schools.

“The greatest threats to progress are low expectations and misleading alleged experiments. We need to achieve real competition in only one reasonably populous area to assure that eventually it will exist virtually everywhere. If we keep our eyes on the goal and are not distracted by half-measures..., it can happen quickly, much like the sudden collapse in 1989 of the socialist regimes of eastern Europe."

 Lessons from Florida and My Education Plan

In 2017, Florida ranked 29th in K-12 education. Governor DeSantis came into office and removed Obama’s Common Core curriculum. Then, the Florida legislature expanded eligibility for their school choice programs to include 56% of their K-12 students. Those two things helped Florida go from 29th in K-12 to 3rd by 2021. My plan was to go even further than Florida.

My plan for Alabama K-12 education that I put forth in 2020 included removing all traces of Common Core and then putting into place a total, no-strings-attached school voucher program. That means no central state or federal government control over schools. Instead of the existing school boards, there will be parent boards in each school. Those parent boards will consist of parents (elected by the other parents) that have children in the school, and they will have authority to hold the school administration and teachers accountable. This will create more parent and local involvement in each school. A sizable voucher will be given to parents for each child (possibly up to 75-80% of the approximate $12,000 the state spends per child). This voucher program will create free-market competition among schools. The good schools will get better, and the bad schools will stop being propped up by tax dollars even though they fail year after year.

I bring up this issue of education to illustrate several things…

Opponents’ Lack of Concrete Plans

None of my Republican opponents in the 2022 GOP primary put forth a plan to actually fix K-12 education. I was the only one and now four years later not one of my opponents has put forth a specific plan to actually fix K-12 education. I have not heard a peep from Wes Allen, Rick Pate or Nicole Wadsworth about how they plan to do anything other than what has been done which is to kick the can down the road with only platitudes and promises to throw more money at the problem.

Secondly, this Choose Act deception and the fact that Alabama K-12 is still ranking near the bottom ought to infuriate Republican voters, but it appears the election year blinders are being put in place and without a miracle awakening, they are going to hypnotically elect the next batch of do-nothing GOP-establishment darlings.

The establishment has tried to silence me because they don’t want their voters to wake up and throw them out of power. They know I speak the truth about these things (and many other issues), so they start whisper campaigns about my religious beliefs and make plans to try to keep me off the ballot by way of a technicality that they would easily overlook for one of their establishment buddies.

My Economic Vision for Alabama

I am also the only candidate who has an economic plan with specifics that will actually cause our state to prosper like never before. My plan will give our state the ability to get rid of property taxes and the state income tax. Nicole Wadsworth’s economic development plan is to try to get more federal grants and other federal government money here. That’s not the way to go. Alabama is already too dependent on federal money. Furthermore, I haven’t heard a legitimate economic plan put forth by my opponent Wes Allen or Rick Pate.

My economic plan that I have been pushing since 2020 is this…

I believe in lowering taxes and getting rid of useless regulations. Those two things alone encourage economic growth. I also want to see Alabama do more drilling for our oil and natural gas. “Alabama should have a very profitable future in the Conasauga, Devonian and Neal shale formations in the upper middle part of the state. The Geological Survey of Alabama estimates that these formations may hold more than 800-trillion cubic feet of gas resources. That’s a lot of gas waiting to be extracted, creating jobs and fueling economic growth.”

“Survey scientists are describing deeply buried reservoirs in southwest Alabama and in Alabama state waters. Survey scientists are identifying areas that may contain undiscovered oil and gas accumulations. The results of this study will help oil and gas companies find new fields in Alabama.

The Geological Survey of Alabama completed a three-year study on the geology and development potential of shale gas plays. The Black Warrior basin and Appalachian thrust belt of Alabama contain a diversity of emerging gas shale plays in Cambrian through Mississippian strata with gas resources that may exceed 800 trillion cubic feet (original gas-in-place).”

https://www.al.com/opinion/2013/08/drill_bama_drill_our_state_is.html

https://www.gsa.state.al.us/gsa/energy/og/resources

https://www.gsa.state.al.us/gsa/energy/og/shale

If we simply remove bureaucratic red tape and overcome hyper-environmentalism nonsense, then Alabama could dramatically increase drilling for our oil and natural gas. There are large oil companies who already have written proposals for doing this in Alabama. It would prosper our state like never before and also help the poorest part of our state in west Alabama. No one else running for any office in Alabama has been talking about doing this.

A Message to Alabama Voters: Time for Change

My message to Alabama voters is this…over the last decade, Alabama has been consistently ranked in the top four of states in political corruption. And for the past fifteen years, Republicans have controlled state government. Sadly, the majority of these “Republicans” have not been true conservative patriots who really care about the people of Alabama. It is time to stop electing the career politicians and their children (like Wes Allen) over and over. We must elect some Alabamians who will shake up the status quo and fight corruption on every level.

*We must stop the manipulation of our elections via Chinese-compromised voting machines. We can only accomplish this by getting rid of the voting machines and going to secure paper ballots and hand counting like Germany, France, and dozens of other countries.

*We must stop the selling of our precious farmland to solar companies. These solar companies are funded by our globalist enemies at the United Nations and the Rockefeller foundation. The solar panels are made in China and these massive solar farms destroy farmland and poison the water table from toxic chemicals that leak into the soil.

*We must stop PAC to PAC dark money donations to political candidates and limit donations from businesses and corporations. We must also stop political contributions from pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment.

*We must stop corrupt judges, lawyers and DHR from breaking the law and doing things like stealing children from their innocent parents.

*We must prepare our state for the food shortages, lack of antibiotics, biological attacks, cyber warfare on our power grid, and economic instability that will come from the inevitable war with China and other countries like Russia and Iran.

*We must resist the UN, WEF, WHO, NWO agenda to take away our freedoms. We must have leaders that fight to keep our freedom of speech, religion, the press, to assemble and our right to bear arms, our right to privacy, and to exercise the 10th Amendment of states’ rights against an overreaching federal government.

My Commitment as Lieutenant Governor

As Lieutenant Governor of Alabama, these are some of the things that I will fight to the death (if necessary) to protect our freedoms  and our way of life. So I ask for your vote on May 19, 2026 to be the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor of Alabama. I am the anti-establishment, anti-RINO Republican.

Our elections in the Alabama Republican Party have become too much of a high school popularity contest. I have watched this celebrity/popularity excitement rule many Republican groups instead of the issues and the logical ways to fix them. They trade you access to the cool kids’ group for your blind vote and silence.

Don’t Be Fooled Again

Just remember that 99% of Alabama politics is based on deception. It’s not about real solutions to the problems in our state. I pray that conservative voters in Alabama will ask God what He wants and to let them see through the manipulative ways of most candidates. Don’t be fooled by the same old song and dance in 2026. Discern who are the true conservatives and elect them.

Dean Odle is a candidate for Lieutenant Governor and will be on the ballot in the Republican primary on May 19, 2026. For more information on Odle, visit his campaign website or follow him on social media.

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