I’ve attended dozens and dozens of local political dinners, and I can tell you, the speakers are almost required to say the same things.

That includes our political party is great, the other party is full of extremists and here are some examples — it doesn’t matter if they’re all true — for both.

In the past week, I attended the Lincoln Day dinners for the Mahoning and Trumbull Republican parties. Most of the speakers stuck to the standard script of praising fellow Republicans, particularly former President Donald Trump, and criticizing Democrats, particularly President Joe Biden.

That’s what made ex-U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the keynote speaker at the Mahoning dinner, so refreshing.

I don’t recall him even mentioning Trump or Biden in his speech.

Instead, he said the Republican Party needs to look inward for the failures during the past couple elections, particularly 2020 when it lost the presidency and Senate control.

Unlike other speakers at these events, Gowdy didn’t talk about cheating or rigged elections.

He said Republicans had control over the federal government after the 2016 election, but failed to keep it because the party lacked an agenda.

Once Republicans were in charge, they didn’t know what to do or how to get across their message and quickly fell out of power, he said.

Other speakers at both events, however, delivered the same old stories.

At the Trumbull event, Bob Paduchik, Ohio Republican Party chairman, spoke highly of Trump. Paduchik, a close adviser to Trump, noted Trump’s success in Ohio and in Trumbull, which used to be a longtime Democratic county. Trump’s back-to-back wins in Trumbull County are remarkable accomplishments and worthy of note.

But then Paduchik talked about Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

He said the administration represents “the radical left wing of the Democrat Party,” and that “everything the Biden-Harris administration is doing is about Democrat power.”

He claimed the two are encouraging people to illegally cross the Southern border so “they will be Democrat voters for a long time. Opening the borders is about expanding the Democrat vote.”

Regarding the federal election bill proposal, Paduchik claimed Democrats “want to use the same tools they used in 2020 to cheat and make it federal law and do it in every state and not just in the states where they got away with it like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Georgia and Nevada and Arizona.”

This isn’t true, and Paduchik knows better, or at least he should. There isn’t any evidence of cheating in those states. Those are the swing states that Trump lost.

At the Mahoning County dinner, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was the warm-up guest speaker. He blew so much hot air that he was actually sweating.

He questioned the fact that Biden received more than 80 million votes in the last election, basically saying Trump won, without saying it. That was kind of a surprise because Robinson had a lot of trouble with the truth, so what’s another falsehood?

He said society is so bad he couldn’t disclose the name of the No. 1 song in the country because it was so profane and the lyrics are 10 times worse. Depending on what list he was looking at, the top song in the country was either Rapstar by Polo G; Montero (Call Me By Your Name) by Lil Nas X; or Leave the Door Open by Silk Sonic. I don’t know the lyrics to any of those songs, but the titles are not profane.

He also falsely stated that Dr. Seuss’ “If I Ran the Zoo” book was banned when it was the author’s estate that voluntarily stopped publishing it in March because of what some consider racist images in it.

Robinson didn’t let the truth get in the way of a stump speech. He’s been North Carolina’s lieutenant governor since January. It’s his first elected office, and now he’s looking at running for the U.S. Senate next year.

Skolnick covers politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.

dskolnick@vindy.com