Vacation time – means a self-imposed (abetted by a "Honey, please do" addendum) clean up time and older emails are certainly in that category. Thus, cnce again, the following is from one of the email lists I’m on. While I’ve put up just the one email that caused me to wear a little skin off my fingertips, it really stemmed from a longer thread. But, the email below serves the purpose of "kickstarting" my response just fine:
<Redacted> wrote:
ENOUGH OF THIS GOP CRAP!!!!!…there’s no long term success because of the weak leadership that only cares about the "parties survival…the money would be better spent contributing to individual candidates…the cost of running the party is another symptom of the larger problem…if the GOP wants to help, then they need to focus on getting out the vote – PERIOD…
My Response was the following:
<Redacted>,
I have been watching this discussion for a while now. While I am a registered Republican, I can assure you that I am among the foremost of those that have been out there whacking Republicans – just ask Phyllis – with GraniteGrok and the radio show we had. You vary from a conservative standpoint? You heard about it.
<Redacted>, bluntly put, you have no chance with the Democrats to turn them around. You have zilch chance with the Libertarian Party to even get elected (sorry, but I was at the World of Life Christian Fellowship forum where they, along with the Republicans [Dems refused to show up] , had the chance to speak to about 500 people; they were, on average (to be kind), pathetic, in enumerating their points in an articulate manner. Ditto with any other Party here in the State. You may not like it, but them’s the rules until YOU (and others) get them changed.
You are, then, restricted to very few choices:
- Get the rules changed – again, a long view proposition.
- Stay home and sulk
- One positive choice – see below – but I will warrant that it will be long, hard, and expensive (& I’m not talking just $$$).
If you TRULY want to effect change, TEA Party (and I was a co-founding member of the NH TPC) and 912ers HAVE to take over the GOP. Period. You can rant all you want (and I encourage you to do so – stay mad!) but that’s reality. I encourage you to rant as well.
But when the emotion runs dry, the only thing that is going to succeed is to put a detailed project plan together and take the long view in overhauling the Party. Period. And when I say long view, I’m talking years – look how long <redacted #2> and others have been trying. People have come and people go because they haven’t had the willpower to stick to it. Do you? Really?
There ARE costs to running organizations and to messaging. That’s reality – to say otherwise is simply being either stupidly ignorant or willfully stupid; pick one (but note that either CAN be fixed by sheer application of YOUR will, but only by such). There are costs to have full time folks trying to coordinate stuff and pay for the stuff organizations need. SURE, grass root efforts are cheaper to run, but still cost $$.
I am not silly enough to believe that I know all the answers but I do know that going nilhistic isn’t the answer either.
Remember, our military is the best in the world – but it takes oodles of billions to make it such and to keep it such. And yes, we do complain that more $$ are simply wasted even as they protect us. However, many are already complaining that Obama is trying to demilitarize and castrate our forces by lowering their budgets. It does no good to weaken our own.
Now, throw this into the mix: Politics is merely war by other means. You want to weaken your own forces even as the opponents are bulking up?
I’m not against you, <Redacted>, but am trying to point out that organizations do exist for reasons. Sure, they ALL go off the rails at some point; at some point, unless extraordinarily lucky, this group will implode as well. That’s just life. That’s doesn’t mean you throw them away – it does mean that in our case, we have to make a more concerted effort to establish a more Constitutionally oriented outlook both with our candidates AND in those that volunteer their time and talent to run the party.
I cannot run for state level office – but I can run for Delegate. And have, and will continue to do so. I WILL be part of the support troops that helps to either turn the GOP soon or hold out until reinforcements arrive (at which time, we take the objective). Objective one has already been achieved – the Platform. Objective two is either partially or fully achieved for now – a more conservative Chair than what Fergus "The Fringe" Cullen could ever be. But what happens when he retires? The battle begins anew.
Objective 3 – better candidates. That is happening now. NO, not all at once, but with the RLCNH and the NHRVC, it is happening. And the Rochester 912 group is in the middle of that fray – you have NO idea of how you folks turned traditional campaigning on its head by staging the debates on Constitutional-centered questions! But better candidates must continue to be recruited and then supported – and like it or not, coordination has to be in place for a lot of the traditional parts of winning campaigns (regardless of being a Dem or an Repub – the tasks are the same). And like it or not, they need organizations.
So of the choice I gave above, which do you choose ?
– Skip
