Well, you know what the rest of that line is, right? I do agree with Jon that money is not the root of the NH GOP problems – but it is rather easy to point to as an overall symptom:
The silver lining is a timetable in which the membership of the Republican State Committee picks a new chairman in late January. Incumbent Wayne MacDonald of Derry took over a party last July that had $650 in the bank, $14,000 in bills and $48,000 in long-term debts.
“This isn’t any one person’s fault, especially Wayne, who was handed a bag of crap at the 11th hour,” posted Jon DiPietro, a conservative activist from Manchester. “But we had better get it fixed. There’s a presidential election in two years and it’s going to be here in the blink of an eye.”
Why, what is the problem here? His immediate predecessor was Jeanne Forrester – and he was the Vice-Chair so he knew about the problem. Now, the point of this post is not Wayne. It IS about
the duplicity of the Party (full disclosure: to which I haven’t been a member for a number of years now). Certainly Forrester’s departure from being the Chair was rather sudden in jumping to being the Tilton, NH Town Administrator back in June. While I’m quite as well plugged in as I used to, I don’t remember a ton of hoo-ha about fundraising other than it was “difficult”. I don’t remember much about any turmoil about her term with respect to being tossed because of a lack of fundraising other than this rather mild observation:
Forrester was never known as a voracious fundraiser during her years in the state Senate or during her bid for governor. And the state party currently trails far behind the New Hampshire Democratic Party in the fundraising battle. In filings this week, the state Democratic Party reported raising nearly $1.3 million since the start of the 2018 cycle, with a $214,978 surplus. By comparison, the NHGOP raised just $195,829, with a deficit of $29,102.
As the above piece recounts, she was the lone candidate, at the time, running for the NH GOP Chair, having been endorsed by now Gov Chris Sununu. Right – who has the juice to run against the wishes of the leading Family of the “Five Families” here in NH? And you can bet your bottom bippie that all the other potentials (and there were a number of names floating around at the time) either “had the talk” or recognized that running MIGHT not be a political death wish but simply knowing that Papa Smurf is still sitting on his throne gave a message of “Nice career ya got there….”. The question is, if she was the Sununu Anointed, why wasn’t Treasury opened?
Which gets me to me not-so-Quick Thought – I remember this happening before that a chief complaint against a TEA Party based NH GOP Chair was the lack of fundraising. I noted at the time that Jack Kimball wasn’t out of the norm for the amount of time in office compared to others’ efforts and results but it was used against him and he was bounced rather quickly
Sidenote: and, with no surprise at all, it was Jennifer Horn, the self-seeking self-aggrandizing political “Can You All See ME???” attention-deficit political opportunist who had been a “staunch” supporter before his election as Chair, shoving everyone else in her way aside, was the one delivering the “Et Tu, Brutus” backstabbing.
I wrote this when Papa Smurf had to announce that the TEA PARTY had rejected his hand picked candidate, Julia Bergeron (who later became the NH Committeewoman to the RNC and publicly trashed, along with Steve Duprey the NH Committeeman, the NH GOP Platform on several planks – and neither suffered any penalties):
Sununu had, as any regular reader of the ‘Grok knows, heavily backed Jack’s opponent heavily in the race. Just before this video started, I had been watching Sununu before the vote was announced, and it became clear from his face and his body stance that he was pi…. angry and resigned to a loss. While he will be remembered for much good he did over the last two years, I am afraid that his legacy will be tarnished due to his massive throw down against the Liberty & Freedom wing of the Party here in NH in the attempt (as I have written and spoken about before) to keep the Establishment in the seats of power.
When the slip containing the voting results was handed to him to announce, his chin fell and his shoulders noticeably “collapsed” inward as if he had been told that someone had died. Thus, the “bum’s rush” by any means possible for Jack. And at that point, the TEA Party, after enduring lots of blows by the Democrats (who rightly saw the TEA Party as an existential threat to their nascent socialist ideology), was smushed out of any kind of real political power here in NH – just as the GOPe Elite wanted.
However, far, FAR worse fundraising efforts, there were no public pilloring of Forrester – after all, it wasn’t just Chris that had tapped her but she had also worked for John H Sununu (the former US Senator who lost his seat to Shaheen mostly because it seemed he took his re-election for granted at the time). If TWO Sununus had blessed her, well then!
Anointed or perceived threat – a difference. I’ve also wrote around that time that the GOPe Elite would rather see the NH GOP shrivel and become smaller, but maintaining control of that shriveledness than to share power with what was then the most activated wing of the Party. They got their wish then – and they got it now.
So, what will happen now? Will they just select from one of the normal suspects and continue the cycle? Is this the start of the NH GOP becoming the equivalent of the California GOP (effectively useless as considered by the electorate who have basically wiped them out – and yes, demographics have certainly changed that State as well)?
Or will there be another, yet unnamed replacement for the TEA Party movement? After all, the NH GOP didn’t like them much at all – will the next movement learn the hard lessons from that time and use the NH GOP’s own rules against them? Sorta like how the Left isn’t liking that militant conservatives are using the Left’s own tactics against them (or as Kurt Schlichter keeps saying that the Left isn’t liking that the Right is now using the Left’s own rules).
(H/T: Union Leader)
