And this is not just for Groksters and candidates this time around – readers, you have your role to play as well!
In our GrokGauntlets, we DON’T ask the same types of questions that other media journalists ask in their roundtable with candidates. We are Conservatarian political activists, first, that have built up a large mouthpiece in GraniteGrok – and our questions should, quite well, align with our readerships’ political viewpoints that generally do NOT align with most mainstream media. We want to figure out who you are, what you stand for, and how you view politics, how well you are grounded, and get a sense of what you’d do if you win both the Primary and General Elections.
And then hold you accountable for your speeches and actions.
Rules of the Gauntlet:
- Given the timing, we’re going to do two sessions a week – Wednesdays in Concord and Thursdays in Hollis if at all possible
- Time: 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Yes, it will be two hours long. No, there are no breaks.
- Bright Lights: Yes, we will be recording it.
- Staff: that’s our “staff” – not yours. For some of you, you generally have staff that travel with you. They will not be allowed in the room. One candidate in the last cycle had a staff member make a scene over this restriction. He was finally told that if he continued, we would write about his candidate but not in the way he’d like. Tough noogies.
- All official Grokster writers are invited (implored??) to attend with questions. No, we will not let candidates see them before you hear them from us. Heck, many are made up on the spot given an answer you give us. Remember, bloggers often act like we all are ADD – we can take a point B and go to point Q seamlessly, so be prepared.
- It’s ok to say “I don’t know” – trust me, we don’t have all the answers either. However, if we detect that you try to blow smoke up our butts in trying to appear that you know the answer but don’t, we will be merciless. You can ask us to clarifying questions, though, as some questions can go in a number of different directions at the same time
- We will have food and drink there – hey, we wanna have fun with this, too!
Purpose of the Gauntlet:
- These GrokGauntlets used to be for one and only one purpose – to see IF we would hand out an official endorsement. GraniteGrok, in a combined vote, would issue an endorsement in a given race. The recordings that we have done in the past have only been used to allow Groksters who could not attend one (and it generally is a musical chair scenario as to who can show up at any given one of many). And yes, we add one additional name to all the candidates that we grill: “No Endorsement”. Top vote getter gets our endorsement. That said, history shows that we give out very few endorsements, so be warned.
- This cycle will be different – I’ve decided to change things up. Not only will the recordings be seen by “unable to attend Groksters”, when we are done, we will put them all up on GraniteGrok by race (e.g., all of those vying for NH Governor will be in one post, US Senate another, et al). Although we have the capability of livestreaming them, we don’t wish to give our questions away as some are asked of ALL candidates and others are meant for individual races, and sometimes, individual candidates (after all, we probably know you better than you think we do).
We want our readership to start taking advantage of the questions that are asked and what better way to try to impress your potential voters, Conservatarians that generally make up a LARGE percentage of Primary voters? Especially in an off-season mid-term election? We want them to listen to the questions and listen to the answers. We also want to hear the tone of the answer, the delivery of it, and your body language. We want them to see which questions “light your fire” and those that you cringe from. Are you a generalist with respect to topics (willing to take anything on) or a specialist (able to handle just a few topic but are superlative at them)?
So it isn’t just Groksters that you have to impress – it’s our readers as well. And they VOTE almost religiously every time there’s a ballot box.
So with that said, readers, this is where it starts for you! I want to crowdsource questions from you all. We’ve done so in the past and really want to do so again this cycle. So, here is YOUR homework: we want your questions! After all, some of your questions will be used and we acknowledge who sent in the question.
Either in the comments below OR email them to Skip@GraniteGrok.com and Steve@GraniteGrok.com, and arrange them:
- By each race
- By topic
- By candidate
This is your chance to be part of the process – don’t blow it!
I’m starting the Contact phase later on today and hopefully we can get this started next Wednesday and Thursday. I am looking forward to this!