weren’t you a Huckabee guy during the primaries? He’s about as squishy as they come.

-exits

Well I am all in and you all can start with your RNC Chair…..let me do some hunting around on VA’s and I will get back to your post with what I find out!

Nice article Ace. Here’s some help for everyone.

There are 168 members who will be voting to decide the next RNC Chairman at the RNC Winter Meeting on January 20, 2009. There are three members from each state who are able to vote, the state Chairman, the state National Committeeman and the state National Committeewoman. To locate the names of who your local state members are, perform the following steps:

Go to the National GOP Website – States page and select the state in which you live, which will bring up all three party member names for the state selected.

There are 50 states plus DC, include also Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Three members voting from each location makes a total of 168 members who will decide our next RNC Chairman.

nt

I’ll try and find the good peeps down this way to run ‘em up here at RS for big-time kudos and support.

Then we can locate “the others” and help start sending those abject schmucks packing.

Hey DaveInFla….. can you handle upstate ?

Cheers !

I’m sorry, I’m confused. What am I supposed to do right now? So I found out who from my state will be voting for the RNC chair. What am I supposed to do with that information?

when you say the “RLC” are do you mean the Republican Liberty Caucus? If so, you will be attracting as many enemies as friends. I don’t want to say any more on this because we have always got on, and I want to be sure what you are talking about.

anyone who takes on libertarians in our party is taking on me. Anyone who think “Rockefeller” Republicans (a group that went away long ago) are in any way connected or similar to Goldwater-Reagan Republicans is either totally confused or trying to smear through lies and misdirection.

I will wait for your explanation Ace. But I will say self proclaimed Socons like Bush, Frist, Kyl, et al ran this party into the ground. Sure they had many forces against them, but libertarian-conservatives, and the antiquated “Rockefeller Republicans” where not the problem. one addendum, many in Bush’es wing took on Rockefeller type fiscal policies, is that what you mean?

and get on their mailing list for events and get the dates, tims and places for PRECINCT meetings. That’s where it starts.

Ms. Tina Benkiser
State Chairman, TX Republican State Committee
PRESENT

* State Chairman, Republican Party of Texas, elected November 1, 2003
* Daughters of Liberty Republican Women
* Texas Federation of Republican Women
* National Federation of Republican Women
* State Bar of Texas
* Houston Bar Association
* National Sports Lawyers Association
* Gospel Movie Association
* Admitted to Practice Law: State of Texas, Federal Circuit Court of Appeals
* U.S. Patent and trademark office

PREVIOUS

* Texas State Republican Executive Committee (1998-present)
* Texas Republican Precinct Chairman
* Texas Election Judge (1996-2001)
* Daughters of Liberty Republican women – Officer or Chair 1995-2000
* Delegate to Precinct, Senate District, State Convention and TFRW conventions (1994-2000)
* Harris County Execution Committee and various committees (1994-2003)
* Involvement in numerous political campaigns
* Volunteer Deputy Registrar
* Frequent Speaker – Political Involvement, the Political Process and leadership

RNC ACTIVITY

Mr. Bill Crocker
National Committeeman, TX Republican State Committee
PRESENT

* National Committeeman, Republican Party of Texas, elected June 4, 2004
* Attorney, self-employed 1974- present

PREVIOUS

* Chairman, Eastland County Republican Party, 1961-1962
* President, Smith County Young Republicans, 1963-1964
* Chief Counsel, Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner, 1967-1969
* Executive Director, Texas Motor Vehicle Commission, 1971-1974
* Vice-chairman, Travis County Republican Party, 1996
* Member, State Republican Executive Committee, 2000-2004
* Chairman, Resolutions Committee, State Republican Executive Committee, 2002-2004
* Chairman, Audit Committee, State Republican Executive Committee, 2003
* Delegate, Republican National Convention, 2004

RNC ACTIVITY

* RNC Rules Committee, 2004 -

Ms. Cathie Adams
National Committeewoman, TX Republican State Committee
PRESENT

* National Committeewoman, Republican Party of Texas, elected June 14, 2008
* President, Texas Eagle Forum, 1993-Present
* Founding Member, Collin Country Republican Women’s’ Club
* Member, Northwood Republican Women’s Club
* Member, Dallas Downtown Pachyderms
* Member, Dallas County GOP Eagles
* Advisory Board Member, Young Conservatives of Texas
* International Issues Chairman, Eagle Forum
* Lifetime Member, National Rifle Association
* Member, Stonebriar Community Church

PREVIOUS

* “Capitol Inside’s” Texas Lobby Power Rankings, 2005, 2006, 2007
* “Defender of Life” award from Texans for Life Coalition, 2005
* President, Dallas Eagle Forum, 1988-1993
* Member, Health & Human Services Commission for the City of Dallas

RNC ACTIVITY

* Republican National Platform Committee, 2000, 2004, 2008
* Delegate, National Republican Convention, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008

[+]Mr. Eric Opiela
Executive Director, TX Republican State Committee

Here is some additional info on the Republican Party of Virginia Chairman.

http://virginiavirtucon.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/klinge-calls-for-fredericks-resignation-as-rpv-chairman/

Info on Morton Blackwell who is one of the Virginia GOP voters.

http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/AboutUS/?PageID=Morton

By the way AChance, I read your diary entry and it motivated me to act. I have researched the GOP party organization for Prince William County. See the following link, http://www.pwcgop.org/. I have also contacted my district chair and offered my services. I was unable to attend the first post election meeting, but have it on my calendar for Dec. Lastly, I have an email into Jeff Frederick, Chairman of the VA GOP, as referenceed above. He is my district (52nd District) delegate. I have met Jeff personally on a few occasions. While I may not agree with him on every issue, he is extremely responsive and has been a good delegate. The other members of the VA state party leadership are the Honorable Morton Blackwell (previously mentioned by Scope) and Mrs. Kathy Terry. The Republican Party of VA website is www.rpv.org. As I learn more, I will post it.

For thirty years I did nothing but raise money for GOP candidates; local, county, state and federal candidates.

Here’s some basic advice for personal fundraising;

1. Clearly state your purpose and why you need the money. You have to tell people what you are going to do with the money.
2. For seed money, make a list of all your friends and start with them. They are more likely to say yes and that will make you more confident and confidence is very important when asking for money. Plus it gives you a chance to work on perfecting your “pitch” when you starting asking strangers for money. A professional pitch is very important.
3. Make lists, for instance if you are in business, of all those vendors you deal with, they are fair game for the asking. Lists can be composed of co-workers, professional associations you belong to and even people on this site! You can purchase lists but the return is usually much lower than your own lists.
4. Always try to figure out what a person can afford to give and assign that goal figure next to his name. Don’t ever ask a $10.00 contributor for $1,000 and never ask a $1,000 contributor for $10.00 – you don’t want to humiliate the $10.00 guy and you don’t want to let the $1,000 guy get away cheap.
5. Always ask for a specific range amount and then get them committed to a specific dollar amount. Vague replies usually translate into no contribution.
6. Always ask a contributor for names of people they think might also be willing to give. If the contributor is really sold on the cause, they might even ask those people for money on your behalf.
7. Computerize everything and keep it up to date because you can get into trouble real fast when dealing with political money. File your reports on time and account for every dime. ALWAYS ASSUME SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T LIKE YOUR CAUSE IS FOLLOWING THE MONEY.
8. Fundraising is a personal business, as I have told every candidate I have ever worked for, don’t be shy – you are not asking for a hand-out, you are asking them to join you in a cause.
9. Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up. If someone commits to giving a contribution, send them a note right away in follow-up, thanking them and restating the specific dollar amount they have committed to your cause, it also helps to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope or BRE. If they do not respond in a week, call them on the phone and tell them you need the committed funds for “state a specific reason.”
10. Keep contributors informed of the progress you are making and never miss an opportunity to ask for another contribution. Once a person is committed to your cause, they have a vested interest in its success.

Of course there is also direct mail fundraising, online fundraising, event fundraising, but that’s another story for another day. Hope this helps you.

I am a conservative Republican. I view the Republican Party the way Ronald Reagan saw it, and the conservatives in the party are in much better shape than they were in 1980.

As a Reaganite, I see the abject folly in attacking the party apparatus. This can only do bad things for the party and thus for conservatism.

I will spend my time supporting conservatives and, when I feel the urge, berating liberal Democrats. I will support conservatives at the RNC, but most importantly, I will support conservative candidates.

We’ve got a bigger problem than bogeymen hiding under the bed.

Washington RNC Members

Ace, though I guess I’m supposed to be flattered that you linked to my post, you missed the point. My fault for violating one of my own rules: “Never post when you’re angry.”

I beat up Curly Haugland rather severely in that post, but nowhere in it did I frame my argument in terms of conservatives vs. “RINOs.” What set me off was the way a candidate for RNC chair was dissed for not being an RNC insider and therefore “not qualified for the postition” simply because he’s not an RNC member. It’s not a prerequisite, according to the RNC’s rules.

A politician can have a 100% lifetime ACU rating and still not be able to lead a one-car parade. I believe that the RNC has a leadership deficit, but it has nothing to do with the purity of lack of same of conservative convictions.

BTW, Curly responded to my post, and he did so as a true gentleman. He was much kinder to me than I was to him. And for the record, like me, he’s a Reagan conservative who thinks Sarah Palin was one of the few bright spots in the McCain campaign.

I still disagree with him about Michael Steele or any other outsider who wants to be RNC chair, but my argument was about leadership, not ideology. Please don’t use my post as a rallying cry for an RNC RINO hunt.

If you want to change things, encourage people whith real leadership abilities who want to be RNC members to keep that committee independent of the control of the White House or of any politician’s campaign organization.

• JP

I was in a bad mood when I wrote it and regretted it as soon a s I posted it.

That said I keep trying to disabuse you of the notion that this is a post about…or that I advocate purging anyone from the Party. This is about who controls the Party and my issue is with the fact that 10% of this party controls the message, tactics and agenda of the other 90%. But in no way am I saying throw anyone out or ban anyone. yet you insist on setting up that as a straw man and knocking it down.

Even with a Party essentially wearing a disguise, it took a heavily biased media and astounding stupidity in both Congress and the Executive Branch to give them a narrow victory over a decidedly third rate Republican ticket.

I don’t disagree with you at all here…the media is a huge factor in this but their bias is becoming so obvious that I don’t put near as much weight on them as many do. I put more weight behind the “astounding stupidity in both Congress and the Executive Branch”

And who is responsible for that astounding stupidity…it’s not SoCons contrary to popular belief because SoCons didn’t ask for a massive expansion of the education system called no child left behind…we’re the ones behind the home school movement because we don’t trust the government to educate our kids…We didn’t ask for a massive expansion of the medicare system with the prescription drug benefit. We didn’t ask for McCain Fiengold…or Amnesty. All that occured against our wishes and the amnesty bill was defeated only after a massive effort on our part!

There is room in my Republican Party for the Main Street types that you decry, for the libertarians, even for the Log Cabin types, and for fiscons, socons, and defcons so long as they are willing to adhere to a few basic federalist and republican principles – not the lower case “R.”

I agree…there is room in the party for them and I don’t advocate throwing them out…but there isn’t room in this party for them to lord it over the 90% of this party that they relentlessly attack and aggressively work to undermine and defeat at every turn…and I wonder, when you say “they should so long as they are willing to adhere to a few basic federalist and republican principles If by adhere you mean they can collude with the Democrats to advance their big government and socialist agenda and still get to thwart the overwhelming majority of the party?

I want to bring people into the Party, not push them out. That said, if one of the aforementioned factions comes to dominate the Party at the expense of the other factions’ interests, then the Party’s structural mechanisms are adequate to restore some balance.

Fair enough…what you seemingly refuse to acknowledge what I’ve said over and over again is my goal to restore a balance because the leftist faction of this party has dominated this it for 50 years with a few exceptions in 1980 and 1994…and in those two instances and in 2004…that faction immediately went into apoplectic fits about how they needed to band together and push back the barbarians that had imposed themselves on their fiefdoms and threatened to stop the crumbs falling from the master’s, (Democrat’s) table. well…if the “Party’s structural mechanisms are adequate to restore some balance” then what are they…cause I think it’s time a little balance was restored.

We lost the last two elections because we, with a lot of help from the Ds and the media, demonstrated to America that we could not be trusted to govern cleanly and competently; it is just that simple. Other than the kiddies and the Blacks coming out in somewhat greater numbers than usual for their New Hope candidate, nothing much changed in the turnouts and interests of the American people. What had changed was that they had lost confidence in the Republican Party to govern.

OK…thank you for making my point…How did this all come about?…is it because I or the majority of the party agreed with the K street project? or no child left behind? or McCain Lieberman, or McCain Kennedy, or McCain Fiengold?…Hell…the majority of this party didn’t even want the candidate the party saddled us with…so whose fault is all of the above? it damn sure ain’t mine because I don’t have any say about it!

There was no great ideological shift, even the Ds had to run as R-lite to get elected. The McCain-Palin ticket ran as Gov. Palin herself had run here; as the un-Republican and un-Bush. They had to try to run against the perceived, and too often real, corruption and incompentence of THEIR OWN PARTY.

Again…fair enough…but did they run as the un-Bush or did they run as Democrats? It’s a serious question because you could easily run as the un-Bush by adhering to conservative principle…God knows that would have been a change…but no…we got “I wouldn’t drill in ANWR because that would be like drilling in the grand canyon or the everglades.” or at an speech before an Irish group that Immigration Reform is his goal first last and always and then promised amnesty to 50,000 Irish illegal immigrants…and speeches about the wonders of his Global Cap And Trade legislation, (Al Gore’s Carbon Tax). Oh…and the sniveling about Obama refusing to tie his own hands and keep his promise to tie himself to the abomination that is McCain Fiengold!

There is no need to reform Party structures. There is a need to use and maintain those structures.

Again a straw man…I never said anything about reforming the Party structure…I said we need to systematically work to take it over from the bottom up…It’s in the OP…you should read it…I’m really proud of it….I’m told it’s quite good!

Most of it is divorced from reality, actually. There is not a conservative party. You couldn’t get agreement from self-described conservatives on what conservatism is if your life depended on it. To my mind it is more a way of dealing with change and societal conditions than any specific policy. I live in a socialist state and I’m both quite content with that socialism and very conservative towards any attempt to change it. How does that square with your definition of conservative?

In any event, it isn’t some conspiracy of effete northeasterners and Beltway elitists that got us here. It was a lot of good “conservatives” from the South and West who couldn’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar and their thing in their pants.

As I said above, the whole Party got way too complacent. We bought that permanent majority stuff and left the Party and its politics in the hands of whomever would show up and do it. Ok, its time to get back in the saddle, but it isn’t time to start looking for scalps.

That is all.

Because I’m not calling any of the people that I’d like to influence “fools” or “clowns” or publicly advocating that they are tools of some nebulous secret society and that they should all be removed.

I’ve never claimed they are part of a secret society…just that they fly under the radar and work the party apparatus in obscurity…It’s what I’m busy doing bringing them from obscurity into the light of day…it’s why I have the RMSP in my sights now with plan to take on the RLC, “It’s my Party too” and other groups that have crippled the conservative movement for far too long…

As I said above…maybe I am over the top with my rhetoric calling people fools and such …and I likely won’t ever have a postilion in the party leadership as a result because I’m too blunt and to the point in the way I say things and address problems when I see them.

Subtlety has never been my strong point and I’ve never been able to overcome my proclivity to spout off and call people on their foolishness…On the flip side, I expect the same from them when I’m being especially stupid which is one reason I have a profound respect for you.

It’s aggravating to have you twist everything I say into something it’s not. Anyway…I’ve tried to temper my more colorful way of saying things with little success…like it or not…you’ll likely see more of it from me and you can take it for what it is or leave it.

What I’d like to see from you is maybe looking past the more strident paragraphs and some input on the rest of it i.e. getting people involved, educating the party at large how the process works, who are the movers and shakers in the party leadership at the national level and blog on it while also doing the same on a local and state level…

Finally…Patrick Henry was accused of being a bomb thrower and for being extreme in his rhetoric and while I’m certainly no Patrick Henry I would say that every movement has it’s clarion rhetorician to call out the issues and call people to action…There are some of us here trying to do the same…if you’re happy with the status quo that’s fine too and this post isn’t meant for you.

Sad thing is…I had some people doing just that but now I’m engaged in a back and forth with you and Neil and Doc H about what a jerk I can be…and everyone that was fired up and ready to get in the game have tuned out and moved on…

Thanks a lot!

If so, why can’t I understand it?