“…give us Blackwell or… you’ll have to deal with Duncan for a couple more years!”

I’m taking the “if you’re not part of the solution…” approach with Duncan. He might be a perfectly competent Chairman. That being said, we can’t deal with a caretaker as Chairman, but should be figuring out ways to go on the offensive, lest we end up handing the Democrats a super-majority on a silver platter. In lieu of seeing that as part of Duncan’s nature at all as of yet, I’m really not confident in letting him keep the keys as the car goes off the cliff, even if the situation isn’t necessarily his fault.

I think the Directors have found a very reasonable position on this issue. Whatever happens, I just want to get the decisions made and begin the fight. Let’s go.

The Republican party needs to change.

Duncan is Bush’s guy and Blackwell has always played the good little soldier.

We need someone who be a force for bringing back principles and cleaning up corruption and the good ole boy mentallly from the party.

Steele has the best shot at being that man.

The party needs to catch up to 21st century campaign tactics.

However, the irony is that requires getting huge numbers of people fired up and involving.

You can only do that with ideas not games. So without a return to principles and reform the Republican party cannot comeback.

And I stand on my earlier diary, including the update, on Duncan.

I will not give one thin dime to the RNC if Duncan is back in the office and lets just say the reason someone gave above….he is Bush’s guy!

You did see the 12 traitors in the Senate who voted with Reid on Sunday right? this is what WE need to STOP doing. I will NOT settle for less than the BEST for our party and that is NOT Mike Duncan!

Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy

You have four other candidates, and you think none of them can do a better job than Duncan?!

At getting the message out?!

On organization?!

On technology?!

You think Duncan’s better than Anuzis? Than Katon Dawson? Even than Steele (who I don’t support, though I can at least see a reason why some do)?

This is a weasel second endorsement IMO. I can’t believe all the Directors signed on for this. If they didn’t, I’d like to hear the Minority dissent.

And 4 to 8 more years of what got us to where we’re at today? No thanks! I’m with Jaded, IJB, NightTwister, and Gamecock. I’ve had enough.

I got my GOP renewal beg letter last week. It goes in the trash if Duncan is the pick.

We can always support our candidate(s) directly.

After RedState’s emphatic and influential endorsement of Ken Blackwell, to pull the rug out from under your own endorsement is really unfortunate.

I humbly suggest that the Directors of the Red State step back and truly ask what kind of a message the party would be sending to its own donors and activists by re-electing the incumbent Chairman - President Bush’s man.

SINCE McCain lost (and then presumably Duncan was “free” to be his own man) — he FAILED to speak out against the Wall Street bail out.
– he FAILED to speak out against the U.S. Automakers bail out.
– he FAILED to publicly counsel Senate and House GOPers to get NEW leaders.
– he FAILED to express any concern about the House GOP Conference rejecting an earmark moratorium.
– he has now FAILED to call out House Republican Leader John Boehner for installing Roy Blunt BACK into leadership after Blunt supposedly took the trip to the back bench to atone for the sins of leadership.

The party needs new aggressive RNC leadership that is willing to acknowledge that electing Republicans is not our goal, but a means to our goal which is enacting GOP policy.

We won the WH, Senate and House this decade, and presided over big spending when we had it all.

Part of the new paradigm must include an aggressive boldly conservative Chairman — like a Ken Blackwell.

RedState’s message about Duncan is so off track. I was disappointed to read it.

Jon Fleischman
Vice Chairman, Southern California
California Republican Party.
Publisher, http://www/flashreport.org

First, Mike Duncan did not arrive at the RNC until 2007. During that year, whether you like it or not, Mike Duncan’s job was not about getting Republicans elected. It was about bolstering the President.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!—Ben Franklin

Senate Conservatives Fund House Conservatives Fund

Marco 2010 Toomey US Senate

you disappoint me.

as well. The opposition to Duncan comes I think mostly by the reason’s you describe but also for the desire for a fresh new face and ideas. Honestly though if he would continue on as he has then we will have wasted 2 years and squandered the opportunity to have a more bold leader and the fresh start the party needs.

Who’s the third choice?

First, Mike Duncan did not arrive at the RNC until 2007. During that year, whether you like it or not, Mike Duncan’s job was not about getting Republicans elected. It was about bolstering the President.

If this was his primary job he failed since Bush has suffered with his approval ratings in the teens and twenties for the bulk of Duncan’s tenure!

Second, most of the criticisms against Mike Duncan are uninformed and misplaced. That the RNC did not function as it should have in 2008 had much more to do with the McCain campaign than anything the RNC did. It was the McCain campaign calling the shots and consuming the resources.

Fair enough…we all know what a miserable failure McCain and his crew were…but John McCain didn’t force Duncan to go out and declare the 2008 elections lost before the races even started and whine the rest of the time about how terrible the climate was for Republicans and moan about the fact that no one wanted to poor their hard earned money into an election that the RNC chair had declared lost from the get go.

we share the concern that Duncan is not a particularly compelling TV spokesman for the party.

This is a huge understatemetn… he’s not only less than compelling as a TV Spokesman for the party…he’s been AWOL since he became chaiman!

Given the PR disaster of declaring our imminent defeat in the 2008 elections and the fact that no one even knew Mike Duncan ever existed until after the 2008 elections were over are enough to disqualify him!

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!—Ben Franklin

Senate Conservatives Fund House Conservatives Fund

Marco 2010 Toomey US Senate

You think Blackwell isn’t going to win on the first ballot, and eventually Duncan does, and you need to keep lines of communication open. Sorry, wrong answer. Fight for what you believe in until you lose, don’t pre-emptively surrender-that’s what keeps putting us in bad positions in the first place. If you are that desperate to keep lines of communication open, let one person descent from the Blackwell endorsement and let him keep the line open.

must be the explanation… cuz I checked the calendar and I hadn’t slept until April 1st….

Keep Duncan may as well ask John McCain do it then

Can anyone provide an example of something the RNC under Duncan wanted to do but was overruled by the campaign? Any examples of things they opposed doing but were forced into by the campaign?

And separately, do I understand correctly the suggestion that the role of the party chairman should be an idealogical one who should enforce a legislative agenda on candidates and officeholders? How does this work with a 50 state strategy which has also been pushed here which by its very nature means that candidates need idealogical and tempramental differences among them within the party?

… but I’ll defer to Erick and Co. if indeed Duncan is picked by his *colleagues* to retain his position even while noting his crowing over Chambliss and Cao was idiotic. I’ll give him a fair chance and my support. The reality is that it does us no good to condemn him to failure in advance and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy by a wholesale refusal to cooperate with him.

By the way this;

First, Mike Duncan did not arrive at the RNC until 2007. During that year, whether you like it or not, Mike Duncan’s job was not about getting Republicans elected. It was about bolstering the President (Bush).

… is - along with the point that Mike Duncan is bound to be the beneficiary of the “one of us” syndrome - the reason why I wrote this a while back.

The Chairman of the RNC needs to be selected by the base, independently of the President. This not only would have freed Duncan from having to follow the President’s “New Tone” lead, it would have enabled him to tell McCain to go pound sand as well as file suit against McCain-Feingold back when it would have made a difference.

SIDENOTE: That McCain could demand that the RNC spend money (thanks to the fact that he couldn’t raise any himself) on him with a straight face after he, more than anyone else, deliberately hamstrung the party’s fundraising ability … @#&! I thought money was a corrupting influence? What changed his mind? Or maybe it corrupts everyone except for the Great Bipartisan Maverick himself?

As for Blackwell, the fact of the matter is that his “Plan” is the best hands down - Saul Anuzis’ Blueprint is excellent but it comes a clear second with Dawson’s coming a distant third. For that alone, and the impressive talent he’s managed to surround himself with, Blackwell deserves to be given the top spot by the 168. He’s earned it.

---

 To me, “consensus” seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects … There are still people in my party who believe in “consensus” politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors … I mean it.
      - Margaret Thatcher
NOTE: “consensus” = “Bipartisanship™”/”Centrism™”

to the long list here for the very good reasons already mentioned above. This is the same tote the party water line we got during the presidential campaign and look what that got us. Please print a retraction of the Duncan endorsement portion. Show the moderates how to admit an error when one is uncovered or pointed out please. I’ll have much, much, more respect for The Directors than if they continue down the ‘Duncan is okay with us’ path.

Out of the folks running, I’m guessing that Blackwell is the best when it comes to pro-life issues followed by Duncan.

The other folks are squishes at best and “pro-choice” at worst.

Is this an accurate guess on my part?

Sorry, I must have typed into the Bizarro RedState website again.

Your second choice is the ONLY dissenting voice for RNC Chair against a resolution by Conservatives through the RNC to call Bush out on his Socialism…..the ONLY ONE!

http://janeqrepublican.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/rncs-bush-rebellion-necessary/

Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy

in the last 2 elections, and managed to get the least-qualified and most-liberal major party candidate ever nominated elected as POTUS for the opposition party. We managed to lose controlling majorities in both the House and the Senate. And so, as a result, the changes we should make are:

Keep the same guy in charge of our side of the House,
Keep the same guy in charge of our side of the Senate, and
Keep the same guy in charge of the Party, (if a guy we like, who might not win, in fact loses.)

This sounds like the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.