**************update **************************
My apologies to all you people who support Sarah Palin, but do NOT deify her. This diary was not intended to talk about you. (I actually fit into this category, I LIKE SARAH!!! She belongs in the Republican party, not a 3rd party! She gives a conservative message and scares the lefties. I get that.)

This diary was intended to talk about the people who, rather than debating any perceived slight against Sarah attack the person giving their opinion. They attack the character and motives of the person rendering the opinion rather than the issue that was brought up (and yes sometimes it does go both ways, but not in most cases I’ve seen).

If you are one of those people, STOP IT!! You are hurting your candidate, not helping her.
***********************************************

Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Sarah! Sarah!

The cheering is the same. The complete lack of ability to logically look at anything said or done by the person is the same. The attack mode launched against any perceived slight is the same. The quick jump to conspiracy theories when anything goes wrong is the same.

So what happened? Did the Pauliacs all become Palinites?

Come on people!!! Use your brains!!!!!

Sarah had a message that resonated with people. That doesn’t make her the New One or Our One or whatever unrealistic picture you want to paint of her. You’re only setting yourself up for ridicule followed by a supreme letdown when you find out she’s not perfect. And she’s not perfect. She’s human. She’s done some things in her political career that you probably wouldn’t like if you believed it (Art Chance can fill you in). She’s committed sins (yep even her).

There, let the attacks begin.

P.S. I was a FredHead. I liked Fred and I liked his policies and I would have loved, loved, loved to see him in place of The Won in the White House. But you know, Fred wasn’t perfect. I knew that and all the other FredHeads also knew that. You saw us supporting him, but not the blind fawning praise that you see of Sarah, Ron Paul, or The Won. So please, learn a lesson and like your chosen political star, but be realistic about her abilities too.

Adam is a young gun conservative who would make an excellent replacement for Debbie Halvorson.
He’s released this video to explain why he’s running for congress. Please watch the video and contribute to his campaign.

One of the ways that totalitarian governments remain in power is to remove the ability of citizens to cast secret ballots. The Nazi’s, Saddam Hussein’s government and other oppressive regimes had a brownshirt or other thug standing over you to make sure you voted correctly. The soviets allowed “secret” ballots but you only had the “choice” of 1 candidate and had to vote. The pattern is the same in all cases where an oppressive government wants to put on the skin of legitimacy by “winning” and election.

Democrats in Illinois have started the process and are starting to show their true colors (again). A recent law requires that machines notify election judges if a voter under votes on any ballot race or question. Some interpretations have suggested that the whole ballot be considered spoiled if a voter chooses to not vote for one particular office or another.

Worse, the Democrat’s highest legal official in Illinois, Lisa Madigan has issued her opinion on the matter “While plaintiff attempts to suggest to the court that there is a fundamental right to a secret ballot, no such right exists.”

But apparently, she it not familiar with the Illinois State Constitution which states:

ARTICLE III

SECTION 4. ELECTION LAWS
The General Assembly by law shall define permanent
residence for voting purposes, insure secrecy of voting and
the integrity of the election process, and facilitate
registration and voting by all qualified persons. Laws
governing voter registration and conduct of elections shall
be general and uniform.

But this is typical of Democrat elected officials these days. They ignore both the US and State constitutions and implement laws that are designed to suppress dissent to their rule.

Our state government is in financial trouble. Illinois, like many other states, is trying to find ways to plug budget holes and scrounge up a few dollars to fund the essential programs. (of course they’re still funding the Chicago Memory Bridge and similar programs, but the essential stuff is in trouble).

One (of the many) areas of the budget that is draining our state coffers is the pension fund. And a large portion of the pension fund is being paid out to retired elected officials. An article in the Peoria Journal Star listed some of the biggest pension recipients. For example:

U.S. Senator Roland Burris is currently receiving a pension of $121,747 for his time in office as Illinois state comptroller and attorney general. He has received $1.4 million in retirement payouts since 1995.

Dawn Clark Netsch, another Democrat former state comptroller is receiving $114,733 a year.

But the problem isn’t limited to Democrats. Republican Judy Baar Topinka gets an annual pension of $141,482 from her time as state treasurer.

So what can we DO about these outrageous pensions? Probably nothing for the existing pensions. Once a pension is earned and retirement started, it’s very difficult to reduce or eliminate the entitlement. If I had the time and the money to hire an attorney, I’d try to find a way to cut them, but I suspect it wouldn’t be successful.

But what we can do is eliminate pensions for all future elected officials. The advantages to this are many.

First and foremost, the direct cost of running the government would be reduced by the pension amounts and by the costs of administering a pension program for elected officials.

There are no thorny legal issues with having an employment agreement which does not include a pension arrangement. No one can sue for losing a pension that they never had to begin with.

Elimination of the pensions would also remove one of the incentives for people to become lifetime politicians rather than citizen legislators.

Politicians would have to learn to plan for their own retirements and put away money for the future like the rest of us do. This attitude in their private lives might just rub off into their thinking for public spending (I know, too much to hope for).

For candidates that advocate a cut off of the pensions, this is a political win. Voters don’t LIKE seeing ex-pols receiving pensions that are 3-4 times what the average worker earns. Hired state workers will like the idea because they RELY on the pension plans. The politicians are currently draining the funds making the future of their own payments less stable. Removing the politicians’ fingers from the pool will make their own future more certain.

I attended a meeting of local Tea Party organizers this past Saturday. They will be trying to get a ballot initiative together so that voters can stop pensions for elected officials. I hope they are successful and will help them all I can.

This is an issue that needs addressed, either by the legislature or by citizen action.

What a strange thing to say. How can being unemployed be a blessing?

Well it all depends on your outlook. Try it with “In all things be thankful.”

Not there yet? Still not making sense? How can I be thankful for unemployment? No income. No employer paid insurance. No paid vacations, company paid travel, expense accounts, bonuses, retirement fund, company paid training or any other advantage you can name to having a corporate job. And not to mention the looks you get when people ask what you do and you tell them you’re unemployed. How can I be thankful that I no longer have a job I had for 28 years!!??? And to have that job go to Costa Rica even! To people I trained!*

In ALL things be thankful.

Being thankful isn’t always easy. It’s not so difficult to be thankful for great food, a nice home, good health, a great job, or any number of other pleasant things. It’s a little more difficult, but not too hard to be thankful for things that you have in spite of your difficulties. For example, “Thank God I wasn’t hurt in that accident that totaled my car.” But try being thankful FOR your adversity.

A few weeks ago my church had a guest speaker who was a paraplegic. He had fallen from a roof and ended up in a wheel chair. The topic of his sermon was, you guessed it, “In all things be thankful.” He explained the process he went through going from anger about his plight to finding things to be thankful for and finally being thankful for his “disability” (in quotes because it is no longer a disability to him). Well if he can be thankful for his situation, how can I be miserable for my own?

So here goes… I’m thankful for becoming unemployed. As I ponder it, it really has been a blessing. If I weren’t unemployed I wouldn’t have been able to do many things that needed done that no one else was available to do. I’ve done home repairs and upgrades, helped put a roof on my son’s house, helped my brother in law put up a fence when his paid employees did a no-show, handled various medical emergencies and spent days making 450 pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals at a local mission (a joyful experience that I recommend to everyone).

And now the big one that applies here: I no longer have to worry about what my employer thinks about my political activities. I can’t get fired for making a controversial statement or for showing up at a Tea Party rally or for taking a stand against abortion or for posting through a company network or writing a letter to the editor or anything else. I’m FREE!!!! It’s a strangely liberating experience.

While I don’t recommend the status to others, unemployment has been a strange and wonderful blessing to me.

*This actually helped, they’re good people.

Jan Schakowsky is a liberal Democrat (some say she’s the most liberal member of Congress) from Evanston, IL who has been in congress since 1999. In that time, she’s attacked many of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. Based on these attacks, I can only conclude that she hates the Bill of Rights.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Liberals claim that they are fully in support of free speech. Turns out, not so much. When the Tea Parties started, Jan Schakowsky was the most vocal opponent of people assembling peaceably to express their political opinion. In fact she called the very idea of people demonstrating with an idea different than hers “despicable”. She has also voted to ban free speech rights by banning political issue ads.

Most recently, she and her supporters were trying to prevent people from expressing any opinion regarding healthcare that is not supportive of the “government option”.

Jan hates the first amendment.

This country needs to have Representatives that believe in the Bill of Rights and the individual liberties it protects.

Joel Pollak has just announced that he is running for congress in the Illinois 9th district. Let’s help him win and get someone who believes in the first
amendment in congress.

Next time: Jan hates the second amendment.

Yesterday, 8-AUG-09, I attended an event billed as a “Illinois Conservative US Senate Candidates Forum” at the Doubletree Hotel in Bloomington, IL. The event was poorly publicized and lightly attended with about 50 people showing up to hear from the 6 potential candidates that spoke. The main theme seemed to be “Find someone who is not Mark Kirk.” and was also the reason I attended. The event was being recorded by Illinois Review who said they would post the videos soon (but have not as of this writing).

The presentations were in a moderated format with each candidate being give 10 minutes to introduce himself and give an initial overview of his campaign. After the opening remarks, the moderator asked each person the same questions from a list with the number of questions asked depending upon the time the candidate took to answer each.

First up was Cisco Cotto who is a radio personality from the Chicago area. He was formerly a news anchor for WLS and WMAQ radio and now hosts his own talk show on WIND AM. As expected given his day job, he speaks very well and has a great voice. He’s a strong conservative and is able to articulate conservative principals well. One major advantage he has over the other candidates is name recognition. I think he would make an excellent candidate for Senate.

John Arrington was next. He started out with a bit of a shocker. He was a community organizer in his younger days and worked with Barak Obama. In fact he was next in line to replace Obama when he moved on to other thing. He says he quit the job after his father took him aside one day and said “Listen, I don’t know about these people. Truth to them means whatever it needs to be. If they need truth to be “Up” one day it’s up. If they need it to be “down” then next it’s down.” I liked the imagery. He’s converted from being a liberal Dem. He’s currently on the Harvey city council and said he learned first had how improving tax policy can attract new business to depressed areas. One advantage he has is he is schooled in the Alinksy tactics. He says he recognizes these tactics when everything is a crises and must be fixed now. I like this guy, but his presentation was rough (it better as he went) and he was a bit weak on some major policy issues. (“What would you do about energy?” was one of the standard questions and he hesitated far too much.) I don’t think he’s make a good US Senate candidate at this time, but with some polishing he’d have a chance. I think at this point I’d like him to run for a State Senate or Represntative slot and get some more experience. He’s a good man, but I don’t think he could beat Mark Kirk.

Don Lowery is a retired circuit judge from southern Illinois. He was probably the most passionate speaker there and knew the issues cold. I get the impression that he’s running because he’s angry at the direction of the country and genuinely wants to make changes. He mentioned several times that he thought Mark Kirk voted for Cap and Trade because of the influence of Excellon Energy (sp?) which donated heavily to the Kirk campaign. He also spoke well on other issues but seemed most motivated by the Cap and Trade bill. I think the Judge would make a great Senator, but I don’t think he’d win an election against a slick Democrat operator. I’d definitely want the judge on my side to fire up the base.

Pat Hughes is an attorney and real estate developer in Hinsdale Illinois. He recently organized a group called “Stop It” to fight Gov. Quinn’s 50% income tax increase. He’s a fiscal conservative and used the phrase “Mainstream Republican Values” multiple times. I think it’s going to be one of his catch phrases in the primary. He’s a very good speaker and gave the impression that he had in depth knowledge of most major issues. He was also pretty good at expressing conservative values. From the speech he gave and the Q&A time, I would have no problem supporting him as a Senator and believe he would make a great candidate. The only yellow flag is the real estate development business. Given the history of other politicians having trouble with real estate dealings, I hope that he gets a thorough vetting in the primary before becoming our general election candidate. With a good exam, I would gladly support him.

Eric Wallace is one of us. He was a Fred! Thompson delegate in the last election for God’s sake! Unfortunately, his presentation skills did not come through well. He seemed like a nervous college kid giving his first speech in SPEECH 101. It’s unfortunate because of the bunch, when he DID manage to get his ideas across, he seemed to most match my ideology. I’m really puzzled by his problem with the presentation because he’s an ordained minister and I would expect him to have the skill to speak to an audience and get complex ideas across. I’m sorry to say I don’t think he’ll make it very far in this campaign unless he does some work. He’s the only candidate that handed out campaign literature with a web site. I think I’ll email him with some pointers to the Marco Rubio and Michael Williams speeches from the gathering. Frankly I want to support Mr. Wallace. I just can’t.

Last to speak was Robert Zadek. To make it short, I didn’t like him. It was a personality thing I think. For issues, he’s a flat taxer. According to him, take the US government spending including Socials Security and Medicare, divide it by gross reported income and you come up with an 11.2% tax rate. Everyone pays at that rate and all financial problems are solved. Our energy problems can be solved by burning garbage. Again problem solved. According to him, all the complex problems of society have very simple solutions and he knows the solution.

After the speakers, the organizers collected a straw poll from the attendees. I hope they give the candidates copies of all the ballots because they do have more than just the vote totals. The ballots had 3 sections. One was a critique of the candidates. One was “Which of THESE” candidates would you vote for? And the 3rd was would you vote for the candidate in section 2, Mark Kirk or Someone else? The totals were:
Pat Hughes 17
Cisco Cotto 12
Don Lowery 8
John Arrington 4
Robert Zadek 2
Eric Wallace 0

I voted for Cotto.

Mark Kirk got no votes.

One of the complaints my county chairman has is that people call him expressing interest in running for office after the deadlines. If you want to run for any office, you need to get on the ballot.

In order to get on the ballot in Illinois you need to follow some procedures and now is the time to start the process. There are several offices up for election this season including Precinct Committeemen. The list of offices that you can expect to be on the ballot next year follows. There may also be special elections to fill vacancies that are not included below. Your county clerk should have the full list for your area.

OFFICERS TO BE NOMINATED AT THE GENERAL PRIMARY AND ELECTED AT THE GENERAL ELECTION:

United States Senator
Governor
Lieutenant Governor
Attorney General
Secretary of State
Comptroller
Treasurer
Representatives in Congress – all 19 districts
State Senators-For two-year term:
Districts – 1,4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25,28,31,34,37,40,43,46,49,52,55,58.
District 51 – unexpired 2-year term
Representatives in the General Assembly – all 118 districts
Judges: Supreme Court Judges, vacancies will be filled if required
Appellate Court Judges, vacancies will be filled if required
Circuit Court Judges, vacancies will be filled if required
Resident Circuit Court Judges, vacancies/additional judgeships will be filled if required
Subcircuits vacancies/additional judgeships will be filled if required
All judges seeking retention will appear on the ballot at the General Election
County Clerks
County Treasurers
County Sheriffs
County Assessors
Members of Board of Review (in counties with elected Boards, including Cook County)
Regional Superintendents of Schools
County Commissioners (not under township organization)
County Board Members (under township organization)
Sanitary District Commissioners and Trustees

OFFICERS TO BE ELECTED AT THE GENERAL PRIMARY:

State Central Committeemen (Democratic and Green Parties only-one Committeemen and
one Committeewoman per district)
(Note: Republican State Central Committeemen are elected at The County Convention)
Township Committeemen (Cook County)
Precinct Committeemen

If you have ANY interest in ANY of these offices, download the 2010 Candidates Guide from which the above list was extracted. The candidates guide has specific information about the requirements for running for office. There is a wealth of other information on the State board of Elections site. that you should also review. Other resources are your local Republican party office and your county clerk or municipal election authorities (city hall).

To all my fellow RedStaters in Illinois. I received the following announcement from my local county board member and thought this is a good opportunity to meet candidates who are NOT Mark Kirk. I plan to attend and will be wearing my RedState name tag from the gathering (if management here doesn’t object).

If any of you can make it, please stop me an say HI!

Conservative US Senate Candidates Forum

August 8th, 9:30AM – 12:30PM
Please RSVP to gop@parrott-associates.com
Location: Doubletree Hotel & Conference Center, 10 Brickyard Drive, Bloomington

Schedule:
9:30 – 10:00 Coffee, Continental Breakfast, $5.00 per person
10:00 – 12:30 Candidates Speaking one at a time
O&A to follow. Come with prepared questions.

“This is one of the most important meetings of the Republican Party for US Senate Candidates. Our party needs to come together and support the most highly qualified conservative candidates to represent Illinois in the February 2, 2010 Primary Election.

Let’s help return the Illinois Republican Party to the Party of Reagan/Fitzgerald! 2010 is the year to return to Traditional Principles, Strong Values, Smaller Government, and Common Sense Ideas to protect Freedom and to keep our nation sovereign.”

Hosted by County Chairmen of the Illinois Republican Party.
County Host: John W. Parrott, Jr. (309) 663-6323

Since they have a Q&A session, I would like suggestions for good questions to ask. I assume they’ll address Cap & Trade and Obama Care in their allocated address time. What else should I ask about?

As is usual with big government programs, the “Cash for Clunkers” program has some unintended consequences. This one is a direct harm to the nation’s poorest people.

A woman who was in charge of a charity was on a radio interview this morning. The charity raises most of it’s money by getting people to donate their old cars and reselling them. You’ve probably seen ads for charities of this nature. “Give us your old car to feed the poor” or similar billboards are all over the country.

Since the Cash for Clunkers program has started, donations to her charity have dropped to zero. That’s right, all the good works her organization was doing have come to a halt because Obama tried to help the car companies sell more cars.

As always, bad things happen when the government meddles in markets.

From the diaries by Erick.

One of the print papers I like to read is a little 8 page weekly that I pick up free at the bank. The Tazewell County News Bulletin^* is a “paper of record” meaning that legal notices can be published there to meet the legal requirements for publishing actions before they become effective. You’d be surprised at the things that show up in legal notices, but I digress…

The July 22 edition had an article entitled “Study Examines Rain Barrel Adoption in Chicago”. My first thought was “why would you want to study that“. My second was “who’s paying for it”.

The answer to the first question is that rain barrels have some theoretical beneficial side effects. In areas that are prone to water damage problems from rain drainage, getting residents to use rain barrels can help mitigate the problem by reducing the runoff. They can also reduce the demand on city water supplies as the water from the rain barrels can be used for watering the lawn instead of using city water. I suspect the theoretical benefits are far greater than the benefits from actual usage, but at least the proponents of rain barrels are using a logical argument. Unfortunately, residents aren’t buying and using rain barrels to as great an extent as the proponents, city and rain barrel manufacturers would like. Thus the study.

Read More →

From the diaries. More like this, please! — Erick

Toomey’s campaign announced that they have raised more than $1million in 60 days. That’s a great accomplishment and should show the party leadership that conservatives can raise significant money and can win elections!

Now we have to help other conservatives throughout the country raise money to defeat the Dems next year. Give what you can to the candidates of your choice. Some of my other preferences:

Adam Kinzinger for Illinois Congressional District 11. Adam will try to win the seat back from Debbie Halvorson. He is the Air Force Reserves member who saved a woman from a knife wielding attacker with his bare hands. He’s also a good young gun conservative who will make us proud.

Marco Rubio is of course running for Senate in Florida and will be battling the NRSC’s pick Charlie Crist. Marco will need all the help you can spare to get through the primary.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams is a good conservative who has proven that he can take on a big job and do great work. Please support his run for US Senate.

Please find other deserving conservative Republicans who need your assistance and do what you can to get them elected. If you don’t know any of your own, pick one of mine and toss them some cash. 8*)

Adam Kinzinger is the young gun conservative who saved the woman from a knife wielding attacker. He’s also a former Bloomington IL city councilman who resigned to council to join the Air Force shortly after 9-11.

He needs our help to win the seat back from Debbie Halvorson.

If you can make it to the Lake Bloomington Illinois area next Thursday night, please try to attend his first fund raiser. If you can’t make it to Hudson, Il he could still use your help. Go to his campaign web site and throw him a few dollars and/or volunteer to help in some other way. This is one seat we can win back.

reposted due to problems linking to my original article
Most of the people who hang out at RedState are conservatives of one form or another (I don’t really care to break us into sub groupings because that is both simplistic and counter productive). Since we are conservatives, the Republican Party is our natural home. No other party has a hope of getting any significant number of conservatives elected. That means that most of us want to get conservative Republicans elected to public office. Lately, we’ve been doing a terrible job of reaching that goal for various reasons some of which I will cover here.

One of the major problems we see is that the party is supporting more moderates and even liberal Republicans. Frankly the party is moving too far to the left in its chosen candidates. And the more elections we lose the farther it seems to move to the left. So how do we stop this trend and hopefully reverse it? We have to take a number of actions some of which many of my friends here disagree with.

We must remember that we are playing a long game. We aren’t likely to be able to turn the party around in just 1 or even 2 election cycles. If the situation changes we need to be ready to play a short term game and move all in, but we have to get the framework in place for the long run in order to take advantage of any opportunities that arise. So let’s talk about building the framework.

The most important action we can take is to get involved! Become a precinct committeeman. Get active at your local county party’s level. Work local campaigns. Recruit good conservatives for local offices. Get conservatives selected in local primaries and get them elected to local city councils, county boards, school boards, road commissions, etc. No office is too menial to consider important. Hold your elected officials accountable to the conservative values they claimed when you recruited them. These are the farm team for people who are going to run for higher office. This isn’t too controversial, but it’s hard and important work. And no one’s going to do it if you don’t. Martin A. Knight has written on the precinct committeeman project. Look for those posts for ideas or just call your county party headquarters and get started. If you don’t have an active party in your county, guess what. You’re the cavalry. You’ll have to build the party yourself (and yes you can do it).

Get active in the primary process. Find a candidate that is a good conservative in your area. Donate time and money to this person and get him or her to win in the primary. Promote your candidate, but try to remember the 11th commandment. Send money to conservative candidates in other districts to help them win their primary. Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, or Adam Kinzinger could use your help, even if it’s only a token $10. It costs a LOT to run a campaign and many small donations work as well as a few large ones.

Now the hard part: Party unity. If our candidate doesn’t win the primary, we must support the victor. Staying home or voting 3rd party or otherwise punishing the party is guaranteed to do 2 things. It will give the seat to the Democrat and it will move the party farther to the left in selecting future candidates. Even good conservatives like Cornyn are laboring under the false belief that we need to put up squishes in order to save Republican seats.

Party unity requires the cooperation of all the people involved and this is where all factions of the party have been deficient of late (including ours). We must stop this trend and the only way we can do it is to be the adults in the room and forgive the moderates and liberal wings and provide support to them IF they win the primary. In exchange we must remind them that we are loyal when they win and we expect the same from them when WE win (and yes we will start winning). After all, what help can you expect from them when you win if you refuse to help when they win. Split electorates always lose and we can’t afford to keep splitting the party.

Go to party events and talk to people. If there are any national level party officials present, let them know that party unity requires cooperation on both sides and that you are doing your part, but expect them to also work for unity. Tell them that favoring people in party primaries is a divisive action and that they need to stop if they want to maintain unity. My local party has an RNC town hall meeting tomorrow and I intend to bring this up. If you happen to be in the Peoria Illinois area, stop in and lend me a hand. Just remember that loyal people who hammer on the party leadership are more likely to get their way than fair weather friends.

Finally, we need to bring back conservative leaning people who have already left the party. Talk to Libertarian Party, Conservative Party, etc members and try to convince them that you need their help to take back the Republican Party. Most of them left due to the party not living up to its conservative base. We need to convince them that the only way to get conservative people elected is within this party. Chances are they won’t come completely back to the party, but maybe you can get them to commit to voting with the Republicans when they don’t have a candidate in the race. We have to start building coalitions with other conservative leaning groups.

Update: I had problems linking to this article (I think maybe the dashes in the title caused the problem) so I reposted is here: http://www.redstate.com/brianh/2009/06/08/fighting-for-the-soul-of-the-party/ Please use that link instead.

Most of the people who hang out at RedState are conservatives of one form or another (I don’t really care to break us into sub groupings because that is both simplistic and counter productive). Since we are conservatives, the Republican Party is our natural home. No other party has a hope of getting any significant number of conservatives elected. That means that most of us want to get conservative Republicans elected to public office. Lately, we’ve been doing a terrible job of reaching that goal for various reasons some of which I will cover here.

One of the major problems we see is that the party is supporting more moderates and even liberal Republicans. Frankly the party is moving too far to the left in its chosen candidates. And the more elections we lose the farther it seems to move to the left. So how do we stop this trend and hopefully reverse it? We have to take a number of actions some of which many of my friends here disagree with.

We must remember that we are playing a long game. We aren’t likely to be able to turn the party around in just 1 or even 2 election cycles. If the situation changes we need to be ready to play a short term game and move all in, but we have to get the framework in place for the long run in order to take advantage of any opportunities that arise. So let’s talk about building the framework.

The most important action we can take is to get involved! Become a precinct committeeman. Get active at your local county party’s level. Work local campaigns. Recruit good conservatives for local offices. Get conservatives selected in local primaries and get them elected to local city councils, county boards, school boards, road commissions, etc. No office is too menial to consider important. Hold your elected officials accountable to the conservative values they claimed when you recruited them. These are the farm team for people who are going to run for higher office. This isn’t too controversial, but it’s hard and important work. And no one’s going to do it if you don’t. Martin A. Knight has written on the precinct committeeman project. Look for those posts for ideas or just call your county party headquarters and get started. If you don’t have an active party in your county, guess what. You’re the cavalry. You’ll have to build the party yourself (and yes you can do it).

Get active in the primary process. Find a candidate that is a good conservative in your area. Donate time and money to this person and get him or her to win in the primary. Promote your candidate, but try to remember the 11th commandment. Send money to conservative candidates in other districts to help them win their primary. Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, or Adam Kinzinger could use your help, even if it’s only a token $10. It costs a LOT to run a campaign and many small donations work as well as a few large ones.

Now the hard part: Party unity. If our candidate doesn’t win the primary, we must support the victor. Staying home or voting 3rd party or otherwise punishing the party is guaranteed to do 2 things. It will give the seat to the Democrat and it will move the party farther to the left in selecting future candidates. Even good conservatives like Cornyn are laboring under the false belief that we need to put up squishes in order to save Republican seats.

Party unity requires the cooperation of all the people involved and this is where all factions of the party have been deficient of late (including ours). We must stop this trend and the only way we can do it is to be the adults in the room and forgive the moderates and liberal wings and provide support to them IF they win the primary. In exchange we must remind them that we are loyal when they win and we expect the same from them when WE win (and yes we will start winning). After all, what help can you expect from them when you win if you refuse to help when they win. Split electorates always lose and we can’t afford to keep splitting the party.

Go to party events and talk to people. If there are any national level party officials present, let them know that party unity requires cooperation on both sides and that you are doing your part, but expect them to also work for unity. Tell them that favoring people in party primaries is a divisive action and that they need to stop if they want to maintain unity. My local party has an RNC town hall meeting tomorrow and I intend to bring this up. If you happen to be in the Peoria Illinois area, stop in and lend me a hand. Just remember that loyal people who hammer on the party leadership are more likely to get their way than fair weather friends.

Finally, we need to bring back conservative leaning people who have already left the party. Talk to Libertarian Party, Conservative Party, etc members and try to convince them that you need their help to take back the Republican Party. Most of them left due to the party not living up to its conservative base. We need to convince them that the only way to get conservative people elected is within this party. Chances are they won’t come completely back to the party, but maybe you can get them to commit to voting with the Republicans when they don’t have a candidate in the race. We have to start building coalitions with other conservative leaning groups.

I first heard of Chuck Smith today when I received notice that he was following me on twitter. That got my curiosity up and I started doing some research.

Chuck Smith is running for congress in the VA-02 district.

Virginia’s second congressional district was a recent pick up for the Democrats. Last year, Democrat Glenn Nye won against the incumbent Thelma Drake* 52.40% to 47.46%. This district had been a Republican district since 2000 and voted for George Bush twice.

Chuck is a veteran of the Marines and served as a Navy JAG. He also has a long history with the Virginia Republican party including serving as a country chair, and the most important office in the country, a precinct captain.

He has been referred to as a strong conservative by the local Republican party and his issues page backs up that statement.

I hope you’ll join me in wishing that Mr. Smith goes to Washington in 2010.

*Thelma Drake has announced that she will not seek this seat in 2010.

It’s time to start supporting our candidates for the 2010 congressional races. One great bright young Republican face on the scene for 2010 is Adam Kinzinger. He’s announced a run for congress in the Illinois 11th congressional district against the Democrat incumbent Debbie Halvorson.

You’ve all heard of him before. Adam Kinzinger is the man who saved a young woman from a knife wielding attacker. But he’s done more than just saving the life of a complete stranger.

Here’s the short bio he posted on his facebook profile.

“Adam Kinzinger was elected to the McLean County Board as a Sophomore at Illinois State University in 1998 beating a 12 year incumbent Democrat. He was re-elected four years later. Shortly after 9-11 he decided to join the Air Force. Since then he has completed Pilot training and participated in missions to Afghanistan and Iraq numerous times. When he has not been deployed overseas he has flown missions on our Southern borders in the War on Drugs. As of February 16th, 2009 Adam has returned to Iraq for another mission that will last till early May. Upon his return he will be hitting the trail, as a near full time candidate. He will retain his Air Force Reserve Status and when elected will be part of only a handful of Representatives in Washington DC that serve as Reservists.”

Now from everything I’ve heard about this young man, this is a completely understated biography. For example it doesn’t mention his selfless act of heroism. But this will do for now.

I’m really excited about this run because his district is right next to my home district of the Illinois 18th congressional and I think this man has a very good chance to take it back from the Democrats. I hope you’ll join me in supporting him.

[promoted from the diaries by bs]

There’s a theme I notice quite often. It’s not just here, it’s a common in political discussions everywhere. It’s the “My idea/candidate/platform plank/you name it didn’t win my party’s support so I’m going to stay home/switch parties/form a new party for the next election” theme.

This theme is actually counterproductive to whatever cause you were supporting since the end result of your temper tantrum is that the one outcome you least desired was helped by whatever action you took against the party. IE: If you stay home from an election because the Republican party nominated a moderate instead of a conservative, you just helped hand the election to the Democrat who is most likely a socialist.

There are a couple of variations on the theme that are different enough that they deserve separate treatment.

Read More →

The Republican Governors Association is sponsoring what they call Tea Party 2.0 which is supposed to be a town hall format tea party style meeting. The featured speakers are Rick Perry and Mark Sanford.

You can sign up for this town meeting by going to the GOP Comeback web site and registering with your name, phone number, email address and ZIP code. The comments say they will call you.

I have signed up for this call, but have no additional information. It was something I heard in passing yesterday while flicking past Fox News when Sanford was on. I’ve seen no other announcements of it and I doubt that CNN, MSNBC or any other MSM news outlet will even report that it occurred.

The recent DHS memo that warned our nation’s law enforcement officers to watch out for “Right-Wing Extremists” seems to have brought it’s share of trolls and Moby’s to RedState recently. The theme is always the same “Oh, the memo didn’t mean YOU. It meant those extreme conservatives who become neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists.”

And there lies the heart of the problem. The memo achieved it’s goal of tying conservatives to these hate groups. The progressives have over the years managed to convince people that somehow people who love liberty, equality of justice, and the constitution of this country can, when taken to an extreme level, suddenly turn into hate mongering statists.

In other words, the extreme end of conservatism is the exact opposite of conservatism. The leap in logic required to come to that conclusion is something I find curious. To me, an extreme conservative would become a small L libertarian. Someone who believes the state should just but out of our business altogether.

Conservatism is based on individual liberty at it’s core. Statism is anathema to anyone with conservative values.* We don’t hate people.

There are some historical facts that the progressives like to ignore. The Nazi’s were socialists. True, they allowed corporations to continue to run so long as they met state approval, and were quick to take over or replace the heads of any corporations that didn’t (sound familiar?). But they were primarily socialists. They appealed to populist messages and they required an unswerving devotion to the goals of the state. They directed the public towards hating a group of scapegoats who they claimed were responsible for all the ills of the country (traditional socialists used the bourgeoisie, the Nazi’s used the Jews).

The ultimate white supremacist group in this country is the KKK. Another convenient fact that the progressives like to ignore is that the KKK was a group that was born from a political party. Only it wasn’t the Republicans who were the basis of it’s membership. No, it was another party that spawned this evil. The conservatives in the Republican party were often targets of this groups wrath because our ideology was so offensive to them. After all, how DARE we say that “All men are created equal.”

It’s time we start fighting the lies that have been told about us and denounce this smear. NEVER let anyone get away with equating nazis, white supremacists, or other hate groups with anything do do with conservatism.

* I was banned from KOS after posting this exact phrase. Though I went out of my way to state that I didn’t think THEY were Nazis.