I’m a registered Republican. I was born in NYC and lived in very blue Manhattan (I thanklessly ran for Manhattan Borough President in 2005), but moved to Texas in late 2006.

That’s my involvement for now. I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old at home, and I was in the hospital last month with a gastrointestinal disease.

I do what I can, mostly through my writing. Republicans are well represented here (Texas, border of Williamson County in Round Rock), although Austin (“Hey! Let’s ban plastic bags!”) is another story.

At your suggestion CW, I joined the commitee. I am very disappointed with the level of activity in the commitee but after”caucusing” with a select group of members, I think we can unseat the old sedentary chairman an get active. We intend to move toward joining with and activating neighboring commitees and getting some things done such as closed primaries in VA. I have you to thank for the impetus to move on this. I guess it’s time to stop bitching and do something. With new leadership in the precinct, we can hold our reps feet to the fire and collectively make a differnce. Keep up the good work CW.

As Rush Limbaugh said last week several times to exasperated callers who couldn’t understand why the Senate for over two years did nothing on the budget, “We just have to win more elections.” Stating the obvious is the easy part. The “how” is the hard part. But it is not all that hard. If each one of us would prioritize our time and did a little, in a united way, we could accomplish much. The “how” of electing more Constitutional conservatives would be much, much easier if we had conservatives filling up all of the approximately 200,000 vacant Republican Party precinct committeeman slots across the country. For example, in my congressional district, in 2008, more than two-thirds of the Republican Party precinct committeeman slots were vacant. Now about 49 per cent are filled. And, almost all of the new PCs are conservatives from the tea party ranks. If conservatives filled up all of the empty slots, even our new freshman Constitutional conservative representative, David Schweikert, would have to worry about a challenger having a shot at taking him out in the 2012 primary. When we get to the point where all of the Republican House and Senate members fear the possibility of a primary challenger from their right, then we’ll see some real change in Washington and the state legislatures. If we don’t get to that point, we may never recover.

Thanks again for responding and for all you do. Barry, I hope you recover fully.

ColdWarrior

… and have run for public office (and lost).

I am an elected member of my county committee, unfortunately in the extremely Progressive Silicon Valley area of the people’s republic of California. I have to say, this is a very frustrating place to be a constitutional conservative. But I will not give up!

Member of Shelby County, AL, Executive Committee and trying to move on up.
Walking the fne line between establishment Republicans and Ron Paul supporters in the Tea Party whose members are also getting involved in the local GOP. I’m working to get to know members in both better so we can unite the conservatives into a good voting block.

For 40+ years. Some years more so than others.

Been a dam Democrat all my life… although I never have voted for one. (Been votin’ since 1974… and voted in EVERY election.)

I grew up in poor part of Tennessee… a descendant of reconstruction-weary ancestors… moonshiners and sharecoppers… and my family always had a righteous distrust of government. To this day… we live by the feud.

At some point in time… if my departed parents don’t rollover in their graves… I guess I better switch over. The problem that I have is… the moment I switch… I’m afraid the dang Republicans will turn into a bunch of dumb-a$$ leftists. It’s obvious that the Democrat Party of long ago… as my folks thought of it… is no more. To the dismay of some of my yellow-dog relatives… I did actively campaign for Dr. DesJarlais.

Ned Reck

as a Republican.

I try to attend all the local, county, and focus group meetings. During last year’s political season I attended the county, district, and state conventions and participated in the business sessions. I also help distribute literature and answer question at several info booths for many local community fairs.

In addition I was a poll worker for all the primaries, run-offs, the election, and subsequent recounts.

lack of other activity, ended up being the de facto PC Captain of my precinct. I only have 6/12 slots filled: one is in DC interning in the Capitol until September, one joined while running for a local office and has now dropped completely off the radar, I was brand new in February, and I have made contact with the other three and had two of them actually show up at the July meeting. Now to meet some more of my neighbors and recruit 6 more to fill out our team, and then move on to help precincts who have zero slots filled. In addition, we are working toward more awareness of the local offices which are coming up for election, recruiting candidates to run for open/primary seats, supporting and walking precincts to GOTV for these brave folks, and laying in a farm team who can bring along more conservative voices into the future.

If we don’t do this, who will? I read CW’s posts for a while, preparing to move and looking into the precinct meetings in the area of the new home, before I was in a place to join and start educating myself on the local party in’s and out’s. It is not hard, but it does take a few hours a month of committment. Compared to the disaster in DC, a few hours doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice. I am in at least 2 Tea Party groups too, to keep my finger on the pulse and recruit like minded conservatives to be PC/s. The Tea Party folks have lots of energy to put into politics, why not harness it to something we can really change?