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March on Washington #2

By: ehud (Diary)  |  March 3rd, 2010 at 10:09 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I am calling for another March on Washington on March 26, before the Easter recess, in order to kill Obamacare once and for all.

Both the House and Senate plan to be in recess starting March 29:

My best guess is that the first March on Washington drew a few hundred thousand people to DC, but was a failure due to the lack of media coverage. Media coverage is important because it affects the political dialogue, puts pressure on congress, and gets the attention of Americans who are not following the legislation too closely. It forces them to ask ‘Why are so many people so angry about this bill?’

I get the sense that the people in Congress are becoming complacent and are convincing themselves that the public REALLY supports the policy of Obamacare, they have just been turned off by the process and by scare tactics.

Getting 500,000+ people to rally on the mall will send the signal to congress that we are paying attention, we are determined, and we are not going to let this happen. And it will encourage others to voice their opinion and stand up to these people. Having a rally right before the Easter recess should jump-start another round of raging townhalls.

I think a couple hundred thousand people would draw media attention this time, especially since health-care will be the main news story around that time. To really drive home our point and get the media attention we are going to need to do something more dramatic, such as creating a human wall on the steps of the Capitol to prevent congress from going into session that day. If the police have to drag a few people off to jail, so much the better. More drama for the nightly news. If they are going to jam this thing down our throats let us give the American people the visual of the federal government using the power of the state to stomp out opposition from masses of patriotic Americans.

I doubt Congress can finish a reconciliation process by Easter, and we need to rely on the Senate to hold this thing up until at least Easter (and preferably November). But if for some reason Obamacare passes by the time of the rally, then let the rally be the launching point for the repeal of this monstrosity.

I believe this is what we need to do, but we need some conservative leaders to set the date and send the word out. 3 weeks should be enough time. Tea party leaders, Glenn Beck, Sen. DeMint, and Rep. Bachmann, are you listening?

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  • ehud

    you do a very good job advocating for your strategy.

    You are right that many of the progressives couldn’t care less what we think. But let’s not be overly simplistic. There are many congressmen who are not idealogues and are instead power-hungry politicians who want to be re-elected more than they want to see socialized medicine enacted. Those are the congressmen who will determine the fate of Obamacare and protests and media coverage DOES have an effect on them.

    I don’t think politicians mind having a handful of people mad at them until it becomes news. They hate negative media attention because that is how public opinion moves and people get activated.

    Your precinct committeeman project is a good long-term strategy but it will not help in the battle against Obamacare. Massive protests in DC that garner national media coverage have a good chance of changing a few votes or delaying the bill. And given the razor-thin margins in the house, having only a marginal effect on 10 representatives could be the difference between a government takeover of health care and a possible permanent democratic majority in the country (due to dependence on government and all the unions that will result from all the federal workers employed by the eventual government run healthcare system) and the complete implosion of Obama’s agenda and presidency which could usher in 10 years of conservative rule.

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    You assert: ‘Massive protests in DC that garner national media coverage have a good chance of changing a few votes or delaying the bill.” What evidence do you have to support that assertion? What Democrat took to the microphones to say, “That 9.12.2010 protest at the Capitol really changed my mind on socialized medicine.”?

    I think a protest that included actual evidence that the people at the protest were actually clued-in to basic civics and actually involved in party politics, as precinct committeemen, WOULD make the protest worthwhile — but that impact could be made more effectively by thousands and thousands of letters to the congresscritters that said, truthfully, one of the following (mine always include the first blurb):

    ?I am a conservative Republican Party precinct committeeman and I am recruiting every conservative I can to come into the Party with me as a precinct committeeman for the sole purpose of making sure you and all like you who do not uphold your oath of office will not be returned to office in the next election? or

    ?I am a conservative Republican and I am taking steps to become a precinct committeeman and I am recruiting every conservative I can to come into the Party with me as a precinct committeeman for the sole purpose of making sure you and all like you who do not uphold your oath of office will not be returned to office in the next election.?

    You said, “There are many congressmen who are not idealogues and are instead power-hungry politicians who want to be re-elected more than they want to see socialized medicine enacted.” Exactly. All I’m saying is that I believe we conservatives could make a bigger impact on the politicians you describe, those who actually care about getting re-elected, if we demonstrate that we’re changing the status quo where it matters — in the Republican Party itself, which happens to be THEIR MAIN ADVERSARY. If all things remain equal, incumbents have a greater than 90 per cent chance at getting re-elected. For Debtocrats, that percentage would drop precipitously IF we conservatives could demonstrate to the Debtocrat incumbents that we were increasing the chance that they’d be facing a real conservative in the general election. We can do that by actually changing the make-up of the Party at the grass roots. We’ve done that, for example, in Maricopa County, Arizona, where I live. And the AZ Debtocrat congresscritters undoubtedly are taking notice — and the DEMONSTRATED CONSERVATIVE RESURGENCE in the Maricopa County (and other AZ county) Republican Party organizations might get them to change their vote on Obamacare, whereas protests alone, I believe, would not. (I wrote about our conservative resurgence here.)

    If every signholder at the rally had somewhere on their sign, “REPUBLICAN PRECINCT COMMITTEEMAN” in bright red, signifying their participation in actual party politics, that would be a good thing, no?

    I have been to many, many Tea Parties, protests at congresscritters offices, Tea Party meetings, 9.12 meetings, etc. I go to them to recruit conservatives into the Republican Party as precinct committeemen. The overwhelming majority of those I talk to haven’t a clue about basic civics. And, I believe, the incumbent Democrats are banking on the chance that they never get a clue and continue to just go to protests and wave signs and not actually getting involved in party politics where they can have a chance at changing the outcome of the primary elections.

    If your rally idea takes off, I’ll try to attend, but only if I get to address the crowd — and exhort them to go back home to become Republican Party precinct committeemen.

    Thank you.
    ColdWarrior
    P.S. I hope you will become a PC, too, if you aren’t one already.

    • ehud

      and getting involved in the party aren’t mutually exclusive. Clealry, you wouldn’t say that all the tea parties and town halls held up to this point were a waste of energy would you?

      Your constant pushing of the precinct committeeman idea did cause me to read your website a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know a lot of that stuff and I commend you for your effort to inform us.

      However, I still think the best thing to stop Obamacare at this point is a big rally that includes some dramatic expressions of how much we hate this bill.

      You say, what evidence is there that the 9-12 rally did anything? Did anyone come out and explicitly say ‘because of this I’m changing my mind?’ No, of course not because that’s not what people do. But all our protests and townhalls have clearly had enough effect to scare 40 house dems into voting against the first house bill and keeping liberal R’s from being ‘bipartisan’.

      • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

        if it included an expression, somehow, that those in attendance were involved in actual party politics as opposed to just waving a sign.

        I believe one way to achieve a “dramatic expression of how much we hate this bill” would be to have those in attendance to somehow demonstrate that they would be returning to their communities to actually engage in party politics WITHIN the Republican Party as precinct committeemen, where they can actually elect more conservative Party leaders and actually have a real impact on get-out-the-vote efforts for the BEST conservative candidates in the all-important, traditionally-very-low-turnout primary elections.

        My experience at these kinds of protests is speaker after speaker gets up to the microphone and basically says the same thing:

        The Founding Fathers said X, Y, Z.

        The Constitution says A, B, C.

        We’re not following A., B, C, X, Y, Z.

        We’re mad as hell. Let’s “take our country back.” Yeah!

        Thank you.

        Nothing is ever said about HOW to take our country back..

        If we want to take our country back, we have to elect better people who will actually follow their oath of office.

        To do that, we have to get them onto the general election ballot. To do that, we have to get them onto the primary election ballot and get them to win the primary election.
        The BEST way to get a good conservative to win a primary election is to get into the trenches within the Republican Party as a precinct committeemen and make sure the people in your precinct know who the BEST conservative is on the primary ballot and then make sure they actually vote for that candidate.

        Going to a rally, without more, and wishing the above is going to happen, is just that — wishful thinking.

        The grass roots tea partiers ARE starting to figure this out, and the outcomes of the VA and NJ governors races, the Scott Brown election, and the outcomes of some of the lesser-know races around the country, where conservatives have won with grass roots conservative support, are having an effect on the incumbents. All I’m saying is we can dramatically increase that effect if we demonstrate that conservatives are flocking into the Republican Party precinct committeeman positions in droves.

        You are right, going to a rally in DC and becoming a precinct committeeman are not mutually exclusive. But, if I could do only one, I would choose becoming a PC. And if I could do both, I would figure out some way to use the rally to increase the number of conservative PCs in the Republican Party. I’ve been doing that since March of 2009. In case you’re interested, here’s an account about what I did at the Arizona state capitol Tea Party on April 15, 2009: http://www.redstate.com/coldwarrior/2009/04/16/phoenix-arizona-tea-party/ , which includes a link to a video I shot.

        I hope you will become a PC.

        And thanks for asking for more ideas on how to stop socialized medicine.

        Thank you.
        ColdWarrior
        No More Scozzafavas!
        Become a Republican precinct committeeman. NOW!

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    Your premise seems to be if “the people” make enough noise and fanfare in public somewhere, like at the Capitol, the progressives/socialists in the Debtocrat Party in Congress and the White House will “get the message” and cease work on passing socialized medicine.

    I believe they could care less about such demonstrations. Indeed, if that’s all “we the [decent, conservative] people” can muster, the progressive/socialists will be delighted. Those demonstrations do not actually affect the only thing some of the progressive/socialist incumbents care about — reelection. If the status quo does not change, and more conservatives do not come into the Republican Party to change it, at the grass roots, precinct committeeman level, the incumbents’ chances to be elected will not decrease. Indeed, I believe the post-modernist Democrat Party incumbents, when they see these public demonstrations, say to themselves, “Great! As long as these folks don’t discover basic civics, and continue to waste their time at these kinds of rallies, instead of getting themselves organized locally within the Republican Party, where they can be politically relevant, I’ll probably get re-elected.”

    Instead of encouraging these ineffectual public demonstrations, I believe a far more effective strategy, one with a much better cost/benefit ratio, is to encourage the energized conservative Americans in the “tea party movement,” who are aching to “do something,” to get their fannies into a local GOP meeting to sign up to become a precinct committeeman so they will have the right to vote in the internal party elections and be in the BEST position to help the BEST conservative candidates win the all-important, traditionally-very-low-turnout primary elections. (It’s all explained at my blog, linked below.)

    If we could get the leaders of a few of the largest conservative organizations to announce publicly that they were going to “pivot” and focus on getting their members involved in actual political activity WITHIN the Republican Party itself; that is, they were taking their activity indoors at GOP meetings where they could UNITE with the other conservatives already within the Republican Party, to create a full-strength Republican Party with a strong conservative majority within it, I believe the incumbent Democrats would take notice. At least those who care about re-election.

    And until those kinds of announcements are made, I’ll just keep suggesting that they are made. And keep trying to convince conservatives to become Republican Party precinct committeemen to fill up the half of the slots, nationwide, that did not have a warm, conservative body in them on Election Day, 2008. Folks, we went into the 2008 election cycle with a half-strength Republican Party!

    By the way, the folks at www.nationalprecinctalliance.org are working on this strategy, too. They’ve partnered with www.ourcaucus.com and www.thevoicesofamerica.org. Another project advocating this strategy is at www.precinctsolution.org .

    The people who control Oteleprompter used this strategy to defeat the Clinton machine. We conservatives can use it now to defeat the RINOs in our party in the primary elections and then go on to defeat the progressive/socialist Democrats in the general elections. The Republican Party is there for the taking by conservatives if we’ll just do it.

    Okay, I’ll shut up now.

    Thank you.
    ColdWarrior
    No More Scozzafavas!
    Become a Republican precinct committeeman. NOW!

  • ehud

    Does anyone else have a better idea how to stop Obamacare? I think it is likely Pelosi and Obama will twist enough arms to get it through the house unless we do something big. If the senate bill passes the house they don’t need to do reconciliation.

  • JadedByPolitics

    I put it in the RedHot I have tweeted it out and I think you really need to get with a Congressman or woman, say a Michelle Bachmann to get this thing off the ground. She really fired up the base to come protest during the last Congressional vote on this HORROR and Rush and Beck etc helped push it, so while Redstate is a good start you need a HEAVY HITTER to move it!