This might not be safe for work for some of you.

For the rest of us, Cyrus protects the RNC from this problem:

We now have a new Chairman for the Republican Party. With a new Chairman comes new people and new vendors and new ideas.

When I first wrote on this topic on Christmas Day, the post made it round the world — surprising particularly because the post was written on Christmas Day.

There were five points I made and that I stand by:

1. That you have come to me thinking I am a technologist is an indication of the problem;
2. Luckily for you, I have come to recognize my limits, but sadly there are too many others out there who do not recognize their limits and, unfortunately, offer themselves as solutions to our tech problem instead of offering real solutions;
3. If anyone you talk to says you need to duplicate what Obama did, run the other way as fast as possible;
4. When looking for people, choose technologists who are interested in politics, not political guys who learned tech; and,
5. Look outside Washington, D.C.

In my post, I discussed who Cyrus Krohn is and why keeping him at the RNC is important. Since then, all the thinking we have done at RedState over endorsements, etc. has come down to one this: will Cyrus be kept at the RNC.

He is that important. We will know whether Michael Steele is serious about bringing change to the party by, ironically enough, whether he brings change to the e-Director’s position. Change in that position will most likely mean he was not serious about change at all.

Allow me to explain:

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Congratulations to Michael Steele on his victory in the hotly contested race for Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The former Maryland Lieutenant Governor was not our first choice for this spot, given our concern that he was not the most conservative choice in the race. But he is an eloquent and persuasive spokesman for the party and an impressive man, and we wish him well.

The Republican Party needs to do two contradictory things in the years to come: return to the party’s conservative roots and sell the party’s message to voters who are not base conservatives. Chairman Steele has promised an aggressive outreach to do the latter; we urge him, in that effort, not to neglect the former. We can’t sell a message based on our principles if we don’t have principles.

UPDATE: Blackwell drops out. Endorses Steele. Has the RNC gone the way of the country and put a black man in charge? Looks that way. MSM won’t change the narrative though, I guarantee.

Ballot 4:

Dawson 62
Steele 60
Saul 31
Blackwell 15

UPDATE BY JEFF: Duncan withdraws

Ballot 3:

Steele 51
Duncan 44
Dawson 34
Saul 24
Blackwell 15

Ballot 2:

Duncan 48
Steele 48
Dawson 29
Saul 24
Blackwell 19

Ballot 1:

Duncan 52
Steele 46
Dawson 28
Saul 22
Blackwell 20

The magic number is 85.

Some very good and close friends of RedState (and some familiar faces around here) have started a new web venture. As we head more toward the grassroots and activist angle and as some of the old guard publications out there go the way of Kathleen Parker, we need a new voice for conservative thought and news.

A younger generation of fresh faces and clear voices has seized the challenge and launched the New Ledger. It has already become part of my daily reading and I hope you’ll make it part of yours too.

Thanks to Moe for reminding me I forgot to mention it the other day when it went live.

According to my Amazon tracking account, 111 balls were sent to Mitch McConnell yesterday.

Have you sent yours?

Let it serve as a reminder to the Senate Republican Conference as a whole that they must stick up for their voters like the House and oppose the Obama Spending Plan.

And remind them that their own plan for mortgage forgiveness sucks.

Send Mitch some balls today.

I have, for some time, been on a tirade against the self-dealing, back scratching, and incestuous relationship among GOP consultants. The Democrats have had their own problems with the issue.

To be sure, there are some consultants and consulting firms that are must use. But not all of them.

To his credit, Michael Steele recognizes the same problem and sent out an email to RNC members describing how he intended to solve the problem. But, one of the criticisms about Steele from some of the RNC members has been his relationship to Blaise Hazelwood, a DC consultant.

In Steele’s email, he wrote, “No member of the RNC staff will benefit financially from the RNC beyond their salary. The RNC will utilize a RFP process that mirrors best practices among national non-profit organizations. Contracts will be awarded strictly on merit.”

But privately, some RNC members question if he’ll live up to his email and they point their finger to Mrs. Hazelwood. Here’s why:

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This post is past due, I’m afraid. I committed to write it about three weeks ago and kept getting distracted.

Last month I pointed out problems with Majority Strategies/Next Wave Communications. Specifically, I pointed out that Majority Strategies screwed up the absentee ballot mailer in Saxby Chambliss’s runoff, as they had in Ohio. Likewise, I pointed out the various conflicts of interest between the organization and the GOP.

Incestuous relations among GOP consultants is an ongoing problem.

Three weeks ago, Brett Buerck of Majority Strategies called me to discuss my post. He took exception to what I wrote and I wanted to fairly recount his side of the conversation.

Having talked to Brett, it seems that the problem involving Majority Strategies may not be questionable funneling of business, but some serious communications breakdowns.

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Last week I was on Hannity’s show and the lady who did my makeup gave me a bit of Burn Cream MD. It’s great for burns, particularly if you cook.

She asked if I had an opportunity, would I plug it. I said sure. Well, after one week of Barry O back pedaling on the positions you lefties got so hot about, you may be feeling burned and might need to slather some on.

Last night the House GOP stood together, moderates and conservatives, and opposed Barack Obama’s socialist stimulus scheme.

Today, Mitch McConnell is going to address the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting. According to Roll Call, in his speech McConnell intends to outline a “post partisan path” to leadership that “could also provide a rallying cry for old-line Republicans to reassert their authority within the party” — the same old guard that supported the Bridge to Nowhere and capitulated repeated to President Clinton when he was in office.

Already, McConnell has been favorably quoting Bob Dole on the need to compromise with the Democrats.

So here’s what we need to do. I’ve said he lost his testicles and is now spreading a cancer of capitulation throughout the Senate Republican Conference. We need to send Mitch some balls.

Seriously.

We’re teaming up with the Don’t Go Movement to do just that. Go here and send Mitch some balls. The House GOP can hold the line. Mitch and the Senate GOP should do the same and oppose the stimulus bill.

Mail the balls to Mitch’s Louisville Office:

Sen. Mitch McConnell
601 W. Broadway
Room 630
Louisville, KY 40202
Phone: (502) 582-6304

They can donate them to a local youth program, I’m sure. And they’ll get the point. And thanks to Don’t Go for helping us spread the word.

The Senate GOP Leadership needs to stand up for the GOP, not kowtow to the Democrats.

The House GOP held the line. They voted unanimously to oppose the Obama Stimulus Plan. The Democrats will now own this failure.

Earlier today I said we must make our side feel pain when they displease us. But we should be prepared to say thanks too.

I’m giving a $22.00 donation to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the group that elects House Republicans.

We may not agree with them every time. But it is quite important that we say thanks to them when they hold the line on the advance of socialism.

I got an email yesterday. The correspondent wrote

I truly appreciate and support your efforts; however I have to admit my total frustration in having failed to stop the Treasury nomination, it is an offensive move. I called everyone but end up talking with one of the volunteers at the Senator’s offices and I truly wonder about this strategy effectiveness. Maybe we need to pursue a different approach. Please advise.

We are not meant in the course of our activism to be always successful. We will have moments of success and they will be large and they will be small. But sometimes we will not be successful.

The persistent widow in Luke 18 had to keep going to the judge who “neither feared God nor cared about men.” She “kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’” She persisted and the judge finally said, “Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!”

It is the same with an activist. We must persevere.

Yesterday the Politico ran a story on Jim DeMint filled with invective from anonymous Republican staffers in the Senate. They hate Jim DeMint because he perseveres. He is not always successful, but sometimes he is. And if he perseveres, at some point, he will prevail.

DeMint, in the article, said something very wise about the present Republican leadership. He said “that lawmakers in both parties ‘only respond to pain.’”

Again, we don’t expect to be successful all the time. We will have set backs. That is the nature of the game. We must also accept that some people have good reasons for doing what they do, though we disagree with them. But we must also expect and demand that we are respected as the base of the party. We must fight and our fight must frequently induce pain on our own side. It is frequently the only way to make headway.

Persevere and fight on.

One way to do so is to join the RedState Army. We will be sometimes defeated. We will be sometimes victorious. But most importantly, we won’t be idly bitching and yelling into the wind — we’ll be working to make a difference. It is no good to complain and not act. It is very good to act without complaint and fight the good fight until the setting of the sun.

Persevere.

Senator Lisa Murkowski is a massive proponent of the Bridge to Nowhere.

She is pro-choice. She supports embryonic stem cell research. She refused to support the nuclear option to end judicial filibusters. She supports SCHIP funding. She is in favor of government funding of groups who provide abortions. [UPDATE: She just voted with the Democrats to get rid of the Mexico City Policy that Ronald Reagan adopted too]

She is now officially in Mitch McConnell’s inner circle.

Mind you, she is not all bad. She generally supports free trade. She generally opposes the assault weapons ban. But she is very much a status quo Republican. She is not a great advancer of the conservative agenda, let alone the Republican agenda.

If Mitch McConnell is Chief of Mediocrity, Lisa Murkowski is a great surrogate for him.

And so it goes.

Having said the other day that I though Ken Blackwell was unfortunately not picking up traction, I’ve talked to several people who disagree and make a very persuasive case for Blackwell.

At the same time, the colossal mud slinging going on is getting funnier by the day and nastier.

Here’s the scenario laid out right now.

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Freedom Works has put up a post on twenty facts about the stimulus.

You need to know them.

Check out the whole post here. Assuming they won’t mind, I’m going to list all 20 and do it above the fold because they are all worthy of attention:

1. The $825 billion package slated for a House vote later this week will exceed more than $1.1 trillion when adding in the interest ($300 plus billion) between 2009-2019 to pay for it.

2. The Capitol Hill Democrats’ plan includes funding for contraceptives; regardless of where anyone stands on taxpayer funded contraception, there is no question that it has NOTHING to do with the economy.

3. The legislation could open billions of taxpayer dollars to left-wing groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which has been accused of voter fraud, is reportedly under federal investigation; and played a key role in the housing meltdown.

4. Here are just a few of the programs and projects that have been included in the House Democrats’ proposal:

• $650 million for digital TV coupons.
• $600 million for new cars for the federal government.
• $6 billion for colleges/universities – many which have billion dollar endowments.
• $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts.
• $44 million for repairs to U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters.
• $200 million for the National Mall, including $21 million for sod.

5. The plan establishes at least 32 new government programs at a cost of over $136 billion. That means more than a third of this plan’s spending provisions are dedicated to creating new government programs.

6. The plan provides spending in at least 150 different federal programs, ranging from Amtrak to the Transportation Security Administration. Is this the “targeted” plan Democratic leaders promised?

7. Even though the legislation contains at least 152 separate spending proposals, the authors of the plan can only say that 34 have any chance at keeping or growing jobs.

8. Just one in seven dollars of an $18.5 billion expenditure on “energy efficiency” and “renewable energy programs” would be spent within the next 18 months.

9. The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.

10. The House Democrats’ bill will cost each and every household $6,700 in additional debt, paid for by our children and grandchildren.

11. The bill provides enough spending – $825 billion – to give every man, woman, and child in America $2,700. $825 billion is enough to give every person in Ohio $72,000.

12. $825 billion is enough to give every person living in poverty in the United States $22,000.

13. Although the House Democrats’ proposal has been billed as a transportation and infrastructure investment package, in actuality only $30 billion of the bill – or three percent – is for road and highway spending. A recent study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that only 25 percent of infrastructure dollars can be spent in the first year, making the one year total less than $7 billion.

14. Much of the funding within the House Democrats’ proposal will go to programs that already have large, unexpended balances. For example, the bill provides $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) – a program that already has $16 billion on hand. States also are sitting on some $9 billion in unused highway funds – funds that Congress is prepared to rescind later this year.

15. All board members of the “Accountability and Transparency Board” created by this legislation are appointees of the President; none will be appointed by Congress.

16. A scant 2.7 percent, or $22.3 billion of the overall package, is dedicated to small business tax relief.

17. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the legislation increases by seven million the number of people who get a check back from the IRS that exceeds what they paid in payroll and income taxes.

18. The “Making Work Pay” tax credit at the center of the plan amounts to $1.37 a day, or about the price of a cup of coffee.

19. Almost one-third of the so-called “tax relief” in the House Democrats’ bill is spending in disguise, meaning that true tax relief makes up only 24 percent of the total package – not the 40 percent that President Obama had requested.

20. $825 billion is just the beginning – many Capitol Hill Democrats want to spend even more taxpayer dollars on their “stimulus” plan. In fact, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey (D-WI), told Roll Call earlier this month, “I would not be surprised to see us go further on some of these programs down the line.”

You’ve no doubt seen this article in the Politico. The article, which originally erred by naming Tom Price instead of properly citing Phil Gingrey, quotes Gingrey as follows:

“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.”

I ran a primary campaign against Phil Gingrey in 2002. Sadly, we lost in the runoff. Back then we accurately characterized him as an unimaginative whore to leadership. Of course then in a Democrat controlled Georgia state legislature, Phil was always the first Republican in line to kowtow to Democrat Governor Roy Barnes. Everybody knew Phil would be the first Republican to sell out the caucus to the Governor in the state legislature.

Nothing has changed. You should not extrapolate from Gingrey’s comments that the average Republican member of the House of Representatives feels that way. I hear from dozens of them daily and they all think Rush is right. That’s exactly why Boehner has shifted to full opposition against the stimulus package.

During the farm bill debate in 2007, the Georgia Republicans in the House made a pact to stick together and vote against the bill. Going into it, they intended to. But then someone pointed out to them that if they had state wide ambitions, they needed to support the farm bill. It was, of course, fatuous nonsense. But Gingrey promptly marched down to the floor and voted for the farm bill, betraying the rest of his colleagues (Kingston voted for it too, but everyone knew he would given the massive amount of farmers in his district lobbying him. Gingrey had zero farmers).

So don’t be surprised by this. Just note that should Gingrey ever run state wide in Georgia we’ll actively oppose him.

Wow. An email from a friend:

Tonight in the House Rules Committee, Rep. Thad McCotter (R-MI), introduced an amendment to the President’s stimulus bill (H.R. 1) that would require any new infrastructure project – roads, bridges, schools, post offices or any other buildings — created by funding provided in H.R. 1 to be named after a member of the United States Armed Forces who was killed in combat or an emergency response provider who was killed in the line of duty.

The amendment was voted down on with all 9 Democrats on the Committee voting no to the 3 Republican yea votes.

It seems that Democrats are determined to name any new projects after themselves. West Virginia may actually be renamed “Byrdland”…

Today a reporter asked Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, to explain the $200 million for the National Mall in Washington.

He actually tries to justify it as a means to create new jobs.

REPORTER: Clearly with the contraceptive decision, the president is open to revising some component parts of the stimulus

GIBBS: I think that’s accurate.

REPORTER: And to pick up on the phrase you used before, look at the whole package through the lens of what’s economically productive. Does the President believe some other spending that’s been criticized – $200 million for the National Mall, $44 million to spruce up the exterior of the Agriculture Department….

GIBBS: Let’s talk about the Mall for a second.

REPORTER: Okay.

GIBBS: When we met on the first day of our presidency, we were on the Mall. Right? 1.8 million people stood on the Mall, which happens to be the most visited national park that we have. Right? I think that you can make a very credible case and the economic team has, that reconditioning the National Mall will create jobs. Probably through spending in small businesses.

Since when is the Park Service a small business? I mean the money will go there, not to small businesses. Sure, they’ll buy some grass seed from private businesses, which will take from existing inventory — not create new inventory or new jobs — but then the work will be handled by the government, which likewise will not hire new people to do the job.

So how again will this create new jobs? And even if it did, exactly how many would it create and how long would they last? Will we have to keep reseeding the lawn to keep the people employed?

These guys really do have no clue. And it is another reason the GOP should oppose the stimulus plan and be proven right when it fails.

According to Congressional Quarterly,

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the new chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is staking out a sharply partisan approach to the task of rescuing his party from the steep losses it suffered in the last two election cycles.

Cornyn, who once shared former President George W. Bush’s hard-edged political consultant Karl Rove, has already gone after some of President Obama’s Cabinet nominees. Now he intends to target Democratic senators who vote for the economic stimulus package (S 1) that Senate appropriators and tax writers are slated to mark up Tuesday, a version of which (HR 1) will be on the House floor Wednesday.

But John Cornyn voted for Timothy Geithner to be Treasury Secretary.

Call Senator Cornyn at (202) 224-2934. Ask him how we can trust him with our money to fund Senate races if we can’t trust him to vote against tax cheats for Treasury Secretary.

There are two men at the top of list for RNC Chairman: Mike Duncan and Katon Dawson. One of them will be the next chairman.

I’m not saying this because I want them, though truth be told I’d be happy with either. I’m saying this because I’ve been surveying RNC members and people on the outside. It seems very clear this is where we stand.

In third place would be Saul Anuzis with Michael Steele nipping at his heels. Publicly, Steele has more endorsements, but Anuzis has stronger support among undecideds.

Ken Blackwell has failed to gain much traction and Chip Saltsman has failed to gain any traction.

My understanding is that Mike Duncan and Michael Steele are in the process of cutting a deal. If Duncan cannot get enough strength to get an outright victory or at least victory on the second ballot, he may swing his support to Steele. Likewise, Michael Steele is said to be amenable to the idea of throwing his support to Duncan on the second ballot if Duncan gets close on the first.

The wild card is Dawson. Many of the conservatives I’ve talked to intend to throw their support to him on the second ballot if Blackwell does, in fact, go down. This too leaves plenty of room for Saul to jockey in for position if a third ballot becomes necessary.

We can be pretty sure right now that at the end of the week we won’t see Blackwell or Saltsman in the Chairman’s office. As the week goes on and more shifts in voting occur, I’ll try to update with where things stand. Today though, pay attention to Duncan and Steele.