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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Questions That Should Be Asked

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  January 5th, 2009 at 07:00 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

We need to mobilize. It is extremely important.

As you are probably aware, Americans for Tax Reform is having a debate tomorrow for the candidates for RNC Chairman. Individuals can vote for the best questions to be asked.

Paultards have gone into the ATR website to disrupt the process. And it is very clear that they have absolutely no freaking clue what the RNC Chairman actually does; they’re asking a bunch of irrelevant hoo-hah. Let’s take action.

Below are the questions Patrick Ruffini and I agree are very relevant to the debate.

1. Please register at the website then vote for the questions below.

2. Clicking the names of the people in this email will take you to their questions.

3. Vote for each of these questions.

4. Vote down any questions that reference Ron Paul, the Federal Reserve, the Gold Standard, Austrian economists, crazy ass conspiracy theories, the Illuminati, the Zionist conspiracy to make Ron Paul incontinent, etc. [NOTE to the Paultards: none of those questions is relevant to the RNC Chairman's race except for the couple listed below the fold here.]

Let’s mobilize.

Clicking the names of the people below will take you to their questions to be voted on.

————————————————————–

In light of the success of the Ron Paul presidential campaign attracting large numbers of young activists to the conservative cause, what specifically will you do to ensure they become Republicans?

– Jon Seehusen

Bailouts, senior prescriptions, No Child Federal school governance…Please explain how the GOP-brand effectively stands for “smaller, less intrusive government” today, and your plans to restore that brand.

– BrianB

Having been a lifelong Republican for over 30 years, and having participated since the last election cycle at the precinct committee officer level of Republican party politics I am gravely concerned that the Republican Party is soley interested in running candidates who have paid their dues, so to speak, instead of supporting/running the right candidate for the right moment running on the right issues/message at the right location, i.e candidates who can win races. …

– Blonduxo (goes on to be a Ron Paul question, but these concerns are very valid)

While many people in the party have spoken about the importance of young voters, few have offered concrete plans on how to work from within the RNC to attract young voters back to our party. What, specifically, would you do to make the Republican Party an attractive option for voters 18-29 years old? Please include any ideas you have for specific programs, policy initiatives, or organizational restructurings you would commit to as RNC Chairman.

– Charlie Smith

What will you do as RNC Chairman to ensure there is no self-dealing among RNC staff and consultants and as part of efforts to mitigate consultant self-dealings will you commit to legitimately bidding out all of the RNC’s vendor contracts for mail, phone banking, and GOTV programs?

– Erick Erickson

Considering the Institutional advantage Democrats enjoy in the educational system and at the collegiate level, Republicans have to work even harder than Democrats to attract the youth vote. What strategies would you employ to spread the Republican message to young people, and to promote the party as an organization they would want to associate with?

– Locke

As chairman of the RNC, will you pledge to keep the party OUT of primaries and not endorse or oppose any primary contender either publicly or privately; publicly vet federal candidates based on the standard of the party platform and the U.S. Constitution; and open the party back up to ALL conservatives, even those who might disagree with some elected officials’ policies?

– ProfG

What is your vision for the technology necessary for our future and what steps will you take to make sure the RNC and the Republican Party compete with the most current technology available in the future?

– Sharon Day

I am a contributor to the blog HipHopRepublican.com in the past the Republican Party was seen as the party for civil rights and equal opportunity. Today when people think of Republicans they see the party as belonging only to white people. Whether this accusation is fair or not it is a view shared by thousands of Americans. How will the new RNC Chair person specifically address these concerns and what specific tools will it use to improve its outreach to Latino, Asian and African American communities?

– Terrence

What three issues do you think conservatives can rally behind and can be used to defeat liberals in the 2010 election?

– Slick3627

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COMMENTS

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  • cookcountyconservative

    n/t

  • David_Rasbold

    nt

  • AHALgal

    nt

  • http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/ Brian Simpson

    understand what the role of RNC Chair is all about. They think that they Chair sets policy. They don’t. Their job is to get Republicans election. Period.

  • Aaron Gardner

    I would also encourage those with the time to go through and down vote some of the current top rated questions, since they have nothing to do with what the RNC Chair actually does. You should recognize them when you see them.

  • Leon H. Wolf

    Erick is nicer than I am. I would have pointed out the blindingly obvious; when discussing a group of clueless pretend Republicans spamming a real Republican web poll, we’re obviously talking about Ron Paul followers.

    Look at this.

    You can help by logging in and clicking the down arrow on all the Ron Paul questions, including those about the 16th Amendment, the Federal Reserve, abolishing Cabinet Departments, etc. This stuff has *nothing at all* to do with what the RNC chair does and the debate should not be about it.

  • Don

    Republicans should forget about the ‘big tent’ and focus on conservative ideas and solutions to our problems. We need to understand that the direction the Republican party has taken since 2000 has been an abysmal failure.

    Here are the questions that should be asked.

    How is the Republican party going to decrease the size of government?

    How is the Republican party going to fight government health care.

    What is the Republican party going to do about increasing the size of our military?

    What is the Republican party going to do about cutting taxes to the bone?

    What is the Republican party going to do to reform the democrat vote program, a.k.a. welfare?

    What is the Republican party going to do to set us apart from the democrat party?

    What is the Republican party going to do about abortion?

    What is it going to take to awaken the Republican party?

  • icbm

    I would add something about abolishing the Dept of Education, but that could fall under the general question about reducing the federal government.

  • DerKrieger

    You could pose the question as one of adherence to the Constitution’s enumerated powers. Every elected official swears on the bible to uphold and defend the Constitution yet they all wind up supporting the unconstitutional growth of government by trampling all over the states’ 10th Amendment rights. I want to know when the government will actually be restrained by our governing document and why the Hell the SCOTUS doesn’t deem more legislation as unconstitutional.

  • icbm

    Unfortunately, very few Republicans are truly willing to stand up for the pre-FDR meaning of the Constitution.

    So don’t hold your breath – even though you’re right.

  • azaeroprof

    n/t

  • Jim

    …because a group of voters who are wildly enthusiastic about returning to very limited, Constitutional government and a very well developed system of economics founded on free markets and liberty are being uniformly denounced as “Paultards.”

    Disagree and debate with the ideas of the Campaign for Liberty if you like, that is fair game and what our party needs right now. But this name calling I see here does not speak well to the prospects for rebuilding the GOP.

    Believe it or not, there are many of us who support the IDEAS of Ron Paul and DO NOT believe in the Illuminati and “Zionist” conspiracies. Freedom and liberty are not kook-fringe ideas.

  • Praveen

    I decided to go through the questions one by one and was very frustrated. Some people just can’t read. There are probably 100 or even more Ron Paul questions. I don’t get it. Instead Ron Paul supporters could have used just one question. I feel like there is an attempt to swarm the site with Ron Paul questions(same people voting for all Ron Paul rants) and get attention or there are a lot of very dumb people voting.

  • DerKrieger

    really do have a government without limit. If they ignore the limitations set forth by the Founders then why the Hell maintain the pretense at all? Time to stop mocking the Left for their rhetoric about a “living and breathing” Constitution. At least they’re only referring to the 1st and maybe 2nd Amendments with that gibberish. Our Constitution has been reduced to arguments almost exclusively over two Amendments, 1 and 2 and everything else is ignored.

  • Aquinas

    “Why were the Ron Paul delegates harrassed at the Republican National Convention?”

    Seriously?

  • Steve W

    The point is that the RNC Chair does not make party policy – therefore the debate should not be about that. As Brian said above . . . the RNC Chair’s “job is to get Republicans election. Period.”

    If you want to discuss the IDEAS of Ron Paul – create a different thread – and we’ll discuss freedom and liberty all day – but do so in the proper venue.

  • Steve W

    .

  • DerKrieger

    good ideas. Unfortunately he probably wasn’t the best person to represent those ideas. And I doubt very seriously we’ll ever be able to return to limited government because too many people in government and society are invested in big government, people all along the ideological spectrum.

  • http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/ Brian Simpson

    You’re definitely one of the people who don’t understand the position of RNC Chair.

  • Jim

    These are very fair points, and I think that I and many people in the C4L camp simply would like to see the RNC recognize and try to work with the supporters of Ron Paul. There has been many allegations of marginalization of Ron Paul supporters who show up to support the GOP on the grassroots level, and its not hard to believe when terms like “Paultards” are thrown around very casually.

    Clearly they have a presence on the Internet that can be utilized. They can raise money in massive amounts via the Internet. There is a wealth of intellectual firepower supporting the ideas of liberty and freedom behind the campaign (like the Mises Institute ). I would be very happy to see a frank discussion of that movement by the RNC candidates and how it can help the GOP at large. It seems to me that Ron Paul’s movement is too large to ignore by the GOP.

    DekKrieger, agreed. Ron Paul is not the most polished politician in the world. But that is a very defeatist attitude that we are beyond the point of going back to limited government. Our struggle is between two fundamental systems of ordering society (i.e. freedom/liberty vs. socialism/big governement). If we fail in advancing the banner of liberty, then our standard of living will continue to decline and the last best hope of freedom will be extinguished.

  • http://whereswalden.com/ Jeff Walden

    Will you return our nation to the gold standard, as required by our Constitution (Article 1 Section 10: “No state shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts”)?

    http://www.rncdebate.org/index.php?search_type=questionid&search_term=465

    Words fail me.

  • icbm

    although there still remain big differences between originalist Justices and living Constitution Justices.

    But it is indeed difficult to see how federalism will return in any serious way without three more Justice Thomases on the Court, or without a Republican Party made up mainly of Congressmen like Goode (now gone), Flake, etc.

    The FDR interpretation of the Constitution has simply gone too long unopposed.

    This doesn’t stop me from continuing to work for the return of federalism, even if I think there is little chance of it. Even a small step in that direction is worthwhile.

  • SIConservative

    One of the many reasons that we lost the last two elections is that our elected officials failed to follow through on their promises, most notably those of fiscal responsibility. If we’re going to win seats, and eventually control, back, it is essential that we regain the high ground on at least some of the issues that put us in power in the first place. While it is obviously ideal to have candidates, and, secondarily, allied individuals and organizations, leading the way on that front, we must have a coherent and cohesive message that is clearly understood and promoted by the RNC and other Party organizations. The 2006 NRSC debacle clearly illustrated how damaging it can be when those organizations that exist for the purpose of electing Republicans fail to understand how closely that goal is related to promoting, or at the very least defending, conservative policies. I’m not confident that all of the candidates for the job are capable of doing that effectively.

  • profg

    I didn’t write that question, but I sure as heck voted it up. I was there, and I was STUNNED at the harassment that took place. All of the RedHats on the floor (who, according to the rules, weren’t even allowed to be there in the first place), and all of the BlackHats everywhere else, acted like the friggin’ KGB and GRU. I was *embarrassed* to be a Republican at that convention, in the one place where I should have been the most proud to be one.

    Shameful. Just shameful.

  • profg

    The problem is, the RNC Chair lately hasn’t been doing his “job” to “get Republicans elected.”

    For example, we saw John McCain nominated, instead of a Republican.

  • profg

    Can you believe a REPUBLICAN would DARE to demand that we get rid of the unconstitutional fiat money system propagated by the Federal Reserve?

    Words fail, period.

  • Aaron Gardner

    Your ideas about liberty, the economy, limited government and more, are all very respectable positions. In fact many of us here at RedState are in agreement with many of your positions.

    The only problem is that you guys don’t know what the job of the RNC Chair is. The questions you want asked are irrelevant to the position of RNC Chair. The questions you are asking are great question to have in a Presidential Debate, or a Senate Debate, or a House Debate, but they are pointless to ask of someone who does not create or enforce policy withing the Republican party.

    This is why you guys are called Paultards!!!!!

  • Aaron Gardner

    Seriously, the RNC Chair doesn’t make or enforce policy in the GOP, so although this would be a good question to ask a candidate for elected office at the state or federal level, in the case of RNC Chairman it is totally irrelevant and a waste of time. Why is this so hard to understand?

  • Streiff

    on the steps of the convention center and the DVD sold as a fundraiser.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    And my clicker finger is tired. Must have been at least 200 that mentioned the Big Giant Head by name. And no less than 200

  • E Pluribus Unum

    You may notice the Ronulan subtitles. And you don’t want to miss the credits at the end.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    How many people did the party shoot, versus who the Soviets would murder?

    You’re an idiot.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Since when is the national government a state, stupid?

  • Streiff

    mine says Congress has the power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;”

    Now if your objection is to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing producing “paper” money rather than coins I don’t know what to tell you other than throughout the history of the US we have used paper currency.

    If your objection is the standard gold bug nonsense then I can only say you don’t understand either money or the economy well enough to be allowed to comment much less vote.

  • Moe Lane

    Don’t bother asking for reinstatement after it’s done unless you’re prepared to apologize to the site for insinuating that we’re supporters of mass murderers.

  • Praveen

    down..

  • zuiko

    Get into the convention? Seriously. Some state really decided to make this guy a delegate? Or did he just sneak in with the catering crew? Unless by “there” he means he was one of them outside with the anarchists and libs burning police cars.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    He may have been one of them.

  • zuiko

    We didn’t send any Ronulans on to the national convention. There’s no way any of them would ever get the votes of the state convention delegates.

  • Beez

    I posted a question which has gotten a lot of votes (and please, I’m not a paultard; can’t stand the guy actually). I would really have expected the RNC to have some broad, high level policy responsibility. If all we care about is electing Republicans, with no organized, managed plan of what we want in a candidate, we will continue to get RINOs and phoney conservatives.

    Doesn’t some arm of the party need to say, this is what we stand for?

  • JDidSaint

    Was there some part of the post that has been edited out since the ban? From what I see, all he did was use hyperbole, (albeit wild hyperbole,) to describe the actions of security at the RNC. Who does the, “we” in your post refer to?

    Also, while the metaphor is heavy handed, In “Expelled”, Ben Stein drew a connection between Intelligent Design dissidents and Nazi Germany. Does he have a standing ban from the site as well until he apologizes for his heavy handed analogy?

    Finally, why are you silencing profg? Let him/her speak. If he/she’s a Ronulan, (which he/she never actually indicates,) or whatever you guys call them and all Ronulans are idiots, then people will tire of the idiocy and ignore him/her anyway. By banning them, you take away their ability to respond and turned what could have been an intelligent exchange into an admin censoring posts for uniformity.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Sheesh. What, do you think Moe went to his home, taped his mouth, and stole his computer?

    He just doesn’t get to post at Red State unless the Directors overturn Moe.

    Get a grip.

    Don’t you paultards understand the difference between first amendment rights and property rights?

  • Jim

    Money is a medium of exchange. The amount of money in circulation affects prices of goods and services. If the amount of money in circulation is artificially increased (which is easy to do with paper money that is in-and-of-itself legal tender), then the prices of goods and services go up (i.e. inflation). This diminishes the purchasing power of those who do not have immediate access to this newly created money (the poor, those on fixed incomes, etc). The only entity in this country that can increase or decrease the money supply is the Federal Reserve system, which has little-to-no oversight by Congress. If people were allowed to use alternatives to this governement fiat money (i.e. gold, silver, platinum, butter, whatever), then it would allow private citizens to better protect and secure their wealth without it being siphoned away through inflation.

    You may not agree 100% with this, but why is this situation so quickly dismissed as not even worthy of discussion on a conservative Republican site?

  • zuiko

    But it kept melting in my pocket and making a mess. I think I’ll stick to fiat money for now.

  • JDidSaint

    My point was/is why make a martyr of someone for making a, perhaps inflammatory, but otherwise benign statement? Why give the “paultards” another page to link to in their ungoing war of, “It’s not fair!”? Why not let them speak? RedState readers are smart. They can figure out if a post makes logical sense.

    Furthermore, I feel greatful (not justified) that the admins are still letting me post. ;-D

  • Jim

    As it was written on thenextright.com :

    “But the RNC Chair will be in a unique position of Party and movement leadership in years ahead. The Party will need both the tacticion and the strategist. And the most important role of the RNC Chair may well be that of visionary leader.”

    Since that is the case, is it not fair to try to bring to the forefront issues that have not been acknowledged by the leadership as even areas of concern? Though the RNC Chairman’s job is not to create policy, his/her position and views on the role of governement in the lives of private citizens certainly should be of concern to rank and file Republicans. If a pro-choice candidate was running for RNC chair, would you be screaming that the RNC Chairman doesn’t have anything to do with abortion policy and we shouldn’t be concerned?!?

    Look, the squeaky wheel gets oil. If it takes blasting a website with questions to get noticed and prevent more-of-the-same from the GOP (which was what happened after 2006), then so be it.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    We can all tune in to episodes of I Love Lucy if we want to hear this moaning and gritching.

    Martyr? Please. And if there *is* an ongoing war of “It’s not fair!” on the part of the PaulTards, it doesn’t really light up the radar screen here. We just want a clean floor, that’s all.

    By the way, if you choose to ignore my plea, then I have a request. My VERY FAVORITE I Love Lucy sketch is the one where they have chocolate on the conveyor belt and get behind, and start eating it…. Please do that one. Er…. THIS one:

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Raving lunatics who compare Republican party officials with the arms of a murderous, totalitarian system fall beneath our standards and don’t help us toward our goals.

  • JDidSaint

    Thanks for taking time to explain RedState’s reasoning on the ban. I agree that any comparison to the KGB and GRU is heavy handed at best.

  • JDidSaint

    Thanks for not pointing out the mispelling of “ongoing”. Perhaps it was Freudian?

    Kind of confused by the rest of your post. I’ll just assume you’re saying that I’m belaboring a relatively minor decision that’s already been made and we can all move on with our lives.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    Actually I missed the “ungoing”, probably would have been unmercifully bad about that one.

    Yeah, that was my point. RedState had to deal with a massive, massive spamming effort by the Paultards during the primary season. They proved in every imaginable way to be no true pro-Constitution conservatives, but nothing more than pro-pot, anti-war leftist agitators with the worst possible manners.

    So we are severely disinclined, for now, to offer them, or anybody smelling like them, the benefit of the doubt. The topic of censorship, or “silencing” is one of their favorite code words for ‘not letting us rampage through your cornfields’. Unfortunately, true Libertarians get a bit of the short shrift along with them, because initial symptoms are similar.

    I hardly know you, and I apologize for the unkind treatment as it appears I have misjudged you.

    As a peace offering, I offer you this, as a shared laugh (and a reminder of the PaulTards):

  • JDidSaint

    Time does heal all wounds: I had nearly forgotten about the constant barrage of Ron Paul’s minions on the internet. That video is amazing. I hadn’t seen that MP sketch, but I’m saving the link.

    There is no need for an apology. In fact, I feel a bit giddy that I drew a reply from EPU (note: two replies!)

  • liandro

    is acting like KGB in one specific way is not equating that someone with all of the KGB’s actions. It’s hyberbole, and common hyperbole at that. If I had a quarter for every time someone compared anythying to Hitler, or the KGB, etc….

  • Streiff

    Just because this is a conservative/Republican site doesn’t mean stupid ideas need to be discussed.

    I treat this kind of stupidity with the same deference I give to discussions of Flat Earth theories.

    Let’s assume that everything you say is true. First, the proposal is unconstitutional on its face as the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to produce currency. You may call it “fiat money” the rest of us call it “money.”

    Nothing prevents you from either hoarding commodities or bartering said commodities for goods and services.

    You apparently are really unclear on the difference between money and money supply.

    The idea that only the Fed can increase the money supply is simply stupid. If one looks back in history to the 1880s you’ll find the money supply was increased by the opening of sliver mines in the west. In fact, every day on Wall Street the money supply changes as a function of stock prices.

    So no, I don’t intend to see this kind of idiocy debated here.

  • profg

    First of all, thank you Erick for unblocking my account.

    Second, I will say this in the most respectful way it can be said: I was blocked for a comment that anyone else would never have been blocked for.

    And the only obvious reason is because I supported Ron Paul in this election, and not the Democrat John McCain.

    Please don’t try to deny it. As “liandro” noted below (wow, he didn’t get blocked for it?), “saying that someone is acting like KGB in one specific way is not equating that someone with all of the KGB’s actions. It’s hyperbole, and common hyperbole at that. If I had a quarter for every time someone compared anything to Hitler, or the KGB, etc?”

    I made a simple comment about the repressive TACTICS of the RedHats and BlackHats at the RNC, which I experienced first-hand, and I was blocked by someone who obviously refuses to blocked people who use invectives here that are just as bad or worse.

    I’m referring to all of the uses of well-recognized insults to people who are mentally handicapped – specifically, the use of the word “retard”. So many posters here simply slap on Ron Paul’s name, and Wheee, they get to insinuate that supporters of Ron Paul are mentally handicapped. You know – retards. Or, as you so love to spew, “Paultards”.

    How very respectful of you.

    I have been a registered member of RedState since my friend Mike Krempasky first created the site. I have been an active and involved conservative Republican for over 20 years. My comment is even one of the ten that Erick and Patrick selected to encourage everyone to vote up. And because I supported Ron Paul in this election — and NOT because I called the McCain camp on the carpet for their Gestapo-like “security” techniques, which I witnessed first-hand — I was blocked.

    Shame.

  • Jim

    …how confident in the dollar everyone is at the end of 2009. With all the printing and borrowing going on we may be flirting with hyperinflation.

    I am glad you are comfortable with 100%, non-negotiable, zero-choice-in-the-matter, monopoly control over the medium of exchange in this country. Let freedom ring!