RS
EDITOR OF REDSTATE
How
I have gotten a lot of emails in the past 24 hours, mostly from senior citizens incidentally, asking simply, “How?”
How do we throw them out? How do we replace them with good people?
It is both harder and easier than it looks.
First of all, we need to be realists. Some of the candidates we love won’t cut it. Sometimes we will be split on candidates with you liking someone and me liking someone else — it is okay to disagree, but both of us must understand that at some point, if our candidate cannot raise the money, we need to unite behind one conservative lest the conservatives split the vote and get a moderate elected.
More importantly, we need to pick our battles carefully and wisely. I don’t mean to pick on Les Phillips in AL-05, but let me use him as an example.
Les Phillips got a lot of attention at CPAC and thereafter. He and Mo Brooks are battling it out with Parker Griffith, the Democrat turned Republican. Les Philips has raised $363,236.00 and Mo Brooks has raised only $214,339.00. But Phillips’ money was raised through expensive direct mail programs and he only has $66,107.00 on hand compared to $211,303 on hand for Brooks. Compare them both to Griffith who has $714,835 on hand and the backing of the GOP establishment.
This is neither a plus or a minus for either of the candidates, but if we want to improve that seat, we need to rally and we need to educate ourselves.
More importantly, we need to focus on the Senate. I’ve provided a list of good candidates. I’d add Ovide LaMontagne in New Hampshire and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware to that list, but I’m more focused on the list as prepared. We need to move the Senate right both because of the GOP and because we need to hold the line on Obama’s appointees. The Senate GOP continues to fold on these issues.
So how do we do it?
First, we take this of House Democrats and “adopt” them. Set up a Google Alert or whatever you need to so you can track everything they do. And then you blog about it. Build a record of their misdeeds. Blog about them here or elsewhere. Let’s exchange notes.
Then we get in and find good challengers for them. We have challengers for some of them already. I’ll make a commitment to start writing about those challengers. But we need to build up a narrative on these guys and monitor their movements. If you live in their districts, show up at events with a flip video camera. Capture their words and screw ups.
In November, we vote them out and replace them with our guys.
I’ll begin working on a list of the solid House candidates. We have a few already. On the Senate side though, I cannot emphasize enough that we must rally around candidates right now, even though their primaries may be a ways off.
We cannot split between Lowden and Tarkanian — we need Tarkanian. We cannot split between Coats, Hoffstetler, and Stutzman in Indiana — we need Stutzman. We cannot split between Norton and Buck in Colorado — we need Buck.
I know there is some disagreement, but we need to rally. And we need to rally in favor of the guy who is going to be a conservative before being a Republican. That is the only way to have a real impact.
Already Senate Republicans are wavering on repealing Obamacare verses nibbling at the edges to fix it. We need candidates who will repeal it.
This is not rocket science. But we have to stick together and fight. At the end of the day we have to be willing to make some tough choices. We can do it. That’s how we win.
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