The success we Arizona conservatives have had in changing the Arizona Republican Party has not come about through blogging about the Party, but by individual conservatives spending a few hours a month going to a two-hour or so local legislative district Party committee meeting to learn how to become a voting member of the Party. And then recruiting more conservatives to do the same. Yelling at the Party from outside it does not, cannot, change the officers of the Party or its platform. The only way we conservatives can change our best political tool, our Party and its machinery, is to become voting members of it. Period.

For example, each state committee has three RNC committeemen, its state chairman and its two other RNC committee members, one male and one female. If conservatives in Arizona (like me) want to ensure all three are conservatives, then they have to make sure a majority of the state committeemen inside the Party are conservatives. How is that achieved? Well, each of the thirty legislative district Party committees in the state have precinct committeemen, one or more from each precinct. My LD has 69 precincts and we have a total of 277 allotted PC slots. Only 134 are filled right now. (Back in 2008, only about 65 of the slots are filled — we’ve made some progress.) For every three elected PCs we have, we get to elect one state committeemen. The more conservative PCs we get elected (they are elected by the registered voters in each precinct and almost all of the elections are uncontested because almost all of the precincts have fewer PC candidates than allotted slots), the greater number of conservative state committeemen we’ll elect.

All of this is governed by the Election Code, the Rules of the Republican Party, and the Arizona Republican Party bylaws. The applicable portions of which consist of maybe ten pieces of paper. And it’s not difficult to figure out how it all works.

We conservative Republicans in Arizona, who have taken the leap and become “ball players” inside the Party, as precinct committeemen, have had success both in my county and statewide in electing conservative officers almost across the board both on the Maricopa County committee, the most populous county in Arizona, and on the state committee. Again, not because we blogged (although some of us blog about The Neighborhood Precinct Committeeman Strategy and I have recruited conservative PCs in AZ and elsewhere through those efforts), but because we made the small effort to qualify for the ballot and then run for the office of precinct committeeman. Very easy to do in AZ. Each state has unique rules; none are onerous.

Yet here we are in these perilous times, noted above by paladin1, and still about half of the precinct committeeman slots in our Party, nationwide, on average, in each state, are vacant. But they could be filled overnight by conservatives. As we’ve got plenty of conservatives in the tea parties and 9.12 groups, etc. Millions. As I’ve advocated, if we could get them to “pivot” now into united and organized political activity inside the Republican Party itself, to fill up the 200,000 or so vacant PC slots across the country, that war going on inside the Party between moderates and conservatives would be won by the conservatives, as that 50-50 split between the existing 200,000 or so PCs would go to a 75-25 majority for the conservatives. And we’d have a Party at full strength. And all those conservative PCs would be there to help get out the vote in their precincts for the conservative Republicans.

So that’s where I’ve gone. To the local tea parties and 9.12 and other grass roots conservative groups. To tell them that if they want to change the Republican Party and elect better Republicans the best way to do it is to get inside the Party itself. And many have answered the call. And then I’ve tried to reach them on the net at their web sites.

(Some of the “national coordinators” of the tea parties don’t want the local people to do this — why, if the little people figure out that their money and time and effort is better spent locally uniting and organizing inside a political party, to actually change the outcome of elections at the local and state levels, as well as at the federal level, maybe those people wouldn’t be interested in sending their money any more to the “national coordinators.”)

The Neighborhood Precinct Committeeman Strategy is just good, old-fashioned, basic American Civics in action.

I’ve ttried to explain it succinctly here:

http://www.unifiedpatriots.com/2011/04/10/what-we-need-to-do-as-soon-as-possible-why-we-need-to-do-it-why-it-will-work-if-we-unite-now/cold-warrior

I’ve explained why it works better than the “blogger” and “public interest group” strategies here:

http://www.unifiedpatriots.com/2011/04/19/the-public-interest-group-and-blogger-strategies-vs-the-we-the-people-strategy/cold-warrior

I’ve posted to YouTube video of some of the talks I’ve given. Here’s the first clip from one I did (you’ll be able to watch the other four parts if you like):

http://youtu.be/-dSd8kjPz5Y

Here are some success stories from Utah and Arizona:

http://www.redstate.com/coldwarrior/2010/05/08/2101-of-3500-of-75000-denied-bob-bennett/

http://www.unifiedpatriots.com/2012/01/14/1783-of-698940-maricopa-county-az-republicans-passed-resolutions-changed-bylaws-and-elected-officers-today/cold-warrior

http://www.unifiedpatriots.com/2012/01/31/its-not-hard-to-get-involved-in-party-politics-it-matters-and-its-fun/cold-warrior

Simply put, our Party is not “conservative enough” for some conservatives because not enough conservatives are inside the Party itself. We need to change that. No?

I hope this helps.

Thank you.

ColdWarrior