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The Watercooler ~ RedState: Purpose & Integrity

By: westcoastpatriette (Diary)  |  February 27th, 2013 at 10:35 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I have always loved a challenge. It seems to be in my basic make-up to look at systems or organizations to understand how and why they function as they do, and how to improve upon them and/or expand them. Some would call it being a visionary.

It’s one of the reasons I have been so fascinated with RedState. I have been here nearly two years and I am still struggling to understand what I need to know to help it grow and have the greatest impact possible.

If you have not yet read Erick’s Diary this morning, it comes just in time for all of us to digest and incorporate into our thinking when we write here. Whether as a front-pager, diarist or commentator in the comments section.

Here are some of my favorite highlights:

Conservatives must start telling stories, not just producing white papers and peddling daily outrage. The stories we choose to tell should have all the information we need to be informed of facts and paint a picture of those facts’ impact. RedState has a very simple mission statement: educate conservative activists, motivate them to engage, and provide tools for easy activation and empowerment. Along the way, we try to be a compass to the conservative movement, pointing to the truth north of conservatism and letting policy makers and legislators decide how far from that truth north they must deviate.

Other sites are doing great work uncovering scandals and highlighting outrageous antics. I want RedState’s focus to be the daily news that should direct the focus of the conservative movement and then take the next step of uncovering how both Democrats and squishy Republicans are abusing the trust of the American people. I want to focus on why conservatives view their strategy at superior to Republican leaders when the two conflict and put a spotlight on efforts to either merge or separate conservatives from the establishment.

Perfect timing, Erick. Thanks for helping us find truth north.

The Watercooler is always an open thread.

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COMMENTS

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  • cheesycon

    bravo indeed. As I keep saying, we need to stop tilting at the media windmills and instead focus on persuasion, so we can make a play for converting moderates to true conservatives. That means telling people what we stand for, not just “we aren’t Obama”.

  • Ausonius

    Assorted things have kept me from being as active as I would like in the last weeks: when I do skim through, I have not been finding many topics of interest right now, but please do not take that as a negative criticism: the odds are simply that eventually I will see topics which interest me.

    Everything has a cycle.

    I have in mind a “diary” (I really do not like the term, but, all right) whose topic will be how to look at the long term. I have addressed the topic in earlier essays going back a few years, which are now undoubtedly deleted.

    We are being strangled by dull, inarticulate, short-term-thinking politicians on our own side: Kasich, McConnell, Boehner, etc. etc. etc. If we do get somebody who seems not to be part of such a crew, they eventually seem to go soft and e.g. feel the need to hug BIG BRObama on the beach.

    They and the Dems are slowly accustoming us to the new normal: over half the population not paying income taxes, 1/3 of the population not unemployed or under employed, government programs increasingly mandating mediocrity in the schools, families, workplace, and the entire society.

    They and the Dems are cooking the frogs of America:and by the way, the only frogs that will NOT eventually jump out of water that is being slowly heated to ever higher temperatures…

    are frogs whose brains have been removed.

    • westcoastpatriette

      Hey, Ausonius. I had noticed your absence and it’s good to hear from you. Look forward to reading that diary. As I seem to say so much, we need all the help we can get.

    • Viet71

      When the big rock hit the earth 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinos and paved the way for mammals, I think some conservative said, we must adhere to the past.

      I love the past. It’s where I live in dreams.

      So must we live in the past?

      I think the past is great; it’s known.

      We do not live in the past but in the present.

      The present sucks. But we live in it.

      I can go back into the past. Via vinyl records and tube record players. And sleaze magazines from the 1950s.

      The past is preferable. The present is what’s served on the plate.

    • mcrow44

      I agree. Elections occur in the short term so politicians term focus on the short term impacts. When the long-term consequences occur, they are also dealt with by politicians facing elections in the short term.

      Conservatism, by its nature, is more long range in scope than liberalism. The long range argument is harder to sell, but no less important. The daily outrage stuff is a diversion. While sometimes justified, our challenge is to persuade voters, especially moderate Republicans that the long view is as, if not more important, than side-stepping short-term pain.

      Site question: I received some advice here last week..As instructed, I edited a post today when I was logged in using the edit post feature. Once again the edited piece reposted to the top of the Diary scroll rather than the spot it occupied previously. Am I doing something wrong or is the Discus feature malfunctioning? .

      Any further guidance would be appreciated.

  • Kyle-MI

    Looks like Obama is following the Democrat playbook on spending cuts for the sequester, i.e. cuts things that will cause citizens to feel pain instead of cutting unnecessary programs. There are two important points that the GOP should be hitting everyone over the head with. First, this cynical move by Obama shows that he doesn’t care about people. He is deliberately causing people inconvenience (at best) and only doing so to play a political game. Second, this political game could actually hurt or kill someone. For example, the Dems are playing up the possibility of laying off meat inspectors and scare mongering about e coli outbreaks. Hopefully nothing will happen, but what if it does? What if there is a e coli outbreak and a number of people end up in the hospital? What if people die? Sure, some in the media will blame it on the GOP, but we know there is no need to cut inspectors. There are plenty of non critical areas to cut. Isn’t it absolutely despicable that any elected official would put lives at risk for a purely cynical political game?