grassroot republican

catching up

2008-11-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

6 months without posting. It's been one hell of a year.
To catch up on the local level, I was an active supporter of one of the candidates for Sheriff in Clay County Florida. I stand by my choice, but he lost by a huge margin. The Sheriff race down here attracted a huge amount of public interest; on a personal level I learned a great deal of the difficulty there is in getting information to citizens on any political matter, especially on the county level. In Clay we the local blogsite, myclaysun, which does put out a great deal of information but is also dominated by a few personalities, most of which have a non-partisan mentality and a rew of which are leftward leaning. Still, it is the best information source on county politics, you just have to take the comments with a grain of salt. The Jacksonville paper, The Florida-Times Union, doesn't cover very much on Clay County, and the local Clay Today is pretty neutral; I appreciate neutrality in journalism, but with straight reporting you miss a great deal of the dirt.
I had planned to be an active supporter of John McCain for President, but I couldn't do it. He is such a rhino and ran such a bad campaign. As an alternative I became a volunteer for the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment. I was happy on election night because FMPA passed, but now I am faced with the prospect of four years of Obama.
My hiatus from the Republican party is at an end. Now that I don't have to pretend that McCain is ideal I am going to go back into the mix and see what can be done to make a difference at the level of local politics. A difference must be made because I feel the Republican party has lost it's way, becoming a rhino shadow of it's former self. There has to be a new reconnect between the party, social conservatives, and American voters. We are like different camps that just casually come together at election time, but there is no real motivation and no real fraternity between the different camps of American conservatism. We have to step up or we will find ourselves in the dustbin of history, and future generations will question what happened to American greatness.
The Republican party is central to American conservatism. It is this reason that our trend towards rhinoism is so troubling;if the light is darknessk, how great is that darkness? We must try to build greater interest and participation in the Republican party. However, conservatism lives in more than just a political party. More than party, conservatism must be expressed in a non-partisan effort at the grassroot level. On election day, as Obama won the presidendcy, Amendment 2 passed in Florida and Prop. 8 in California. Conservative tendencies live not just in Republicans, but also in a sizeable number of Democrats and Independents. We must come all come together or the liberals who find their voice in the Democratic Party will do us all in.

crouching democrat, hidden liberal

2008-06-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

I like county politics. I have access to all the local officials and candidates, and I can can get involved, it's a lot more personal than sending someone a donation or watching a debate on TV. Yes, county politics represent a very small pond, but what I have found is the more I involve myself at the grass roots the more I understand national politics. The county is, after all, one of the communities that make up our nation.
What I wish to blog about is that fact liberalism and actions of mainline democrats are often concealed as PACS, or citizens groups, or "charities," and "bipartisan groups."

It is my contention that there is little that is truly bipatisan or neutral, that nearly all political efforts connect in some manner to one of the politcal parties.

I have mentioned that our county has a Republican majority; Republicans outnumber Democrats and idependents put together. This has created somewhat of a strange dynamic in which is seems that the Democrats don't even enter elections. If memory serves me correctly, the contested seats in the current election are: sheriff, 4 commission seats, clerk of courts, commissioner of elections, and property appraiser. Most of these offices have several people campaigning, and out of all the candidates there are only two who are not Republicans. Out of these two, one is classified as an independent and one is a write-in.

(I consider the write-in maneuver to be a clever tactic. To explain, because nearly all the candidates are Republicans it means that in most cases the elections are decided during the August primary, and the voting is closed to non-republicans. The write-in candidate is a Republican and is running for county chair; there is only one other candidate who is also a Republican and is currently running completely unopposed. Because of these circumstances the chair position will not appear on the primary ballot, because only one Republican is running unopposed for the position, but there will be an open vote during the general election. The Republican candidate is well known and seems to have a lot of connections in Republican circles, so the (current) write-in would probably be wasting his time running as a Republican; in the general election he might have a chance if he can draw in enough of the general vote.)

I find it odd that the Democratic party has chosen to remain idle in our county. Yes, they are a minority but they are a sizeable enough minority that you would think a personable candidate would stand a fighting chance; you would think that at least one person among all the county democrats would throw their name in the ring, even if it was just to be a pain in the ass. I don't get it.

While there is no viable Democratic Party in our county, there are democratic undercurrents.
From these we can establish some theories.

1) PEOPLE IDENTIFY WITH THE DOMINANT POLITICAL PARTY.
School board election are bipartisan; however, school board candidates still make an appeal to the Republican voters. One candidate used to be a Democrat but changed to Republican, he opened his spiel with an assurance that he is a real Republican.
The leader of a local PAC stated in a newspaper interview that he "was a Democrat until the Republicans took over."
I would imagine that among the politically active people thee are many who would be Democrats if there were an active Democratic Party, but have claimed Republican status so that they can have a voice, and so they can have a vote in closed Republican Primaries.

2) LOCAL PACS SEEM TO BE DOMINATED BY DEMOCRAT IDEOLOGY.
In recent years there has only been one Democrat candidate for county commission, a woman who gained local popularity as the head of a PAC. Her particular issue was opposing an economic development plan (probably not a very good plan) that was presented by the Republican city government. Opposing a Republican mayor, running as a Democrat, is the PAC really neutral in it's ideology?

3) LOCAL PACS BY THEIR ACTIONS COULD SUPPORT A DEMOCRAT PARTY
Another PAC has performed several actions that could be seen as oppositional to our Republican county government. If you look at the actions of this PAC it is seen that they directly corresond to "covert" actions of a shadow democrat organization.
a) They bad-mouth the county commission, who all happen to be Republicans.
b)They supported term limits, a measure which would serve to open up positions for campaigning Democrats
c)The passed a initiative to go to single voting districts for county commission rather than at-large elections. In this manner you would have a chance to get at least one Democrat on the commission if there were a democratic majority in at least one district.

Of course, the hole in this theory is that there are no local efforts to elect Democrat candidates. However, transfer county occurrances to the national level and you see some obvious truths.

CONCLUSION: Anything that is not Republican is Democrat.

Look at all the PACS, the 527s, ecumenical groups, bipartisan groups, and various other types of groups that are based on "issues" rather than "parties," and you will see that they really do support one of the parties. They will conceal this, but look at what they do and you can tell if they are liberal or consevative.
Consider the AARP, the American Association of Retired People. As far as I can tell their only purpose is to gain entitlements for seniors. Yeah, they are old, which normally means Republican, but they are all about entitlements, something normally associated with Democrats.
Consider "Divided we Fail." It is supposed to be bi-partisan, but it's universal health care initiative is an issue that is only supported by the Democratic candidates. That is not bipartisan, that is an effort to winnow away Republican votes on the issue of health care.
Consider bipartisan efforts relating to global warming. It was a Democratic effort before the Republicans began paying it lip service. This is an example of Republicans changing their message to appeal to the perceived majority concensus, but you can't be more liberal than a liberal. All we are doing is dividing ourselves between conservative and moderate republicans in an effort to win over independents and moderate democrats, but we can't out-liberal them, and at the end of the day a liberal is going to prefer a moderate or liberal Democrat to a moderate Republican.
Don't

making fun

2008-06-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a little satire about one of our political forums.

And the award for best Republican performance goes to...
The Fleming Island Republicans are supposed to be a political club, not an acting troupe.
THE SETTING: A candidate forum.
THE PLAYERS: Paul Ackley and Diane Hutchings for commissioner at large
Bradley, representing Rob Bradley for county chair
Various Players from Citizens for Term Limits and Accountability
Mean Guy at the back of the room.
ACT ONE: Ackley gave the simplest performance of the night...it’s like he just went up there and said what he was really thinking. I guess that he is new to the stage.
Act one was livened up by a rant by Mean guy at the back of the room, which went a little something like this:
"You’re from Pennsylvania so I guess you’re used to hunting deer, a 500 foot lot with a couple of houses and you’re ready to hunt. There used to be a lot of deer right where we are standing,(Fleming Island Library) it was an abandoned air strip with pine trees a couple of feet high. Commissioners’ pay is based on county population, so the more growth there is the more you stand to make. Would you support a pay cut for county commissioners to $33,000 a year, the average income for Clay county, because county commission is a part-time job?"
ACT TWO: Diane Hutchings gave a very fluent performance and said all the things that I wanted to hear. I was happy, but then I thought about what she had actually said...
I had come to the meeting wanting to hear three things:
1. I wanted to hear something specific about traffic, hopefully something innovative.
2. I wanted to hear something specific about attracting business, preferably the name of some specific company interested in Clay county.
3. I wanted to hear something about party unity, Republican values, and Republican campaigns beyond what is going on in Clay.
Hutchings talked around these subjects without actually talking about them.
1. She mentioned that the county had just spent a large sum of money on a building project. She didn’t say what the project was, and it wasn’t an idea of hers. I already knew that the county spent money to build roads.
2. She mentioned a specific company that already exists in Clay, and said that we need more companies like this. No play to attract business, just the statement that we need business.
3. She mentioned something vague about the state of the nation, but didn’t go anywhere with it.
It takes a huge theatric talent to say a great deal without saying anything specific.
As was the case with the first act, Mean Guy at the back of the stole the show. It went a little something like this:
"You have been in government for several years and have built up time towards retirement, and God help us all if you do win, but would you support the elimination of commissioner retirement benefits? It is a part-time job, and that would be fiscally responsible.
ACT THREE: Mrs. Bradley did an excellent job representing her husband, and gave such a convincing performance that it made you want to believe her. To illustrate:
Mean guy: Isn’t it disingenuous that your husband is campaigning for a position that he created?
Mrs. Bradley: No, not at all. (Leaning forward, with a "don’t you get it?" look on her face) That’s public participation, that’s what we want people to do, we want more people to be involved in their community.
Does this argument make sense? Only if it referred only to the act of running for office and avoided the issue of whether it is a conflict of interest to run for an office that one had helped create. The argument is also nonsensical if it was meant to mean that "more commissioners more better." If seven is better than five because more people are involved in government, you could also say that ten is better than seven, twenty better than ten, and so on.
Mrs. Bradley masterfully skated around the issue of conflict of interest with a diversion evoking the merits of public participation. Bravo.
While Mrs. Bradley pulled off a very human performance, the award for best performance must go to the CTLA people.
Rob Bradley is a lawyer; Mrs. Bradley was questioned as to whether her husband would quite his law profession if he won the county chair; she answered that no he would not, and it was at this point that we were treated to the shining performance of the evening.
Audible sighs of outrage, people scribbling down notes, as if they wouldn’t be able to remember "Bradley won’t quite job," and muttering about conflict of interest.
The reaction must have been rehearsed because it was so evident and so uncalled for. I believe the "conflict of interest" issue has been manufactured as a smear campaign against Bradley.
How can it be a conflict of interest for Bradley to continue working in his profession if he wins the chair? He was employed while an acting member of the county commission, most of the commissioners have employment aside from their elected position, and most of the candidates are employed. Besides, it seems to be a plank of the CTLA platform that the county commission is "just a part-time job," if it is part-time how can you object to a commissioner retaining their primary employment?
"Conflict of interest" is a term that we keep hearing in relation to Bradley, and we always hear it from the same people. Yet, there has no state investigation and no suite brought against the county for alleged instances of conflicting interests; this leads me to believe that these are just slurs to influence the electorate.
Why slur Bradley?
Most of the CTLA issues revolve around district one. It was their citizen’s initiative which prompted the referendum for single district candidates, this effort being a reaction to a district one candidate who won the majority of votes in that district but lost county-wide.
This plan was upset by the Charter Review, of which Bradley was a member, and from which have come all the accusations that 5-2 plan would benefit developers.
It is helpful for any district one candidate that there be animosity towards Bradley. Bradley was appointed to district one, if he was not running for the chair it is likely that he would be running for the district one seat.
It can be considered desirable for all district candidates that the chair and at-large positions be eliminated because:
1. Each district commissioner would be paid more.
2. A one-in-five vote has more relative influence than a one-in-seven vote.
3. Each district commissioner would have a chance to rotate into the chair position.
You can see the political motivation of slurring Bradley with accusation of conflict of interest. You can see the motivations that many would have to accuse various candidates and officials of being in partnership with developers and special interests.
It’s just politics. It’s just theater.
The problem with theatrics is that sometimes people forget that it’s an act, and that detracts from real discussions of issues. It seems that now the CTLA plan is just to attack the county commission and any candidate running for chair or at-large.
It’s good theater, but does it make for good government?

players in the game

2008-04-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yet another Republican club meeting.
I was starting to get a little bored with county political activities. I thought that there would be more gong on in regards to the national elections and pushing a Republican agenda, selling McCain; I'm not all that worried about the county, I'm worried about the Presidency and the Congress going to the Democrats. Granted, it is probably too early for widespread activities, and there is probably little that can be done nationally from the county level, but I like to feel that my actions have a meaningful effect. The majority of what I have seen in these meetings are candidate forums for the local offices. This is a meaningful activity, but we are all Republicans so there isn't the need in the county to fight the Democrats. The term "country club republicans" keeps coming to mind. The meetings do give me things to think about and I keep learning, so there is benefit, the problem is maintaining interest.
Then things get interesting. Even in our little county that is dominated by the Republican party, there is enough dirty dealing and factions and people playing roles that it becomes interesting just to watch.
It's like a soap opera.
There were three candidates in the forum, and it occurred to me that each of them could be considered as as a separate type. There was a "leader candidate," a "populist candidate," and a "government-is-broken" candidate. I had previously written that I believe identitification plays a large part in elections, in that in the lack of other compelling reason people will vote for the person with which they identify. Add to identification the campaign persona of the candidate, the way that they present themselves. Certainly identification and campaign persona draw upon many of the same sources, and can even be identical in what is said and what people see, but they are distinct as terms of classification. Also, there is more to each candidate than just that one is a leader, one is a populist, and one thinks government is broken; these are just the main thrusts of of how they are presenting themselves.
If I was a political science major I think I could do a discertation on just county politics, who won and who lost according to their campaign persona and who identified with the candidates. I wonder, what is the perfect campaign persona and voter identification for my county? Consider that since there is no Democratic opposition our elections of county offices don't take place in November, they take place during the August primaries. I'm not sure, but I think that since these primaries are defacto elections that they are open to all parties, but you are still looking at an electorate that because of demographics and the lack of contending parties will be mostly Republican, and because it is August rather than November will be mostly the hard-core party people. By all means there will be more voters than just those seen at Republican meetings, but it will be far fewer than will vote in the general election. You could probably determine some very narrow demographics regarding what kind of voters come out in August, and make a pretty good estimation as to what you have to do to win their votes.
Note to self: if I ever run for a public office and agree to debate someone on their home turf, expect the crowd to be set up against you. I know a set up when I see it. The "government is broken" candidate used to be the president of this Republican club, and is very closely associated with one of our local citizen action groups. It is my belief that not only was one member of the crowd asking each candidate a particular question that favored the "broken government" candidate as his pet issue, the moderator seems to have been coached to favor this particular candidate. To make things even better, because of alphabetical order the "broken government" candidate went last, which in my opinion contributes to leaving the most lasting impression.
Wow. Not exactly dirty politics or ruthless politics, but it shows that rules of courtesy go out the window during an election. It must be nice to give a debate speech in which the moderator and the majority of the crowd are on your side.
I guess that's the way it goes, but I shouldn't be surprised, it would be even worse if we had to contend with Democrats. This little bit of set up is nothing compared to what went on in the Republican presidential nominations because that was really rigged, but somehow it seems worse when the dirty stuff comes from your own party.
The next day was the meeting of the Board of the County Commission, and it was almost a continuation of the debate the night before because it was many of the same people contending along the same factional lines. What made the matter a little funny was the way the commissioners handled it.
The issue refers back to some old business, bitter contention over a charter review board that put up and passed at referendum the amendment to have two at-large commissioners added to the board, and the allegations by some, in particular citizen action group for term limits, that the charter review board had been controlled by lobbyists for developers, and that they had essentially bought themselves two new commissioners.
The issue of today's meeting was that the citizens for term limits had gotten a new petition approved by the supervisor of elections, and had gotten enough signitures to put on the ballot an amendment to do away with the two at-large commissioner seats. However, there is a requirement that the title of a petition can be no longer than 15 words, they had 19. The purpose of the meeting was therefore to determine whether or not the county commission would accept this petition.
Or course they didn't, and they shouldn't have because the petition wasn't legal. It was invalid only because of a technicality, but the county would be sued if they put it on the ballot. What made me chuckle a little bit was that a spokesman from citizens for term limits requested that the commision take their own ititiative to put the amendment on the ballot themselves, because this would reflect the wishes of the 5000+ people who had signed the petition.
That was wishful thinking. One of the people running for an at-large seat is currently sitting in a district seat on the county commission, I doubt that he would vote in favor of eliminating the office he is running for. Besides this, it is not the job of the county commission to bring up for referendum a question that the voters had already decided during the previous general election.
I have become curious about how the faction lines are drawn. On the one side you have the people in favor of the new positions, which are the candidates and the charter review people, and on the other side are the citizens for term limits. Another group popped up, this one being the citizens for the protection of voter rights. I'm not sure how they fit in, and if their opposition to this particular petition means that they are supportive of the candidates for the at large seats or if they have another agenda in mind. Also, I am not sure but I think the person in charge if "voter rights" is running for school superintendent. Maybe his affiliation with a citizen action group is just his way of staying in the limelight and maybe gaining some political friends.
I don't know.
What made me laugh was how nervous everyone seemed. Everyone acted like they were about to get sued and everyone was choosing their words very carefully to avoid showing preference. I don't get that because legally it seemed quite clear that the petition was void and that the commission had no obligation to do anything. Doing nothing is easy.
Another thing that struck me as odd is that the center of all this strife is the chair position; there will be two at large seats but one is a chair position which carries with it more prestige and more authority. There is currently just one person running for chair, running unopposed for a position I believe he helped to create, and who has a very large campaign fund. Yet, as of today he has not qualified according to campaign requirements. I believe this means he has not gotten enough petitions signed.
The favorite with the big money, who is alleged by some to be backed by big business, can't get enough signitures? Does this really matter, since you can buy your way onto the ballot, and if he is unopposed he cannot possibly lose? Is he a top-heavy candidate with little voter support, and will this matter?
Four months to the primary.

campaigning

2008-03-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Went to another meeting of the county Republican executive community. This one was not as fruitful as far as my political education. I didn't learn anything new that was of any particular use or interest.
This meeting was essentially a candidates forum. There is nothing wrong with that because that candidates have to campaign somewhere; Republican forums are about the only place where you can hear the candidates speak and where the voter can try to reach some kind of judgement as to who they will vote for.
In this particular meeting there were three candidates from one Florida House district, two candidates from another Florida House district, and two candidates for the district circuit court. Unfortunately for me the view of the candidates were largely a moot point; looking at my voter registration card I don't live in either of the House districts and I am unsure if I live in the circuit court district. The meeting was largely a waste of my time in regards to making voting choices, but it is still beneficial to hear people debate about issues.
One lesson I learned was that it is extremely difficult to base a voting decision upon a short speach and a few questions from the audience. Yes, there are differences between the candidates as to their backgrounds, but they all seem like accomplished people who have beneficial goals and reasonable plans; at least, this is how it appears within the few minutes the candidates have to present themselves.
This leads me to pose a few questions/observations.
1)It is a common belief among elected officials that the average voter does not enough familiarity with issues to form educated opinions, and that this is the reason that thee are elected officials. The consequences of this belief is that there is a questionable need for citizen advisory boards and there is questionable value in citizen initiatives. The rationalization for this, as I see it, is that people who do not understand an issue but have the ability to vote for it will simply vote for that which seems best and will cast a vote for what appears beneficials rather than that which appears to be beneficial.
Using this line of logic, that voer will choose the candidate based upon nothing more than who they like rather than who is most qualified for the job. I believe (actually, I know) that I put a lot more thime into thinking about issues and examining candidates than do at least 90% of the voters. If I can't make an educated decision based on the information which is before me, how can anyone else make a decision that is based upon anything else than the most incidental qualitities of the candidates?
I don't have an answer to this question other than to say that voters do base their choices upon facile information, this is probably the way it has always been, and there probably isn't anything that can be done about it.
2) Identity politics: I just watched Governmor Mitt Romney get totally trashed and rejected largely because of his identity as a yankee mormon. While Huckabee wasn't able to ride to vitory as a southern evangelican, this identification took him much further than he should have gone. I believe that experience is a part of identity, and in examing this candidate forum it must be admitted that these are all experienced and accomplished people. Yet, aside from experience most of them seem to have some additional identifying factor:one of the candidates for judge was a deacon in his church, the other was an Army veteran, and out of the House candidates one was a minister and one was a rotarian.
How important are these additional identifying factors, and are they relevant? It has to be addmitted that these things indicate civic involvement and perhaps leadership, but on a case by case basis it is hard to say that these things are really relevant. Yet, if issues and qualifications don't really play into voter decisions, perhaps identity politics are more important than anything else.
3) How much important is there in campaigning at party forums? There are over 100,000 registered voters in my county, the votes ultimately make the decision, if you appear at every available forum you can only reach perhaps a few thousand people over time, so how much value is there in becoming the "insider" candidate?
I don't know. From observing the 2008 Republican nomination race I believe that the candidate who is annointed by the party leadership does have an enourmous advantage, but I don't know if this extends down to county and district levels. The common wisdom is that any serious contender for office has to build a network to reach the voters, and I suppose that all this forum campaigning is meant to build a grassroots, republican network that is the basis for an expansion to reach the voters.

angry republicans and tyranny

2008-03-05T16:13:00.000-08:00

McCain won the nomination...
Went to a "strategy meeting" at the Republican Club, which is to say it was a regular meeting with the objective of planning what our little corner of the county will do to support the Presidential campaign.
This has been a very weird primary. I have come to terms with McCain winning, but it seems like many others have not. I had thought that perhaps the problem of conservative anger was being overstated in that the complaints of the few seem louder than the silence of the majority. The media can distort and distance one from a situation, but things are brought home when they are before your eyes. Last nights meeting was very skinny. I estimate that at every other meeting there have been at least thirty people, sometimes many more; last night there might have been fifteen.
I have entirely gotten over my anger, but I have learned to deal with it. Now I have become concerned about my Party. It is still a long way to election day and I had been thinking that the Republicans would come together, that as the election debates heated up McCain would sell himself to the party; now I don't know.
I have the feeling that we are a demotivated party. However, I am not sure that I can trust this feeling. Through the process of the Republican nomination race I came to have a deep distrust of the media and now I believe that the various forms of media have a very profound effect upon how the public perceives a situation and consequently has a powerful effect upon how the public casts their vote. Everyone kept hearing that Romney was a loser, after hearing it enough times enough of this people believed it that Romney did indeed lose.
Now we keep hearing that the Republicans will lose in November, that we are split and demotivated, that McCain is such a liberal that it doesn't matter who wins the Presidency.
People point to too many reasons why we will lose. People like to talk, but the miss the single cause that would result in a Republican loss.
The only way the Republicans can lose is if the Democrats get more votes.
Simple, simple, simple, and everything else is secondary to this principle.
All we have to do is get people to vote Republican. This will require selling McCain to the majority of the Republican party; this is doable. We have to sell McCain to the independents; this is also doable, and just might be easier than selling him to conservatives. We also have a chance at selling McCain to large numbers of Democrats who are dissatisfied with their eventual nominee.
I think that we will win, but the first step in winning the Presidency is for the Republicans to act like winners.
If you hear enough times that you are a loser than you start thinking like a loser, then people consider you a loser, and then you lose. All the Republicans who are worthy of that name need to raise themselves up gather together their fellow Republicans and start kicking some ass.
There are three things that we must do:
1)Start thinking and acting like winners. Winners never quite.
2)Lash out at those who are purposely trying to demotive us. This is the media, the Democrats, the columnists, the political experts, and in some cases the pollsters. They don't really report, they just say what they want us to believe. They want us to believe that we have already lost. We need to get in their faces and call them liars. We are the voters, the media is not supposed to have any power whatsoever over our government or our parties.
3)Sell McCain. He has a number of good qualities. He really is a leader. He has experience. While he is more liberal than most Republicans, he is not as liberal as they say, and he certainly is not as liberal as Clinton or Obama. Sell him to the conservatives, sell him to the independents, sell him to the Democrats. We will see who is demotivated when we steal away Democrat votes.
I'm going to put myself out there and do what I can, because I am afraid of the alternative.
Consider what will happen if the Republicans stay home on election day. We won't just lose the Presidency, we will lose Congress.
Right now there is a Democrat majority in the House and the Senate, but it is not a large enough majority to overrule a filibuster. We also have a Republican president with the power of veto.
Change the equation, contemplate an America with a Democratic President and Democratic super-majorities in the House and Senate.
The Democrats could do virtually anything they wanted. With that much power all accross the board they could pass any law they desired and the American public would have to swollow it all. Any person could be appointed to the Supreme Court, the Executive Branch could be reorganized in any fashion... there is no telling what could happen because they could do whatever they wanted.
This scares me, and it should scare everone. This is something that I believe should frighten the Democrat voters because Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, and Obama are much more liberal than the average rank-and-file Democrat. Give them absolute government power and there is no telling what could happen. I believe that such power in the hands of such irresponsible people can only result in tyranny. It probably wouldn't be Tyranny with a capital T, but I think we would see deep, gashing changes in American society and terrible insults to liberty and Constitution based law.
I refuse to stand by and let this happen, and if this does occur I will not accept it.

party within a party

2008-02-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

Went to another club meeting. This one featured a debate about how members should be elected to the county commission. It was a little bit complicated but I am there to learn, and you learn much more when you talk about specific issues than when you discuss broad agendas. I also see such things as representing two sides of a coin, that of party and government. The two are entertwined, especially in my county which is so dominated by Republicans, but though they go together they are two seperate activities. The purpose of the paty is to elect Republicans to office, so most party activities are going to be about nothing more than winning elections and rallying the troops, and are not going to dwell very much upon the actual activities of government. It's too easy to lose sight of the goal that just as much as you want a Republican in office, you also want the government to run smoothly and effectively and be representive of it's constituency.
One of the things that I found very interesting about the debate is that it showed that even within a single party, and even at the county level, there are oppossing viewpoints, coalitions, and concentrations of power. The subject of the debate is too complicated and boring to repeat here in great deal, but it dealt with the manner in which county commissioners were elected and how many commissioners there are.
At one time there were five county commissioners, and though each directly represented a single district, every voter in the county voter for every commissioner. This was done away with because in one instance a candidate actually won the majority in their district but still lost because of the votes which came from the rest of the county. This was considered to be disenfranchising because the people in that district, the most direct constituency of that candidate, did not get the commissioner that they had voted for.
The system was changed, by a referendum vote, to districts just voting for their commission representative.
Now comes the point of controversey.
At about this time there was a review of the county charter in which the county commission assigned a panel to examine the charter and make recomendations for changes. It was felt by some that there was some picking and choosing as to who would be on the commitee, and that the commitee was influenced by development special interests. What the commitee came up with was to add a commissioner at large who would be chosen by the entire county, and another "chair" at large who would also be elected by a whole county vote, would have addittional powers to set commission committees and agendas, and who could have additional powers granted at a later time.
The one side in the debate was represented by those on the charter review commission, and I must say that I was not very convinced by their arguments for the changes they made. Basically, they claim that having a four-year elected chair( rather than the chair rotating annually, as had been the previous practice) provided continuity, and that having two additional persons to vote for gave the voters greater representation.
The other side were those who opposed this latest change and wanted to institute the practice of each district only voting for their commissioner. There argument is that there was no reason to have a seven member county commission, the chair had too much power and the potential of gaining additional powers, the the cost of campaigning in the entire county, as oppossed to single district, made candidates more liable to being influenced by big -money developers.

I was intrigued to learn that even at county level there are opposing sides in the same party and so constitute parties within a party. I'm starting to notice this same thing at a national level in that it seems that McCain is the choice of the Republican Party establishment. If nothing else, it must be admitted that it is hard to win in Florida when the endorsements of Governor Crist and Senator Martinez go to your opponnent.
Another thing which I have come to notice is the matter of disenfranchisement. Disenfranchisement can take many forms. In the matter of our county the members of district one were disenfranchised from their vote for their direct representative because people from other districts were also involved in the vote. Today on Super Tuesday I am looking at the events in West Virginia and can't help but call that a disenfranchisement of a very large percentage of the electorate. Mitt Romney won 47% of the vote, McCain gave his votes to Huckabee( I don't know how that works, but it sounds illegal) so Huckabee won in this winner-take-all state. This is completely ridiculous because the person who won nearly half of the entire state Republican vote was not the winner. I consider those 47% to have been disenfranchised by the West Virginia system, a system that I expect will probably be changed very soon because it is completely retarded. Those McCain votes came from individuals, votes are not a commodity to be traded and sold, you cannot say with any surety that in the case of a redistribution all of those people would have wanted their votes to go to Huckabee.
I consider winner-take-all primaries to disenfranchising. I suport this practice when it comes to actual elections because it ties into state rights, but I consider the primaries to be for the parties and as such should represent all the votes of the party. In Florida McCain only beat Romney by about 6%, yet he got the entire Florida vote.
I'm starting to like it down at the grassroot level becaue I'm learning a lot and it is making me think a great deal more on grassroot issues which are the building blocks of democracy.

Learning how conservatism works

2008-01-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

Went to the monthyly country GOP meeting. It sure is different than a club meeting, much larger gathering and more focused on the business of being a political organization.
Tonight more than ever made me realize that I learn something every time I go to a Republican function. Issues drive the popular sentiment, but they are broad, ill-defined philosophies that are propagated through sound-bites. It is different when you get down to the activities of parties and governments, for it is then that you realize that a huge amount has to happen in order for our country to work.
What did I learn tonight?
1)I learned that I have no idea what is the benefit of the chamber of commerce, and apparently, no else does either. What occured at the meeting was that the secretary needed to take a vote as to whether or not they would renew the membership in the chamber of commerce. It reminded me of a meeting of the JAX Naval Air Station Association I had attended a few years prior, in which the same issues came up, whether or not to pay the dues to remain a member of the chamber of commerce. At that time I had asked the obvious question, what was the benefit of being a member. The quick answer I had received was "influence."
I had thought at the time that this was a very incomplete answer; influence in itself is not a benefit unless this influence allowed you to obtain something which was useful.
Apparently the Republicans feel the same way. No one could come up with any benefit for the organization to remain a member of the chamber; and besides, several of the elected officials of the party attended chamber meetings and so could coordinate as neccesary.
I have to admit that I liked this turn of events. The habit is to do what has always been done, in this case it being expected that a county republican party would be a member of the chamber of commerce. Instead the body stood up and said that there was no point in spending the money for membership if no benfit was obtained. That is smart, fiscal conservatism.
2) I learned that there is campaigning even a party, and that different divisions of a party can take opposite sides on an issues. One of the speakers was a represenitive in the Florida house, and he had the task of "selling" us on the property tax referendum, a tax cut in Florida. Republicans generally run on the low taxes platform, but you wouldn't think so from some of the responses he received. This was not an effort to sell the issue to the voters, we had in the room the hard-core party organizers, a mayor, and most of the country commission and school board. These are the people who have the responsibility to keep things running even if taxes are lowered. The way that it panned out was that the county commissioners seemed split on the merits of the tax-cut, while the school board members were strongly united in opposing the cut.
3) I learned that economy affects government. Two large sources of income for Florida state are sales taxes and taxes relating to the sale of homes. People are spending less and the housing market has slowed down, so this has had an effect on state revenues.
4)I learned a little bit about Florida state laws. It is in the Florida constitution that the state has to operate within it's budget and is not allowed to borrow money to fund it's operations. What they do every year is estimate expected revenues and build a budget from how much money they can expect to receive. I wish Washington worked like that. Also, in Florida the tax on gasoline goes to transportation. That makes a lot of sense because Florida is a growing state and new roads are being built all the time.
5)I learned that government can cut back when it is forced to do so. The representitive who talked to use said that revenues this year were less than expected, so in the midst of the year they had to trim a billion dollars out of their budget. The way he explained this was very illuminating: their initial budget had seemed economical at the time, but when they were forced to do so they were able to find a billion dollars that they could do without. Later in the year they had again had to cut back, this time to the sum of two billion dollars, and again, when they were forced they could find the money.
The Democrats always want to raise taxes, state governments accross America are unable to meet their budget, but in Florida we have a balanced budget, we can trim off three billion dollars and still maintain operations, and our governor is pushing for a tax cut.

Preaching to the Choir

2008-01-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

I went to a second meeting of the Republican club. Met some more people, eveyone sure is friendly.
I think I have identified as a problem that Republicans tend to "preach to the choir." This isn't a problem within a meeting of Republicans, but aside from active party members it doesn't motivate people to vote and it especially doesn't help to get independants and democrats to come over to our side. The practical purpose of party activities is to get Republicans elected to office, so at all levels we need to concentrate on this or else we are just a social club
Still, it's only January, there is plenty of time to get down to business.
The greatest benefit that I have received from these meetings is that it has shown me in what areas my knowledge is insufficient. To explain:
The meeting was divided into two parts. The first part talked about taxes. The second part involved a guest speakers who talked about his experiences as a Christian in the military and an ex POW. The concluding point of his speach was that when he joined the military he took an oath to defend the Constitution, and that while a POW he pondered that while he had taken this oath he really didn't know very much about what was in the Constitution. To remedy this he had educated himself and now carries around a pocket-sized Constitution.
So I learned that I need to learn some more about how taxes work and how they will be increased if the Dems win the election, and it would also be good if I learned a little more about the Constitution.
The purpose of the party is to get Republicans elected, so I think I will either find or make a concise pamplet that does the math in regards to taxes, something that goes by income level and explains to people how much more money will come out of their pockets if the Democrats win. A lot of people just don't get it, they hear about taxes but consider them to be inevitable; if they see a sufficiently large tax debt next to their income level under the Democrats it might just wake them up a little. Also, I need to go as far down the income table as possible in this effort. You might pay significantly more taxes as your income level goes up, but the average voter isn't making $150,000 a year. I need to include the middle class in this pamphet because otherwise there is a trap of them thinking that tax increases won't effect them.
There is another problem in tax politics in that the farther down you go in income the less that taxes become an issue and the more that entitlements come into play. I need to find some way to articulate to lower income people that it is in their interest to vote Republican, and I'm not going to be able to do that with a tax table because many of them don't pay taxes at all. The only thing that I have come up with is that entitlements diminish liberty and self-determination, and that it is impossible to get ahead if at every income increase you pay higher taxes. This type of argument doesn't appeal to someone who is getting benefits now and has no expectation that they will ever get ahead.
I'm going to have to work on it.

Which Candidate?

2008-01-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

One of my Republican associates kept sending me e-mails about Huckabee. This made me realize that out of the field of eight Republican candidates I still hadn't made a choice as to who I would vote for in the primary.
This was troubling to me because I like to make an informed decision, and if I could not make a clear choice I just wouldn't vote in the primary.
I looked at a few websites, watched a few interviews, and I still don't know. I have leaned toward Romney from the begininng, but I need to have something more to go on than just that someone feels right.
I still lean toward Romney, which is why I was disappointed when Huckabee took the Iowa Caucus. Still, it is only the first race, Iowa doesn't represent very many votes, and it is a caucus rather than a primary, so there was no use in getting too worked up.
What made the matter a little weird is that when I next spoke to Republican friend I remarked that he must be glad about the Huckabee victory in Iowa, but surprisingly, he said that wasn't behind Huckabee anymore.
So this is the state of many Republicans: we don't know who we want. We might have one or two people among the front-runners that we like, but there isn't one candidate that really jumps out at us as the person we need to vote for.
At this point it's not even possible to rule out those who aren't viable candidates. It's a long way till the nomination and a lot can happen, it is possible that one of the front runners could drop out or that one of the dark horses could suddenly make a decisive move. Right now I consider there to be four candidates which are most likely to win the nomination, Romney, Giulliani, Huckabee, and McCain. Out of these I like Romney the most, but I don't really have a reason to like him.
I look at Romney's background and I see a person who is a great organizer and a sense for what will be successful. America needs an economic leader. Yet, I cannot discount Giulliani's organizational and leadership skills: this was the guy who turned around NYC. I don't even want to think about how many problems had to be solved and how much opposition overcome in order to remake America's largest and most diverse city.
These two are my favorites, but I can't make a clear distinction between the two. I feel that Romney would be somewhat better economically, but that Giulliani might be a little bit tougher in standing up to America's rivals. However, these are just feelings. One of the big issues of the election is healthcare, and neither can I decide which of them have a better plan. Romney has spoken of getting people insured for serices that they are receiving and the government is already paid for, while Giulliani wants to solve the problem with market solutions, which I interpret as meaning the government will stay out of the issue. If health care becomes a deciding issue in the actual election this might make Romney a little more appealing to those who want a reform of health care, but electability is hard to judge.
There is McCain. Most conservatives look at him and consider him to be a little bit too bipartisan. We want someone who will lead as a conservative president; we want someone who wins, not someone who ties. Yet, being able to compromise and bring resolution to political conflicts is a good quality, so maybe I can live with McCain.
Huckabee? I still don't see the appeal, but neithe do I see any real reason to oppose him. I don't think he's the best candidate, but neither do I see him as a really bad candidate.
I really need to start paying more attention to the debates. Florida primary is just over a week away.

republican club

2007-12-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

Went to my first meeting of a Republican club. The way that it works in my county is that there is the main Republican Commitee which coordinates all the Republican effort in the county and there are a number of Republican clubs. There are the Republican Men, the Republican Women, the Young Republicans for people under 40, (I guess 40 is when you stop being young) and about 5 other clubs spread out through the country that more or less correspond to different towns.
As usual, I was the youngest person in the room. It is nice to converse about serious business, but I have to wonder about the purpose of a Republican club. The purpose of a party is to elect it's candidates, and much of the election efforts take place at the county level, so I'm guessing that the clubs exist only to support the county efforts and to maintain the interest of active party members.
Most club meetings include a guest speaker, in this case it was the county clerk of courts. He talked about his office's work for about twenty minitutes, mostly about how since he had taken office they had increased their efficiency to the point that they now operated under budget and returned their excess funds to the state.
This is one of the reasons that I decided to become involved in local party politics, because it gives me a better grasp of real issues. If you only look at the news and the national politics it seems that you get caught up in the "hollywood" aspect of the elections, where everything seems to be a popularity contest and all the candidates grandstand and give their opinions in 30 second sound bites. When you get down to the state and local level you start to look at real issues and can see a little better why you like conservatism:an office of the clerk of courts that operates under budget and returns it's excess money to the state. All of the money that operates all government offices comes from taxpayers, so the more efficiently they operate the less that my money is being wasted, and that's what fiscal conservatism is all about.
Another reason that I like being involved on the local level is that you get to meet some serious minded people who do hold important local positions. The county clerk of courts is one example, the the country delegate to the state Republican party was there, the president of this particular club is supposed to be running for country council in the next election, and there was also a gentleman who is going to run for a seat on the school board. While being a casual acquintance of any of these does not make me an important person, it does make me feel more respectable to speak with and know the minds of the people who run the county.