What It Will Take to Build a Rightroots Movement | The Next Right
Interesting discussion here. Pat Ruffini is too much of a wired-in RNC organization type, though, and he makes the classic mistake of believing that money is everything in politics.
You can’t raise money when there’s nobody you want to give money to in order to help them get elected.
This blog did a decent job, given its readership, of raising money for Fred Thompson - although the large bulk of our contributions came from one reader. But after Thompson imploded, I just couldn’t bring myself to even try to raise money for somebody simply because he was (nominally) a Republican. If I couldn’t even, in the end, bring myself to vote for the GOP candidate, why in hell would you think I’d work to raise money for him?
On the other hand, I do think it’s a fair cop to say that the political/financial potential of the right blogosphere is badly unexploited. But we still have to answer the chicken/egg question: Which comes first, the enthusiasm for the candidates, or the candidates who inspire enthusiasm?
I don’t know that it is the job of bloggers to create candidates, although I can imagine it might happen here and there. But if the GOP has any job at all, it is that of finding and bringing up candidates who inspire their voters. The GOP has failed miserably at this for years, and, in fact, has destroyed their brightest stars. I’ve always felt that Newt Gingrich was brought down by his own party far more than any other cause, and he was a brilliant star in the conservative firmament.
Instead, we suffer hacks like McCain and Stevens and that ilk, because they are simply too brass-balled ever lose sight of the fact that what matters most to them is their own power, and so can’t be run out of government by party disapproval.
And we reward them simply for pasting the GOP label on their behinds, by supporting them no matter how rotten, corrupt, stupid, and self-aggrandizing they are, simply because they aren’t quite as bad (supposedly) as their Dem opponents.
We have to help identify and finance candidates whom we want to vote for, not candidates we vote for as a way of voting against the Dems in the race. And only when we make it clear that we will support candidates and would-be leaders because we want to support them on their own merits, not in comparison to somebody else, will we begin to get those leaders again.
The popular vote doesn’t matter in six days, only the electoral vote. And my gut feeling is that on those results Obama will cream McCain. I don’t anticipate staying up late on November 4th to learn who the winner is.
On November 5th, we’ll have to start organizing, building, grooming, and financing the liberty-minded conservative men and women who will be the vanguard in taking back Congress in 2010. I think Ace’s idea of looking at our military men and women is a good one. The Dems ran several in 2006, and won most of those races. There’s no reason we can’t return the favor.
Give me somebody who deserves the money Daily Pundit can raise, and I’ll raise money for them. But I won’t raise a thin red cent for some phony, fake-conservative hack who thinks he should get that money by default.
Let that party crumble. It deserves it. And the saluatary example of its rubble will make a fine foundation for the next effort.
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I’ve considered running for office in the past. It always comes down to this, though: I can’t see putting my family through the wringer. And my day job is actually a productive one, what with trying to produce power and all. Giving that up to suck at the power teat is of little interest to me. Of course, I then hear some dimwit politician talking economics and energy policy and, after getting my blood pressure back down, start thinking about it again.
One big drawback is that I don’t suffer fools gladly. My response to a stupid question would be much like the one Newt Gingrich had once:
You’d think that honesty would play well with most people. You’d be wrong.
Ditto. Forget my personal life, my resume makes me unelectable or unconfirmable. (Too much porn…)
Personally, I figure the Republicans can use a cycle in the wilderness. Let the careerists and the pork-pushers die out, get some fresh ideological blood in there (preferably from the libertarian wing of the party, but anything is better than Stevens), and come back for another try. It’s a big country and two years of Dem control won’t screw things up too badly. Hell, we still got our guns…
My interest in joking about porn is greater than my interest in porn, but still renders me unelectable. Along with my propensity to joke about cannibalism, mock the narrow-mindedly religious, mock the narrow-minded, mock the stupid, mock the ignorant…
However, trying to succeed in winning a popular election is most likely the sign of neurotic insecurity and the need for external validation of worth. No, it’s much better to grab power directly. “Senator Steve”? Blecch. “Tyrant Steve, Undisputed Lord of Earth”? Oh, yah, baby, now we’re talking.
Don’t worry. When I’m in charge I won’t come down harshly on DP readers. (Except for Judson.)
The RNC and DNC are elitist organizations that have NO interest in the common man’s interests.
The very fact of John McCain’s candidacy is a referendum on power in the party, a 1% minority of the party, arm wrestled the rest into accepting McCain through what appears to be gerrymandering, the re-alignment of the scheduled primaries, then a soaking of the media environment in only those few areas left in play after the gerrymandering.
The RNC is run by the 1%ers of the party, the uber-wealthy. They have goals the rest of us don’t have, like an appreciation for government health care that a 50 year collision with the UAW has given them.
John McCain’s candidacy is not for you & me, it’s for the Rockefeller Republicans, they flat out beat us out of a decent candidate in Fred Thompson. They have the bulk of the disposable income in this nation, the average Conservative stands no chance fighting them off. We either get used to being run like dogs or we form a new party that is truly conservative and throw out the uber-wealthy that have ruined ALL the elections since The Kennedy boys got off the reservation.
Bill, The last two decades have made the word ‘liberal’ a repugnant word. The last few years, ‘conservative’ has become almost as repugnant. Maybe instead of building a ‘conservative’ party, we ought to reclaim the ‘liberal’ moniker. Hayek died in 1992 but he advocated ‘classic liberal’ ideas: emphasizing individual freedom, rationality, property rights, free markets, laissez-faire economics and constitutionally limited governments. That set of ideas is about as concise a summary of my own values as well as those of many of my fellow ‘conservatives.’ It would be poetic to give that grand old word new respect.
Hell, I’m with you Haverwilde but free markets and laissez-faire are now verbum non gratae.
We’re gonna need a new vocabulary.
There’s a rumor that Fred Thompson may be the next RNC chair.