Posted on 09/04/2012 2:13:59 PM PDT by Eagle Forgotten
Seek help.
I. Considerations as to Organizing Groups
My response to you will be broken into many posts of moderate length. Please bear with me and I am also writing for those pinged and for any conservative interested in organizing. I am addressing it specifically to you but it is meant for all of them too.
This first part is on Considerations as to Organizing Groups.
Rather than immediately focusing on a replacement for Romney, we have a lot of vital and indispensable preliminaries to accomplish.
In a nation whose Republican primary voters could be bullied and bamboozled and bribed into supporting or even accepting the awfulness of Romney as the "GOP" candidate for POTUS, we have a mountain of work cut out for us.
You are already doing one of the things that need doing by taking responsibility for the Illinois Center Right Coalition (a shotgun organization as explained below). You provide a quarterly opportunity for Illinois conservatives to become acquainted with you and one another and to strategize and to become aware of what goes on in our state, which candidates seek office (BTW, an impressively diverse group of interesting folks, each with his/her own background and biography, each bringing his/her own perspective to the table).
What you are doing should be done across the nation and, particularly in other dismally Demonrat states like my native Connecticut, California, New York, Oregon, Washington State, New Mexico, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and what not. Each of these state and others have actual conservatives and some conservative organizations of varying degrees of success usually on narrow ranges of issues.
Organizations with a broad range of target issues take the shotgun approach: fire and hit one or more target issues every time; reload and repeat as often as possible. They may address pro-life, pro-normal marriage, home schooling, alternative private schooling, God in the public square, the rights of gun owners, private sector medicine, resistance to taxes, aggressive foreign policy, public employee pension reform, reducing the welfare state dependency and programs, resistance to religious persecution, dismantling the regulatory state, separation of tax money from crony capitalism, integrity of the election process, availability of oil and gas and coal at reasonable prices consistent with the market, restoration of the US industrial base and blue collar jobs, effective criminal law enforcement, and many other worthwhile issues.
Shotgun organizations require, as leadership, political Renaissance men and women with a broad grasp of many issues and a sure-footed ability to communicate on those issues with the general public. It is not just a job. It is a crusade and it ought not to pay lavishly. Those doing the job need a lean and hungry look and an understanding of the need to succeed on issues in order to survive with pay check intact.
There are also narrowly focused on a single issue or a small group of issues. Most of the above-listed issues may and probably should have representation by a more narrowly focused organization(s) to address such issues narrowly. The target is thus narrower and we may call such groups: rifle organizations (focus on a single target, fire and reload and repeat as often as possible). We are all familiar with National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, National Right to Life Committee, American Life League, VFW, American Legion, Tea Party groups, Taxpayer Associations (state, county and local) and analogous groups dealing with the other issues listed.
These groups have a common enemy named liberalism and another common enemy called ignorance and another called discord and other common enemies. Sometimes there are disagreements among their constituencies. One essential leadership characteristic in any organization is a certain flare for effective diplomacy (preferably privately) to remind anyone who needs reminding that we are in this together and need to minimize our differences in order to defeat our common enemies and accomplish our common goals.
Some conservatives (most conservatives?) are absolutely appalled at how much tax money is squandered, and how much borrowed from Red China, and the exploding accumulated deficit and the exploding annual deficits as well. Call them fiscal conservatives if that is their primary interest. They are certainly correct to be appalled. OTOH, I personally lose little sleep over those specific issues (although those who are concerned are right) compared to babies, marriage and guns, among others which are what really engage my interest as a primarily social conservative. SOME fiscal conservatives take a libertarian position on babies or marriage some may even think gun control a good thing. Each conservative should prioritize his/her own issues and TRY his/her best to agree with the conservative consensus. If that succeeds, we all benefit.
There are people here who argue that we will get 85% from Romney and nothing from Obozo. This is ludicrous given Romney's entire personal history of militant opposition to conservatism. If all we get is 15% or less of what we want, Mittler is just NOT worth it and we would be empowering our real enemies. So, rejecting Romney is a basic building block in what we must do. Don't vote for him. Vote for conservatives for lesser offices and third party conservative at the top.
I believe that organizing my native Connecticut (with its very compact geography) and organizing Texas or California (with geography sprawled all over the map and organizing Illinois are quite different things. Using Illinois as an example, you might want to break the state down into smaller areas with reasonably common interests and those groups should meet monthly, reporting quarterly at the ICRC meetings.
I am tiring and will continue when refreshed by a little sleep. I will ping a list later. Thanks for your patience and for all that you do. I will make this series of posts worthy of attention.
Black Elk
The ICRC doesn’t meet quarterly. During the past three years, we usually met every other month. We held five meetings, within the past 4.5 months. The next meeting will be held on Sept. 15, at 4:30, at 17923 Alaska Ct., Orland Park. I agree that more states should have groups that are similar to the ICRC, so that they can persuade all conservative groups (tea parites, pro-life groups, pro-gun groups, and minuteman groups) cooperate better.
If Illinois wasn’t a swing state, I’d agree that we should vote for a conservative, third-party presidential candidate. However, based on the 2010 election results, I think that IL is a swing state. I don’t want to help split the anti-Obama vote, helping Obama win Illinois’ 20 electoral votes by receiving less than a majority of the popular vote. I hope that all anti-Obama voters, who live in IL, will vote for Romney.
phil
Mundelein, IL is a bit far from the IA border, but at least yer in the neighborhood.
Romney won’t be challenged there in IA, caucuses are a bad format to take on an incumbent. I’ve tried organizing NH the past 2 primaries ... it is difficult to do so remotely. I think I am giving up on the idea until I can do it full-time.
The locals are getting much better at the game themselves, especially the moderates. Jon Huntsman had western NH organizations, almost as thoroughly as the Paulistas.
The small group working here in my town is focused exclusively on state rep seats. Whether that is smart or not, we don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
Gary Johnson is one of those guys that, while I’m not a fan of some of his positions or the battles he chooses to fight, had he stayed a Republican he would have been very useful in giving the Democrats a good fight for a Senate seat in NM, forcing them to be spread thin elsewhere. Not unlike Lingle in HI, I suppose.
And while there are definitely better NM Republicans to send to the Senate, I’d take Johnson over a Democrat.
Yes.
I wonder if he might be polling better than Wilson.
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