Two words: Hell no.
I know, I know. I’m in the minorty among my conservative friends but hear me out. Michael Steele is a modest Republican version of Joe Biden, with an equally charming smile plus the un-Biden-like trait of being man enough to embrace his own baldness.
What will happen if Michael Steele steps down or is somehow forcibly removed? The left will swarm like kids around the ice cream man and the complicit press will force feed the news to Americans from every channel ad nauseum.
What would happen if Michael Steele stays put, as I think he should? The press will swarm like kids around the ice cream man and the complicit press will force feed the news to Americans from every channel ad nauseum.
So why give the left another grave to dance over? The left will do what it does regardless of what Mr. Steele decides to do. Remember, Steele’s term ends in January, 2011. Why not focus on important things like winning local elections and generating conservative voter activity in November? Sure, what Mr. Steele said about Afghanistan didn’t make sense. I think he misspoke, the same way that Al Gore misspoke about inventing the internet.
Is Steele right that a land war in Afghanistan is a bad idea? Why not ask Russia for the answer.
Is he right that this war is of Obama’s choosing? Yes and no. We all know the war started nine years ago, so it is obviously not of Obama’s creation. But it is the war that Obama has repeatedly expressed support for. I think it is his war, just not of his making.
Does his statement merit loss of his job? Again I say hell no. If politicians lost their jobs over erroneous or questionable statements they made during various gatherings the House, Senate and White House would be empty. But if you think he should step down, I suggest you ask President Obama step down for any of the dozens of verbal and factual, um, “gaffes” he has made. Given that Steele was speaking at a fund raiser, let’s just pull one Obama gaffe out of the air for comparison. It had to do with people clinging to their guns and their religion. One man was asked to resign, the other was elected president.
When you convince me of the logic of those outcomes I might consider joining the emotional “fire Steele” bandwagon. I just think we need to focus on the bigger picture: We have a country to save.
Attention Conservative warriors!
We’ve got a job to do and about three years to do it. We know that President Obama and the Democrats are planning on spending America into despair. We know that they want to give more rights to those that hate America and take them away from those that love America. We know that they want to stifle free speech and strong-arm every possible bill they can come up with. And we know that President Obama cares more about what the world thinks about America than what Americans think about America.
Its only been a month yet we’ve already seen the future. While the Democrats have the votes they need, they won’t take ownership of their legislation. They need Republican human shields to vote with them so that when these crap sandwich bills and stimulus packages are force fed to us and then miserably fail, Dems can say “it’s not our fault, it was a bipartisan bill!”
It is time to plant the seeds of a crop that will bloom in late 2011. We need to rebuild the voter base, the party will follow suit. We need to make our side of the aisle cool, sexy, and funny. After all, far too many voters get their news from comedy shows, far too many voters create their casual political opinions under the saturation of late night television comedians. Magazine covers, email messages and product placement are where its at.
Obama won by less than ten million votes. For the pendulum to swing back we need to educate at least five million voters. Three years, five million minds. Ready?
Take a look at the table below (culled from this great interactive link). The raw data from my spreadsheet can be seen here.
Increase of Democratic Presidential Votes from 2004 to 2008
The Obama generation is dominated by the 18-29 year old demographic. This group accounted for 23 million votes, or about 18% of all voters. In fact, this was the second largest youth turnout in American history. Within this group, 15.3M voted Obama, 7.7M for McCain; approximately a 2:1 ratio.
The 30-44 demographic also played a significant role. This group was 53:46 Republican in 2004 — this ratio flipped to 52:46 in favor of the Democrats in 2008, creating a net gain of 3.3M voters for Obama.
The black vote was also important in this election. Historically speaking blacks have voted democratic (85-90% per presidential election since 1980). This time around, the number jumped from 88% in 2004 to 95% in 2008, accounting for more than 4.2M additional votes for the Dems. First time voters accounted for a 2.7M gain for Obama. However, these two groups overlap with the two age demographics mentioned above.
My not-so-humble opinion is that the RNC and Conservatives in general need to focus on friends, family and coworkers that are primarily in the 18-29 demo. We also need to focus on high school students. Remember, Today’s freshman and sophomores are 2012′s voters!
So what do we do? Here’s a list off the top of my head:
- Be a loud talker! Be diligent in pointing out the flaws of the Obama campaign in a factual manner to anyone you can.
- Refer people to sites like HotAir.com, or better yet, “mainstream” media sites with stories that point out the hypocrisy of the liberal mindset.
- Learn your factual talking points that dispute the common liberal one-liners:
- “I’m not voting for a man that can’t even use a computer.”
- Bush lied about WMD
- Bush policies for the past eight years put us in this financial mess
- Check here for more lies to respond to. Or here. Even here.
- Be diligent and stubborn. Do not cave in to whining liberal rhetoric. Point out any and all flaws in liberal arguments. When confronted with facts liberals usually:
- change the subject to another myth
- question your sources and/or give up because they are unable to quote sources for their “data”
- rely on emotions and avoid the facts, bringing up humanitarian issues with no factual basis
- say they don’t care
- resort to name calling or sheer denial
- Remind them that people have died trying to exercise their right to vote. Let them know that an uneducated vote is far worse than not voting at all.
Ultimately our goal as Conservatives is to educate and change the minds of five million voters. President Obama won by about ten million votes. If we can claim half of those minds we can make the fight even again. If we do a good enough job they will also tell their friends and family and we will regain control of our government and our country again.
And to reinforce the urgency of our need for action NOW, please take a look at the message that Moveon.org sent out to its thousands of members last week. Let’s get to TALKING LOUD!!!
The following email was sent out to MoveOn’s vast email network. The message is below, my comments are in italics:
From: Adam Ruben, MoveOn.org Political Action <moveon-help@list.moveon.org>
Subject: MoveOn’s biggest campaign ever
To: “xxxxxxxx” <xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com>
Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 7:55 AMDear MoveOn member,
When FDR became president, a group of progressive activists asked him to push for some really big changes. His response? “I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it.” President Obama gets that we need to transform our economy. He’s passionate about creating millions of green jobs and investing billions in renewable energy. And he’s appointed great leaders like Energy Secretary Chu to help him.
But unless we create a massive green-economy movement across America, Obama won’t have the mandate he needs to overcome the oil companies and make fundamental change. (overcome the oil companies? Those horrible 4-5% profit margins and an end-product that the entire world depend on. Not only petroleum, but plastics, etc.) As president, Obama’s extraordinary power comes from the people outside Washington. And that’s us. (it’s also US, the 55 million that voted Republican, plus the many millions more that did not vote.)
So we’ve worked up a big plan to build a green-economy groundswell. It’ll mean tripling our field organizing team, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members to take local action, and running ads targeting powerful interests that stand in the way. It’ll be MoveOn’s biggest long-term campaign ever. (Therefore our action/response needs to be even larger and more long-term.)
If President Obama is going to transform our economy, he needs all of us standing behind him giving him strength. Are you in?
This will be our biggest long-term organizing program ever. We’ll build on the lessons of the Obama campaign and our own work over the years to create a new approach to organizing—empowering MoveOn members to run powerful campaigns in their own communities. We’ll combine traditional community organizing (like ACORN?) with cutting-edge technology to make sure our voices are heard. We’re talking about ramping up our current organizing capacity—sending talented organizers to train and mobilize MoveOn members from Maine to California to build a massive green economy movement. (Is this only about being green? For me it is NOT. It is about personal and financial responsibility. Recycling is good. Ruining an economy to try and effect global climate change is a waste of time, energy and money.)
Together, we’ll:
- Build diverse coalitions of small-business owners, green-collar workers, faith communities (did they really say faith?), and many more to show widespread support for a clean-energy economy.
- Organize creatively to make sure members of Congress hear our message everywhere they go. (in other words, continue wearing pink, being disruptive, yelling and generally acting like a spoiled child to get attention. I guess we need to consider adopting the same tactics since they were so effective for liberals last year? I shudder the thought.)
- Combine innovative grassroots and paid advertising campaigns to grab the attention of local and national media. (this means reaching into the deep pockets of liberal supporters in Hollywood and elsewhere. We need to find conservatives with deep pockets that are serious about effecting change.)
- Hold a massive wave of house parties where MoveOn members will reach out to neighbors to involve them in the campaign. (House parties? Then again, the 18-29 demographic helped Obama win the White House. We need to make politics cool and intereting. Nominating old, white-haired men is NOT the way to do this.)
As a country, we face a choice: Either we take dramatic steps and put this country on a new path—a clean-energy economy that shifts us from oil and coal to renewable energy while creating millions of green jobs and fighting the climate crisis. Or we take baby steps that could leave us right where we started. (Where exactly is this? Perhaps it was a vibrant economy that rewards hard work instead of sloth-like behavior? This is a paraphrase of the “last eight years” mindset that has been proven false.)
This is the moment to go big and seize this opportunity—but it’ll take everyone’s help.
Yes. This is a big opportunity. Right now the Left has control. The Right needs to be bigger, louder and more passionate about the issues. Let’s get to Loud Talking!
