Political Arena

On Tuesday I referenced the New York 23rd Congressional District race, a campaign that has highlighted the widespread confusion about the role of the Republican Party. Today, a few more comments are in order.

Some people want to support the liberal GOP candidate in that race because of the decisions made by some party leaders at the local level. Decisions made by local party leaders can’t change the purpose of the party – which is to advance a principle based policy agenda. Local party leaders are famous for getting that wrong. Local party leaders like to win elections by playing the role of king-maker. They often could care less about policy reform or good government.

A battle is taking place in an upstate New York U.S. House race that pits Party Platform-supporting Republicans against RINOs (Republican in Name Only) and the politically confused.

Pat would be well advised to start listening to people who have been outlining solutions to his predecessor’s mistakes.

Part four of our series brings us to the economy. The United States has seen turmoil in its finance, banking, and housing markets for the past few years. The worst of it began to hit after the Democrats won Congress. George W. Bush was still in the White House when things started to unravel. The housing bubble burst, the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused a shock, and the “TARP” (Troubled Assets Relief Program) was passed before Barack Obama came into office.

Our GOP leaders failed on several fronts while they held power – from over-spending to the failure to address the impending Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage mess. The “we really tried…” excuses emanating from former Bush Administration staffers adds one more credibility hurdle for Republicans to clear. GOP candidates have to convince voters they’re not just going to try – they’re going to succeed next time.

Up next in this run through the Republican Party National Platform is the chapter “Government Reform,” which opens curiously:

“The American people believe Washington is broken – and for good reason. Short-term politics overshadow the long-term interests of the nation. Our national legislature uses a budget process devised long before the Internet and seems unable to deal in realistic ways with the most pressing problems of families, businesses, and communities. Members of Congress have been indicted for violating the public trust. Public disgust with Washington is entirely warranted.”

The next few columns of mine will be used to travel through the Republican Party’s National Platform. For the sake of speed and convenience, I’ll highlight excerpts while providing links to the full passages. With all the filler, the downloadable version posted here runs 60 pages.

For any Republican candidates looking to fill out the issues section of a website, the National Platform has a lot of fine language that should be cut and pasted with a link back to their source. Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Pat Hughes refers to himself as a “mainstream Republican” candidate – which is a fine way to say it. Many of those mainstream values have already been articulated in the Platform and should be utilized.

Let’s continue with our sprint through our National Party Platform. I’ll repeat what I stated yesterday – GOP candidates for office should borrow a lot from our well written National Platform. It’s clear that…

There are several versions of this, here’s just one… If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is…

An advertisement for the fine publication Human Events recently invited people to join the conservative “underground,” and to “Join the Conservative Counter-Revolution.” It was an entertaining ad as ads go. It referred to the “surging opposition to President Obama’s plans to ‘remake’ America.”

The fact that almost half of those same voters choose the moderate Ron Gidwitz or the liberal Judy Baar Topinkaon primary election day ’06 was easy enough to understand: those voters never got the message that Topinka and Gidwitz weren’t conservative. Still too few conservative statewide campaigns in Illinois successfully get their message across properly. Often it’s a lack of resources, often it’s just plain incompetence.

Yesterday I wrote about my favorable impression of U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Hughes which resulted from a discussion that lasted 90 minutes or so. In the article I used the following sentence that needs more explanation today: Fortunately, Hughes seems a lot more stable – and frankly, normal – than most candidates I’ve met.

It’s easy for me to imagine the work of personnel professionals who conduct job interviews on a regular basis. While political vetting isn’t quite hiring, a lot of the same weighing and measuring takes place. Is this person who he says he is? Has he accomplished what he claims? Does he understand the arena he enters? Is he really up to the task?