What Now? Read On.

Well, as many of you probably know, the resolutions posted yesterday on this website did not reach the floor of last night’s HCRP Executive Meeting. To see a discussion of what happened, and a correct quote by Alan Bernstein, you can go to these links, and to the twitter link embedded in the comments to the second link. http://blogs.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2009/01/no_rebellion_to_quell_at_local_1.html

http://blogs.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2009/01/mutiny_in_the_county_1.html

Before I address the reason for the resolutions failing to reach the floor, I first want to acknowledge what did happen.

Ever since we started disseminating the strategic plan posted on this website back in November, 2008, I have publicly challenged the leadership of the HCRP, including Jared Woodfill, to come forward with an effective plan and to implement it. To underline the importance of our concerns, I challenged the Chairman publicly to either take action or step aside.

Over the last two months we have seen incremental movements, cryptic references to a new plan, and reasons why such a plan should not be made public (even though every candidate for the chairmanship of the RNC has made their plan public for Republicans to review and comment), but we’ve seen no plan. I have repeatedly said that if the leadership presented an effective plan, this team would support it.

Last night, though the leadership said that it would not divulge its plan in public, it spent at least two hours presenting the contours of the plan in excruciatingly long increments. Although I have several questions and concerns about whether the model for this plan, and the plan itself (if ever implemented), will be effective, it does try and address many of the objectives and strategies we have proposed over the last two months. If, after the full plan is presented to the precinct chairs in February and March, it truly encompasses an effective strategy that addresses the core of the objectives we have proposed, I, for one, will keep my pledge to the party and support this plan.

The reasons the resolutions did not reach the floor were threefold: 1. more than 3 hours into the meeting, we had lost many of the precinct chairs who we felt should be engaged in the debate; 2. the contours of the new plan need to be digested before we proceed with the concept of creating a Steering Committee; and 3. there were sufficient questions about the resolution to explore the creation of a removal process for party officers, so we decided that we would not present it as the only resolution. You see, this effort has never been about dividing the party or promoting anyone’s ambition, it has been about strengthening the party. If the current elected leadership is truly headed in that direction, there is no reason at this time to present resolutions that would be construed as divisive.

That does not mean we will stop what we are doing—only that we are suspending our efforts to directly challenge the strategy of the leadership until we understand the details of the plan discussed last night. In the meantime, we will continue to present ideas on this website about how to strengthen the party and to implement the objectives we have discussed since November, organizations like the Houston Group of Rebuild the Party will proceed with their technology training efforts, and organizations like Raging Elephants and Conservador will continue implementing their outreach plans.

After 7 years of dawdling, let’s hope the leadership has truly listened to us. Only time will tell.

Resolution #2 for Jan 27, 2009

Resolution of the Executive Committee of the Harris County Republican Party (“HCRP”) to create a procedure for the removal and replacement of party officials

Whereas, the Harris County Republican Party (“HCRP”) is established by Bylaws last amended as of May 6, 2008, and the Texas Election Code (“TEC”), Section 171.02; and

Whereas, Precinct Chairs and the County Chairman are elected officers of the party; and Senate District Chairs, the Vice-Chairman, the Secretary, the Treasurer, the Legal Counsel, the Parliamentarian, and the Chairmen of the standing committees of the Executive Committee are the “party officers” of the HCRP; and

Whereas, neither the current Bylaws, nor the TEC, provide a procedure for the removal and replacement of party officers, and

Whereas, the HCRP needs to implement appropriate policies and procedures to allow for the removal and replacement of party officers by the Executive Committee under appropriate circumstances in order to assure that the HCRP continues to accomplish its legal and political purpose to advance the interests of Republican voters in Harris County.

Be It Therefore Resolved, we, the Executive Committee, refer to the Rules Committee of the HCRP the responsibility to draft amendments to the Bylaws to provide a procedure for the removal and replacement of party officers who are found to have violated the Bylaws and TEC; to have violated any state or federal law or regulation applicable to those individuals or to the party offices they hold; to have failed to meet the duties and obligations of their offices as set forth in Bylaws, laws or regulations; or to have failed to promote the mission or implement the objectives of the HCRP consistent with the responsibilities of the party offices they hold.

Resolution #1 for Jan 27, 2009

Resolution of the Executive Committee of the Harris County Republican Party (“HCRP”) to create an Ad Hoc Steering Committee to adopt and implement a new strategic plan for the operation of the HCRP

Whereas, the fundamental purpose of the Harris County Republican Party (“HCRP”) is to advance the interests of Republican voters in Harris County by promoting and supporting the election of Republicans to governmental offices; and

Whereas, the Republican base is shrinking in metropolitan areas across the country, including Harris County, along with Republican voter turnout in the general elections of 2006 and 2008; and

Whereas, the basic strategy, technology, and infrastructure of the HCRP for outreach and for getting out the vote needs to be modernized and coordinated with county parties in counties adjacent to Harris County; and

Whereas, in recent years the regular funds raised by the HCRP have not been adequate to cover expenses related to conducting the necessary affairs of the HCRP, including Senate District Conventions, satellite campaign offices, candidate and precinct chair training, campaign support and getting the vote out,; and

Whereas, the HCRP has not recruited, sufficient numbers of candidates for all of the elected government offices in Harris County; nor filled all of the precinct chair positions; and

Whereas, the current leadership has discussed the creation and implementation of a new strategic plan, but, to date, only minimal details have been shared.

Therefore, we, the Executive Committee, vote to establish a Steering Committee composed of 7 people to develop and recommend implementation of a new strategic plan for the party in order to win future elections by reuniting all of the factions with our party and by expanding the base of our party. At a minimum the objectives of the new strategic plan shall be the following:

1. To work with precinct chairs, affiliated clubs within the Republican Party, and associated groups and individuals to coordinate the activities of the Party and to create the structural reforms needed to elect Republicans.

2. To develop positive principles, messages and policies that unite every faction within the Party.

3. To expand the Party into new communities.

4. To introduce our principles, messages and policies to new voters.

5. To recruit and train strong candidates who will share and promote our principles, messages, and policies, and to run them in every race on the local, state, and national levels.

6. To better mobilize the Party by using every available technology (old and new) to win elections within the county, and to coordinate with other county, state, and national party organizations to identify prospective voters, to get them registered, and to get them to the polls during the 13-day election.

7. To raise the money needed to effectively implement the plan and operate the Party machinery without having to unduly pressure lower level candidates as has occurred with the Senate District Conventions.

8. To better coordinate with other county chairs in the region to elect our shared candidates.

9. To work with other county chairs in other major urban counties around the country to develop an "urban plan" to use our principles to address urban issues, for candidate recruitment, and for voter outreach.

10. To work to reform judicial elections in Texas (or at least in urban counties) in order to retain the ability to elect restrained judges while avoiding sweeps.

The Steering Committee shall be constituted by February 15, 2009, and shall then exist indefinitely through the beginning of the 2010 election cycle. By May 2009, the Steering Committee shall develop a new strategic plan, and a re-design of the structure of the HCRP with necessary Bylaw amendments, which will be submitted for review and approval by the Executive Committee as soon as practicable. For the remainder of its term, the Steering Committee shall begin implementing the new strategic plan with the assistance of the County Chair, Senate District Chairs and Headquarters staff.

The Steering Committee membership shall consist of one resident from each of the seven Senate Districts covering Harris County, who voted in the Republican Primary on March 4, 2008. Each prospective member shall be named to the committee by the SD chair for the Senate District in which he or she resides. The Steering Committee, once formed, shall select its chairperson from its membership. The Steering Committee shall work with the next Chairman elected in the March, 2010 primary in a transition period to be determined, at which time the Committee shall disband and the next Chairman shall take full control of, and responsibility for the remaining implementation of the new strategic plan.

The Plan: Urban Policy

Republicans are losing the metropolitan voter (urban and suburban voters)—in Texas and across the country. We can not win elections in Harris County by just relying on policies that address the concerns of rural voters.

As we noted in an earlier post, a recent PowerPoint presentation from the state party shows that Republicans are losing ground where most Texans now live. Of the 254 counties in Texas, Republicans gained votes in 140 counties with 2,438,604 registered voters, while Democrats gained votes in 114 counties with 11,136,458 registered voters. The 50 fastest growing Republican counties in Texas have a total of 637,694 registered voters, while the 50 fastest growing Democratic counties have a total of 8,959,881 registered voters. Indeed, we lost the straight-ticket vote in Harris County to the Democrats in both 2006 and 2008.

This trend also is consistent with the following graph produced by Nate Silver and recently published in Esquire magazine (http://www.esquire.com/print-this/how-obama-won-0209#):

In his new Esquire column, The Data, statistical analysis guru Nate Silver reveals for the first time the secret behind November 4, 2008.



You do the math—if this trend continues, we will not elect Republicans in Harris County and will soon lose our statewide offices.

We need to face reality: too many metropolitan voters do not understand how our principles of individual empowerment, which promote a smaller role for the federal government (federalism), and a limited, yet effective, role for local government, make their lives better.

We need to begin to look at the issues they care about: keeping children in school through high-school graduation; providing children with the knowledge they will need to succeed in college and in the economy; making college affordable; making neighborhoods safe for children and families; keeping men in families and neighborhoods; addressing the cost and availability of health care; making sure housing remains affordable; maintaining a modern infrastructure; maximizing workers’ take-home pay; making sure retirement savings are safe; and making sure good-paying jobs are available.

These are not Democratic issues, it just sounds like they are because we rarely talk about them, except to focus on processes and costs. We need to develop actual policies that address these issues by implementing our principles. We also need to recruit, train and support candidates who will press our agenda on city councils and school boards, as well as legislatures and county boards.

What we are saying is not a pipe-dream. It’s been done by Republican mayors in New York and Los Angeles in the last two decades. It’s being done in young, growing cities, like Boise and Reno. Houston, with its established neighborhoods and business community, and with its growth, has elements of both the old and young cities, and has something they don’t—a natural conservative political base. If we can’t develop an urban policy here, Republicans have little chance of succeeding anywhere else.

The Plan: Message Development

In an earlier blog post, we gave an example of how we could turn one of our platform planks—promoting English as our national language—into a positive message of inclusion. The bottom line for our party going into future elections is that we need to find a way to promote positive messages and policies based on our principles in order to expand the party. We simply can’t continue to be perceived as the party of “no”, especially when we don’t even stick by our decision to say “no”.

In the Action Plan portion of the “Hubbard Plan”, we have tried to grapple with this problem head-on, by proposing a theme of “individual empowerment” to package our message and to differentiate it from the Democrats, who are the party of “government empowerment”.

As we’ve tried to explain, “individual empowerment” is consistent with the value system we share with many communities who are not voting for Republicans right now, because empowering individuals requires promoting policies that empower the relationships through which individuals act—families, neighborhoods, organizations, and businesses. These also are the relationships valued in the Hispanic voters, African-American voters, Asian voters, Indian/Sikh voters. Through this type of message, we run a good chance of getting the attention of members of these communities, so we can re-introduce our principles and policies to them.

As we’ve said earlier, learning English empowers individuals to function in their communities and get good jobs. Also, school vouchers empower individuals and families to get the best education for their children and empowers neighborhoods with competition needed to improve their schools. Demanding higher performance standards for our schools empowers individuals, families and neighborhoods to keep their children in school and to get them the best education possible, and higher performances will help children to grow-up to get better jobs, earn more income and increase the wealth of society. Virtually all of our principles and policies can be explained this way.

Whether the theme is “individual empowerment” or something else, we need to embrace a positive message in order to be successful in our outreach to new voters.

To the HCRP: “Where’s the Plan?”

Our plan has been disseminated in public since late November, 2008. At the time it was written, Republicans across the country had already been thinking and writing about a new strategy for the party for some time, including Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, and Rebuild the Party.

Moreover, books had been written prior to the last election, which were devoted to ways in which the party could develop new strategies and messages consistent with our principles, including Leslie Sanchez’s Los Republicanos, and Michael J. Gerson’s Heroic Conservatism.

Even after our plan was disseminated, several of the leading contenders for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee floated their own plans and blueprints for re-designing the strategies of the party at the national level, and a new book has appeared entitled, Grand New Party.

So after all this time, with the clock ticking for the next election cycle, we have to ask our current leadership of the HCRP, where is your plan? We’ve heard rumors since the Spring of 2007 that the leadership had a 30-page plan for the future—but where is it? We’ve recently heard that they have a 27-page plan under review—but where is it? After 7 years in office, with all these ideas already floating in public, why won’t the current leadership share its plan with us if they have one? It’s just not that hard!

While we wait for their plan, we will continue to share with you further ideas about how we would implement the objectives of the “Hubbard Plan” for you to consider prior to the upcoming Executive Committee meeting on January 27, 2009.

The Plan: Is it too bureaucratic?

Several comments we received about the plan focused on the proposal to change the structure of the Advisory Board, and to create a mechanism for working with the county chairs in adjacent counties (Objective and Action Item 1, and Objective 8). The primary concern distilled from these comments is that the plan may be too bureaucratic and unmanageable by creating too many new groups with too many people. I understand the concern.

The purpose of changing the structure of the Advisory Board is to open up the governance of the party to all of its factions as part of the effort to reunite the party—not to create an unmanageable committee. Obviously, if we include a representative of every Republican club in the county, we could never get a quorum for the meeting, let alone get anything done. However, we could cap the membership at 15 members by including each Senate District representative (7), and one representative, on an annual rotating basis, from each group of affiliated organizations (e.g., the local Pachyderms Clubs would have one rotating seat, the TFRW Clubs would have four rotating seats based on the four commissioner’s court precincts, and the Young Republicans and other clubs would share a rotating seat). The officers (other than the Chairman) and the Executive Director would be ex-officio members. A board of 15 members is manageable, and the rotating nature of many of the seats would assure the board of new input on an annual basis.

As for the proposed working groups to coordinate with other county parties, this proposal was not intended to create formal committees or structures, so the use of the term “working group” may have been inappropriate. The intent behind the proposal was to recognize the fact that we are part of a metropolitan area that covers several counties; that these counties share state and federal legislative districts, cities and school boards; and that we need better coordination and communication between the counties to help elect our shared candidates. What is intended is really to create a flexible mechanism whereby the county parties share information and resources, help coordinate with candidate recruitment and campaign support, and help with get-out-the-vote efforts for these shared districts. We need to do whatever we legally can do to break-down formalities that inhibit this coordination.

The Plan: The need to amend the bylaws to create new Vice Chairs and “Community Representatives”

Since we first published the plan for comment, we’ve gotten a lot of general and specific comments about how certain aspects of the plan could be modified or improved. In the process, we also have seen need for refinements, as well as specific areas where we will need to amend the party bylaws in order to fully implement the plan. We will try to address these comments and refinements over the next week in separate posts. First, though, I want to address the bylaw changes that will be needed.

When we drafted the plan we knew bylaw changes would be needed. We drafted the Organization section of the plan based on the current bylaws and office structure of the party, so that a team could be put in place quickly to start implementing our objectives, while new bylaws were drafted and debated. Based on our many conversations and emails with local Republicans, the primary bylaw changes needed to implement the plan involve creating a whole new group of Vice Chairs, and creating new local representative positions.

In order to effectively implement and manage the new plan, we believe we will need to create four Vice-Chair positions, in addition to expanding the roles of the current positions of Treasurer, Secretary and Parliamentarian. The new Vice-Chair positions would be for Fundraising, Outreach, Campaign Support, and Communication. The Vice-Chair for Fundraising and the Treasurer would form the Finance Group to develop and fund the budget of the party. The Vice-Chair for Outreach would recruit and manage a committee representative of every community within the county, including a representative from the Hispanic, African-American, Asian, Indian/Sikh, Muslim, and “youth” communities, as well as one precinct chair from each Senate District. This committee would replace the current Outreach Committee, and would develop and implement our outreach objectives. The Vice-Chair for Campaign Support would recruit, train, and support candidates, precinct chairs, election judges and community representatives, and coordinate and train campaign consultants. The Vice-Chair for Communication would develop and maintain the party message, and the means by which the message is communicated within the party and to the public. The roles of the Secretary and Parliamentarian would be expanded to include compliance, ethics and permanent long-range planning duties.

Right now we expect our precinct chairs to wear too many hats at the same time that we can’t even fill almost half the precinct positions. We believe that a precinct chair needs to be just that—a precinct chair—with defined responsibilities to be part of the Executive Committee and standing committees, and to participate in outreach, candidate recruitment and get-the-vote-out activities in each precinct. No precinct chair should be an election judge, or vice versa. Instead, we will work to recruit and train additional activists to fill the election judge positions.

In addition to the precinct chairs and election judges, we believe we need additional representatives in each of our communities focusing specifically on the needs of the 34 cities and 23 school districts in the county. Therefore, we are proposing to create new appointive positions of “community representative” in each city and school district to work with the Vice-Chairs for Outreach, Campaign Support, and Communication, and with the precinct chairs and Senate District representatives, to focus specifically on recruiting, training and supporting candidates for the city and school district offices, and to respond to community-based issues on behalf of the party.

These community representatives should provide the party with an increased and overlapping grassroots infrastructure in each political subdivision of the county. For example, as we enter a new neighborhood with our outreach program, we can offer new activists several avenues for immediate involvement in the party: precinct chair; election judge; community representative for their city; community representative for their school district; local candidacies; and membership in one or more affiliated clubs. With a position within the party, these new activists will have a base from which to recruit others to the party.

As we conduct outreach and expand the number of our activists, the division of grassroots labor between the precinct chairs, election judges and community representatives should help us establish and maintain an intensity of support that will help us in each election cycle.

Unlike HCRP leadership, we are listening to you

The one thing about getting involved in a movement like this is that you have to have a pretty thick skin, and a sense of humor, because you start to hear things about yourself that you never knew. Rumors and innuendos are spread in an effort to discredit the messengers, rather than debate the message. As I discussed in an earlier blog, one of the first things I heard was that I, and my team, were Trojan Horses for people who still want to remove the pro-life plank of our party platform. Having shown that allegation to be hogwash, the new rumor is that we are disgruntled Ron Paul supporters who want to disrupt the party. Because this rumor could get in the way of further debate on the merits of what we are doing, I will address this rumor now to put it to bed.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of any political movement other than the Republican Party, which I have volunteered for, or run as a candidate for, in two different states over 33 years. I am not now, nor have I ever been a Libertarian. I am not now, nor have I ever been a supporter of Congressman Paul. I do not know the group that was involved in disrupting this summer's state convention; I was not involved in any way with that group or in that effort, and, to my knowledge, they are not involved in this effort.

However, labeling people as malcontents who should be ostracized from the party or distrusted, is inconsistent with the fundamental mission of the plan I have proposed, and with everything I believe. Many conservatives embrace the free-market and strict constructionist views of libertarian economists and legal scholars without embracing the broader Libertarian agenda. Should anyone who supports the economic teachings of Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek be driven from the party because a few people disrupted our summer convention? If so, I guess we better change the name of our annual Reagan Day Dinner, because Reagan was an enthusiastic believer in those economic teachings. Many libertarians in this part of the country are more closely aligned on social issues with traditional conservatives than libertarians in other parts of the country. Should they be ostracized? Many young people are embracing the libertarian label right now because it is more hip than the conservative or Republican label, but they don't really understand that the term libertarian has a distinct definition within the discipline and history of political science. Should we turn these young people away from the party?

As for disruptions, although I did not like what I saw and heard at the convention this summer, when did conventions become so orderly? Disorder and dissent used to be the hallmark of political conventions, allowing all factions to vent and then come together. The fact that we had people who cared enough to be a little rowdy may be a sign of future health, not a sign that the party is in trouble. If we are going to label any dissent as disrespect, our party's future is in more trouble than I thought.

We need to reunite all our factions against a common opponent. We need to embrace the energy of these people and, over time convince them that our views are more consistent with the fundamental principles of this country than are the views contained in the Libertarian Party or Paul agenda.

We need to focus on a strategy for winning elections by embracing all people who agree with our principles in every community and faction of this county, rather than ostracize or demean anyone. We absolutely don't need rumor and innuendo to drive these people away from us when they naturally agree with most of our agenda and virtually all of our principles, or to kill strategic change when it is desperately needed.

The importance of contesting elections

How many of you knew that there are at least 486 elected government offices with jurisdiction over some or all of Harris County (not counting statewide offices)? How many of you knew that there are an additional 876 elected offices within the Harris County Republican Party? Not only is the local Republican Party not finding candidates to contest many of the races for government offices, we currently have a 45% vacancy rate for our elected party offices. This status quo is unacceptable.

What are these elected offices? The government offices include: 12 county commissioners and countywide offices; 8 constables; 16 justices of the peace; 100 judicial offices; 7 members of the Harris County Board of Education and 9 members of the Houston Community College Board of Trustees; at least 161 school board trustees sitting on 23 school boards; 39 congressional and state legislative seats; 34 mayors; and at least 100 city council members spread among 34 cities. Although many of the school board and city council offices are officially non-partisan, Democrats have supported candidates for these offices for years in order to pursue their policy agenda and develop a “farm team” of candidates. It is time we do the same.

As for our party offices, there are 875 precincts in the county. We have the ability to directly elect a precinct chair in each precinct, as well as our County Chairman. Not only do we not find candidates to contest every race for a governmental office in this county, we have only filled 454 of our precinct chairs, and many of those positions have had to be filled by appointment rather than election.

If we are going to rebuild a competitive party in this county, we need to implement a process to find, train and support candidates for all of these offices. This process will include outreach programs into neighborhoods and precincts we have ignored in the past, as well as establishing a specific candidate support program. It also will require coordination with our counterparts in adjacent counties, because many of the school districts, cities, and congressional and legislative districts cover more than one county.

These needs illustrate that each of the ten objectives in the plan we have proposed overlaps with other objectives in the plan: outreach impacts candidate recruitment (Objectives 4 and 5); recruiting precinct chairs impacts our get-out-the-vote, outreach, and candidate recruitment efforts (Objectives 4, 5, and 6); and coordination with other county party chairs impacts candidate recruitment and our get-out-the-vote effort in Harris County (Objectives 5, 6, and 8). For this reason, just adopting some of the objectives of the plan we have proposed is not enough. We need to be bold and comprehensive in our strategy to take back this county.

Response to Recent Feedback II

As we get more comments to the plan and about our efforts, another reaction has emerged. We are now hearing from some party activists that, though they like the ideas we have proposed, we are violating the processes of the party by the way we are promoting them, and we are being disrespectful of our leadership by making our views known in public. Although I respect the people who have voiced these concerns, and their commitment to this party, the concerns themselves invert the role of “We the People” of which Reagan always spoke. With all due respect, we who vote in the Republican primary, and who vote for Republican candidates in the general election, run this party. Our views should be shown more respect by our elected servants.

A political party is not a club, a congregation, or an office-place, and we are not plebes, congregants or employees who voluntarily serve a group, a leader, an employer, or a higher power. A political party is one of the organs through which we, the sovereign citizens, have chosen to run this country. Each precinct chair is an elected servant of the Republican voters in that precinct. Each precinct delegate, who starts the process of selecting our Senate District and state representatives, also is an elected servant of the Republican voters in that precinct, as are the party representatives they ultimately choose. Finally, the county chairman of the party is the elected servant of all Republicans in this county.

These servants ultimately have one job: to preserve and use the party apparatus to elect Republicans to government office. When they fail in that job, we, the people, have the right and duty to object, and to propose and demand change from our servants. In the event those servants won’t change, we have the right and duty to demand they surrender their office. The momentary processes of the party are only valid to the extent they help elect Republicans to office. If the processes don’t help that effort, they should be changed, and we have the right to call for such change from our servants. It is not divisive or disrespectful to fulfill our obligations as the real leaders of the party.

We often ask, “what would Ronald Reagan do?” This has always been the wrong question, for Reagan’s message to us was that the Republican mission doesn’t seek a hero on a white horse or place its leaders on such a pedestal. Instead, he always turned to “We the People” of our party and our country and asked us to answer the call of the person we see in our mirror every morning and every night—the call of the real leaders and sovereigns of this country. The question he challenged all of us to ask ourselves is, “what will I do?”

In the tradition of Reagan, we are asking our Precinct Chairs, our Senate District representatives and our County Chairman—our elected servants—as well as all of the Republicans in this county, to look in the mirror and ask themselves, “what will I do to rebuild the Harris County Republican Party.” We have the right and the duty to expect an answer.

Response to Recent Feedback

Since our postings on this website after Christmas, I have been continuing to meet and correspond with local Republican activists about the plan and the intentions of our group. What I am hearing consistently is a version of the following comment: “I agree with your plan and I want to see it implemented. However, I don’t want to divide the party, and I don’t want to upset the people who have worked for years to be in leadership positions. Can’t we work with the current leadership to implement this plan? How can we trust that you won’t divide the party and change its principles?” I will try to address these concerns briefly.

The underlying concern, especially among many veterans of prior intra-party battles, is that our effort to promote this plan is actually a Trojan Horse designed to eliminate our party’s embrace of policies that promote a culture of life in opposition to the hedonism and death that are the consequences of the Democrat’s “progressive” agenda. These veterans fear that our effort is nothing more than a repeat of the “United Republican” movement within the local party in the 1990s. Although I have friends who were involved in the formation of United Republicans, and who are still members today, I have never been a member of that organization, nor do I embrace policies on the issue of “life” that differ from our party’s platform or the Declaration of Independence.

Our agenda is not to divide the party, or change its principles. Instead, our efforts are focused solely on changing the strategy of the party, so that it will grow and win elections. We do not intend to walk away from the party and form our own renegade group if our efforts are unsuccessful. Instead, we will explore every legal alternative available to create ancillary mechanisms to compliment whatever plan the party leadership does embrace, and to independently implement strategies to grow the party and elect Republican candidates until we can more directly effect the party’s strategic planning.

There are times when change is needed to help the whole movement, even though that change may interrupt the aspirations and ambitions of certain individuals. Unfortunately, no matter what faction has been in control of our party over the years, the reaction to new ideas and new blood has often been the same: resistance. It is this resistance that has led our party to nominate candidates like Nixon, Dole, and McCain more often than candidates like Goldwater and Reagan. We will not grow the base on the foundation of our principles if we don’t abandon our historic resistance to new strategies and new people.

It is not our intent to thwart anyone’s personal ambitions. In fact, we believe that if our proposed changes are implemented, all of the leaders of our party will benefit in the long-run. I reiterate that it is not my intent to inject myself into the leadership queue, but I will do everything I can to help implement this plan because I sincerely believe it is the right thing to do. If the current leadership embraces our ideas, we will work with them. If not, we intend to do whatever is necessary to make sure that our conservative principles are embraced by an expanded voter base so that we win elections in the future.