Reflections: What will we do the morning after?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Summer is over, another birthday has passed, and another of my daughters has struck-out on her own-in Austin. The Astros never really competed this summer-and said "good-bye" to some good veterans along the way-but they've ended the season showing signs of life for the future. My White Sox flirted with a pennant race long enough to make reading the morning box scores fun through Labor Day, and have since settled into their usual, second-place position. And the Cubs oh, well, there's always next year!

With fall upon us, politics is back.

I know for many of you it never left, but after the State Convention in June, I needed a break to re-charge my batteries after nearly 2 ½ years of campaigning: in September, 2007, I jumped head-long into what now seems like a continuous campaign that lasted more than 2 ½ years-first for a seat on a 10-county appellate bench; then to revitalize the local GOP; then to formally run for chairman of the Harris County Republican Party; and finally to help elect a new state chairman for the Republican Party of Texas. Even though I entered those campaigns with the support of my family and colleagues, and I believe my team, my supporters, and I made a positive long-term impact on our local party through these efforts, the shear length and depth of such a continuous commitment took a toll on my family and my work, because I hadn't structured and planned my life with an eye toward running for public office. As a result, I've needed to address this toll over the last few months with some long-needed vacation time and then a re-involvement in the practice of complex litigation. With the exception of giving a talk to a local club in August as a favor to fill-in for a speaker who had cancelled, and attending a few committee meetings, I've purposely stayed away from politics for a while to attend to family and work.

But, I haven't stopped thinking about politics completely. So, here are my reflections from a summer's rest...

First, we must finish the task at hand and win this election. There are only a little more than three weeks until the start of early voting, and six weeks until Election Day. While we still have a lot of work to do between now and November 2nd in order to win this election-locally and nationally-a momentum is behind the GOP and conservative candidates this year that I don't think there is time to derail. The biggest enemy now could be our own over-confidence (remember "President Dewey"?), so we need to complete the mission and get the vote out.

Then, when we wake-up on November 3rd, we must be prepared to lead, to govern, and to recruit strong candidates for the next election cycle. Let me give you my thoughts on each of these points:

We must be prepared to lead, with a vision that encompasses our cherished principles.

In my posts on this blog in May, June and July, I discussed an approach called "Renewing the American Community" with a focus on re-capturing a sense of Neighborhood and re-building our communities based on our conservative principles of limited and local government. I won't re-hash what I said in those posts, but I will recap this fundamental point: the original settlers from Europe established neighborhoods and congregations before they established governments. Successive waves of settlers governed their lives by being good and caring neighbors, and then later generations, culminating with the Founding Fathers, created governments to protect the society and culture the settlers had established. Were they perfect? No. Did they fail to apply their principles to all men and women? Yes. But, they built something unique in history, and the following generations fought amongst themselves to eventually apply those principles to all who lived here and came here. The story of the settler's creation, of the founder's vision, and of the following generations' struggles, is our heritage.

That heritage provides the vision we need to use to lead our communities, our state and our nation starting November 3rd. The men and women I've gotten to know over the last 2 ½ years in every corner of this region of the state, in every Tea Party group, and in every Republican organization, crave leaders who understand this heritage, who understand governments' proper role in preserving this heritage, and who are committed to work every day to preserve this heritage for our children and grandchildren. The men and women working hard to get conservatives elected this November need to hear of our party's commitment to this heritage, and of a plan for action consistent with our heritage. If we lead, these men and women will support us and work with us; if we don't, they will throw us out of office as soon as they can.

"The Pledge" that the Republican Congressional leadership presented last week is a good start, but doesn't go far enough. Republicans need a vision of action for not just the next two years, but for the next generation. To find it, we need to stop looking for new slogans, or trying to co-opt the slogans of the Tea Parties-we need to re-commitment to our heritage of Neighborhoods-of local action and limited government-and then fashion an agenda around that commitment. If we truly believe in the primacy of the individual and local government, that agenda must be built from the foundation of local government first. Continually focusing on the national agenda, though momentarily necessary because of the dire straits created by Obama's administration, is self-defeating to our cause in the long-run. Eventually, the national agenda must be drawn to complement and protect our local agendas.

We must turn from critics to problem-solvers and administrators, prepared to turn our principles into action and results.

In my last post on this blog on July 11th, I wrote about the "Tupelo Formula" for local action, which I broke down as follows:

•The community faced a problem that appeared intractable, and that had been confounded by multiple events-not unlike the confounding factors of under-education, under-employment, chronic crime and poverty, and the impulse to be "left alone", which exist in many of our neighborhoods today;

•One person, followed by a group of civic leaders, saw a strength within the community that created an opportunity that could be exploited to help the community address its problem;

•These citizens had the courage to take a risk with their own resources to take advantage of the opportunity and to share the gain with the community;

•These citizens involved businesses, private organizations, and local government in both the planning and the implementation of their plan; and

•The gains to the community were both short-term, and long-term, and were broadly shared-e.g., businesses were created and expanded, employment grew, per capita income grew, and schools improved.

I propose to our local conservative leaders on our school boards and city councils, and to our Republican officeholders at the county and state levels, that we sit-down after the election with other civic leaders, and begin to analyze and address our communities' needs through the prism of this formula. These needs should include at least the following:

•Our educational system, including the type of citizen we want to emerge from an elementary, secondary and college education in this state; the proper curriculum and delivery system needed to produce that citizen; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms needed to pay for, account for, and administer that delivery system;

•Our transportation system and physical infrastructure, including a vision of where our citizens will live and work over the next 25 years; an understanding of how and where our goods and services will need to move; the maintenance cycle for all capital investments; an appreciation for the property rights of all Texans; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for paying for the needed infrastructure improvements; and

•Our criminal-justice and mental-health systems, including the effectiveness of such systems to protect victims, the public, and the person being held and/or treated within the systems; and alternatives that can reduce recidivism and improve the educational opportunities and long-term economic viability of the families and neighborhoods affected by the incarceration or mental-health treatment.

If we can address these issues, and create long-term strategies for addressing them at the most local level possible, we can begin to make government live by our principles while addressing urgent problems; and we can begin to address some of the most vexing structural pressures on our public budgets, which put upward pressure on our taxes and downward pressure on job growth.

Obviously, other problems, like the looming public-sector pension issue, will have to be addressed soon-but we need to start somewhere and show the public that our principles are relevant to modern life and modern problems.

To be the majority party, we must recruit and support strong conservatives to run for local, state and national offices over the next two years, who share our principles and are committed to use them to govern.

As I often said during my campaign for Chair of the HCRP, if we are the party that believes in local government, we must get involved in local government. This means fielding candidates now for the elections of 2011 and 2012. Remember, that in 2012 the local GOP will be the challenging party for countywide offices for the first time since 1996. Included among these offices will be between 30 and 40 local judgeships that will be open for Republican challengers, and we need to start finding competent, conservative members of the legal community to run for these offices.

But in 2011, many of the 416 local city council and school board seats will be up for election, including Houston's Mayor and Controller offices. Moreover, Utility and Emergency Services Districts hold elections each year. From just a rough review of the current holders of these offices, Republicans or Republican-voting independents hold already hold at least 40% of these offices. We need to talk with those officeholders, determine how we can help them keep their offices and how we can support them after they win. Most importantly, we need to determine who holds the other offices and recruit candidates who share our principles to run for those offices. Given the number of offices spread-out over 24 school districts, 34 cities, and many Utility and Emergency Services districts, this process must start now.

Finally, we need to continue the recruitment of new GOP precinct chairs-especially in communities where we need to re-introduce ourselves. For example, once this election cycle ends, those activists who have helped candidates like John Faulk, Fernando Herrera, Sarah Davis, Jim Murphy, and Steve Mueller, need to be actively recruited to stay involved by becoming precinct chairs.

If we can expand our presence in local offices and precincts before the 2012 election cycle starts in earnest, we will start that cycle with the army we will need to win that election and retake Harris County.

Although I have committed to my family that I will not run again for a public office myself, I am committed to the plan of attack I have outlined in this post, and will do all I can over the coming years to work with our party, our candidates and our elected officials to make the GOP the majority party in every part of this county and this state; and to not just cherish our conservative principles, but to use our conservative principles creatively to govern effectively. Will you help in this effort beginning November 3rd?