Improving Communication Within Our Party

Last week, I addressed the credibility gap within the Republican Party in a post entitled, Matching the Message with the Messenger. In that post, I noted that we must realize that the gap is caused by a systemic problem within the party that must be addressed by focusing on communication, self-interest, competition, and culture. I promised then to elaborate on the communication issue, so I will do that now.

As I wrote last week, to improve communication we must begin to open a dialogue between our elected officials and our party leaders, activists and voters, in order to begin to harmonize the desires of our party with the issues faced by our elected officials on a daily basis in the process of administering their offices. The questions are “how do we open and sustain this dialogue”, and “what is the role of the HCRP in that process”. The answer is that the process must be layered throughout all of the groups and factions of the party (formally and informally), and the HCRP should be the primary facilitator of the dialogue. The goal must be to improve communication between our elected officials and the organization of the HCRP, and between our elected officials and our activists and voters.

There are several ways to start this process. First, I would quickly rebuild the relationship between the HCRP and our elected officials by creating a monthly meeting or luncheon to be attended by elected officials and the members of the HCRP Advisory Board. Each month, the meeting would include a different group of elected officials, e.g., judges, county commissioners, state legislators, state senators, Congressmen, etc. These meetings would focus on the concerns of both groups; how our elected officials are promoting, and/or can promote Republican policies; and how the HCRP can help our elected officials. The outcome of these meetings would be communicated through the secure intranet to the precinct chairs.

Second, our plan to reform the HCRP organization contemplates a high-level of interaction between the Campaign Support sub-organization from the Director/Vice-Chair down to the block captain, with candidates at all levels. The plan also contemplates interaction between the campaigns and the Communications sub-organization and the Outreach sub-organization. The divisions and groups within the proposed new HCRP organization are designed to support the campaigns of our candidates and elected officials by improving the process of identifying Republican voters, communicating with and mobilizing those voters, and getting those voters to the polls during the 13-day general election.

Third, we contemplate a greater use of the internet and radio to facilitate communication. The secure intranet will provide a means for candidates and elected officials to interactively communicate with everyone within the HCRP organization, to address concerns, to develop ideas, to mobilize help for campaigns, and to mobilize responses to the media. We also intend to take our coordinated messages to blogs, social-networking sites, and radio. We will use radio by creating 30 second to one-minute spots, narrated by our party leaders and elected officials, to tell the public about the work our elected officials are doing that is consistent with our principles, and to address important issues and policy initiatives with the public.

Fourth, I would continue the program of Townhall meetings and the plan for the “Roots” initiative started by the current team at Richmond Avenue, but I would revise their mission to focus primarily on rebuilding dialogue and relationships between our elected officials (and candidates) and the public. Instead of using the Townhall meetings to promote the current HCRP leadership team, I would use these meetings to promote the current work of our elected officials, by letting them discuss their offices and their ideas, and by giving them a forum to address the public’s concerns. Rather than promote the “Roots” program as a fundraising activity right now, I would first use the program to rebuild relationships between the party leaders and elected officials on the one hand, and activists at the grassroots on the other hand, by creating a process where these people interact at the precinct level with voters. Only after that relationship has been rebuilt, would I transition this program into a vehicle to create a new small-donor base for the party.

We can not begin to address the perception gap between the concerns of activists and our elected officials without taking concrete steps, like these, to improve communication. The HCRP can not continue to just criticize our Republican officials and widen this gap; it must take the lead in narrowing the gap by facilitating the communication.

A Time to Fight

A friend of mine sent me a copy of an email that is being circulated by Organizing For America (“OFA”), which already is the source of some chatter over Facebook and Twitter. As you may know, OFA is the affiliate of the Democratic National Committee that continues to control, communicate with, and mobilize Obama’s campaign foot soldiers. For the last several months, the focus of OFA has been on the Health Care issue.

The latest email told the recipient:

In my community in Indianapolis, OFA members like me are fighting hard to raise awareness and build support for health insurance reform. We're calling our neighbors, going door-to-door on the weekends, and even spreading the word through local barbershops. …

…I'm asking you join me in making sure Organizing for America has the resources to pull off this historic campaign. Can you join me in donating $1 per day until we enact health insurance reform?

My friend who received the email and forwarded it to me is a long-time Republican and McCain supporter, who somehow got on Obama’s email list during the campaign last year. In his email message, he asked me a simple question: where is our party organization at any level on this issue? As I pointed out in another recent post, the GOP should be developing and campaigning for a market-based alternative health-care system, but the question posed to me is more basic. Why is our party not matching OFA’s mobilization effort?

We complain amongst ourselves, discuss theory, and pass along complicated charts, but where is the mobilization? Where are the volunteers mobilized to call our neighbors, or go door-to-door, or talk in our local barbershops, or send text messages? These tasks should be the job of our Precinct Chairs and club members, and mobilization of those volunteers should be a fundamental task of a functioning party organization. Failure to mobilize the party organization to wage this fight is further evidence of a dysfunctional party apparatus.

I stress again, that we do need ideas and alternative policies, but we also need mobilization—and we needed it yesterday. Sending out 650-word essays on maintaining the status quo is not a plan for mobilization. We knew this issue was coming for over a year, and yet we have no plan for a concerted counter-attack. If we are to get this country, this state, and this county back on track for the GOP and our principles, this must change.

To make the necessary changes to combat and contain the explosion of government created by Obama and desired by Democrats here in Texas, the GOP must mobilize the growing millions of men and women who want sanity returned to the operation of our government. To start this mobilization, the GOP must understand what its goal must be: nothing short of rebuilding America consistent with its founding principles. To rebuild America, we must renew the Republican Party into a fighting machine for our ideals, which will require a modernization of our party organization into an apparatus capable of mobilizing our grassroots into action. Our fighting machine will need leaders: either those who already are in the party organization, or those from outside the party who share our principles and who are tired of the mess our political establishment in Washington has created and is expanding. We must look for leaders who will lead and work--in Congress, in our legislatures, and in our neighborhoods.

The plan we have proposed for the HCRP is designed to make these changes at the local level. The plan will only work, though, if our Precinct Chairs accept the mantle of leadership, work to mobilize the grassroots, and then lead them to act when we need action. If they won't do this, we must find those who will.

Unfortunately, we can not wait for the primary next March to start the needed transformation of the GOP, or the HCRP. Passively grumbling about the direction our country is taking, or emailing dissertations in favor of the status quo, won't stop the OFA, and it won't defeat the Democrats' plans for our state and country. The GOP, including the HCRP, must regroup now for the political battle it now faces, and then take the battle to the OFA for the hearts and minds of our neighbors. We need to join our Precinct Chairs and club members with the Tea Partiers and other activists into an immediate mobilization against the growth of the Obama government. If we do this, we will gain the trust and confidence of millions of disillusioned citizens yearning for leadership from the GOP, and we will lay the groundwork for victory in 2010. If we don't, we soon may not recognize the country we live in.

Culberson's SOS: We must respond!

If you were logged onto either Facebook or Twitter last night, you may have received a distress call like I did—like an SOS signal over a telegraph, a Mayday call from a ship or plane, or the an air-raid siren over London two generations ago. However, the source of this distress call came from an unusual victim: one of our local Republican Congressmen, John Culberson. As surprising as that source might be, if you care about liberty, free speech, and the future of our two-party system, the call was as dire as any you could imagine. You can read the series of message on Congressman Culberson's Twitter page.

As many of you know who have followed Representative Culberson’s exploits since the Democrats seized control of Congress in 2006, he has been a constant agitator for sunshine and disclosure in a chamber that increasingly is trying to cloak its work in secrecy. He has constantly challenged Speaker Pelosi’s strategy of burying legislators under reams of paper that no one could read and comprehend in a decade, let alone in the hours that House members are now given to absorb the content of what they are voting on—the content of policies that will change the nature of the federal governments reach and power for decades to come. Truly, Culberson’s has been a voice in the wilderness.

But no one could have imagined that Pelosi truly intended Culberson to be thrown into a wilderness where he could no longer be free to speak to his constituency. That, in essence, is what Culberson was trying to warn us about in those distress calls last night. The Speaker now is censoring everything he is trying to write to his constituents under the threat that he will no longer be able to use the mailing privileges of a House member if he continues to speak his mind in such writings. This is appalling, and it must not stand. We must answer this distress call with action.

At the very least, for now we must do what Congressman Culberson asked us to do in his last message: “Bombard Pelosi & House leadership; let the sun shine in; post all bills online for 72 hrs bf vote, open debate/amendments & end censorship!” To broadcast this message, I ask the current leadership team of the HCRP at Richmond Avenue to use the fruits from the new social-networking training programs, the new Rapid Response program, and the party email system, not to toot your own horn, but to alert Republicans to Culberson’s plight and how to respond. To Republican bloggers and talk-show hosts, flood the airwaves with Culberson’s distress call, and demand the Speaker to stop. To the Tea Partiers, 9/12 organizers and other grassroots conservatives, make your voices heard on this issue.

Above all else, let this be a wake-up call—as if we needed any more wake-up calls—to the realization that elections matter; that seeking change for the sake of change has consequences; and that ceding power to those who see no danger in the accumulation and exercise of power in a centralized authority will ultimately lead to the loss of the liberties we cherish. If a Congressman’s First Amendment right to political speech can be censored, whose speech, and whose liberty is safe? Republicans, we must unite, we must expand, we must organize, and we must win in the next elections—there is no alternative to taking back our country!

Listen to this distress call, and act!

Flattening the HCRP organization

The reality local Republicans face as we head into the 2010 election season is that, even if we have a perfect message and perfect candidates, if we don’t modernize the way the HCRP functions we will have a difficult time defeating the Democrats in Harris County. Much of the strategic plan I’ve proposed deals with this need to modernize the way we do business.

For the last half-century, successful organizations across the planet have changed the way they are structured in order to flatten their management, streamline their communications, and shorten the delivery time of their goods and services. Over the last decade, the Democratic Party at all levels implemented some of these ideas to be more effective at identifying Democratic voters, mobilizing them, and getting them to the polls. You could say that while the rest of the world has adopted the organization and leadership models of Drucker and Deming, the GOP has clung to the General Motors model—and we all know what happened to GM. It is time for the GOP to modernize, and we need to start here in Harris County.

Unfortunately, the plan the current team at Richmond Avenue has developed for the HCRP after seven years in office is not adequate. Regardless of many superficial similarities between the current HCRP plan being described at Townhall meetings and the plan posted on this website, there is a conflict of visions at the core of these plans, which will dramatically affect their implementation and effectiveness.

The incumbent’s plan continues to depend on the outdated, top-down, pyramidal organizational structure used in industry prior to 1960, which concentrates more responsibility in fewer hands, and which has been abandoned by virtually every other organization in the industrialized world. It depends on information and instructions flowing from the Chair and Senate District Chairs at the top of the pyramid down to the block captains, which means that action at the block and neighborhood level is completely dependent on action at each level of the pyramid. All along this type of process there are opportunities for bottlenecks that can impede the flow of information and instruction all the way down the chain of command. Bottlenecks eventually lead to inaction where it is needed—at the grassroots level. At the heart of this plan is a vision of our party that sees it comprised of a few shepherds and a lot of sheep—even among our Precinct Chairs, who themselves are elected officials. Besides being outdated and inadequate, the vision at the heart of this plan misreads the historic dynamic of the Republican Party.

Republicans are not, and never have been, sheep. We are a party of shepherds, not sheep. Appreciating this dynamic, the plan we have proposed creates a flexible structure that presses action and responsibility all the way down to the precinct and community levels, in order to capitalize on the remarkable creativity and energy of our activists. By building flexibility and autonomy into the organization, bottlenecks will be avoided. Avoiding bottlenecks will unleash the creativity and energy at our grassroots, which we will need in the upcoming election cycles to build the party and elect our candidates.

The structure we are proposing really involves a series of semi-autonomous and empowered structures. Each group will have a defined sphere of responsibility: the Director (or Vice Chair) for Campaign Support will have responsibility for the entire county, and will focus primarily on countywide races, countywide recruitment and training, and the coordination of volunteers from affiliate clubs; each Senate District Chair will have responsibility for the races in their respective Senate and legislative districts; each District Chair will have responsibility for the races and precincts in their legislative District; each precinct chair will have responsibility to mobilize the activists in their precincts; and each community representative will have responsibility to mobilize candidates and activists for the municipal, school board and utility district elections in their communities. While the Precinct Chairs are the lieutenants for mobilizing the partisan election turnout, the community representatives are the lieutenants in a separate branch of the party, who will work through the coordination of the Director (Vice Chair) for Campaign Support to focus on the non-partisan races and issues, and to help the Director (Vice Chair) for Outreach with outreach efforts.

At the center of each of these structures is its leader, who must listen to input from each member of the group, and then develop and communicate decisions to each member of the group. Policy and strategy will be set at the Director/Vice-Chair level with input from the Senate District Chairs and the HCRP officers, and the Director/Vice-Chair will directly manage the mobilization of the clubs and the community representatives. Each leader of the other groups will get input directly from one member of another sphere, and from the candidates with races in their sphere. Then the leader will manage the work of a group of activists.

Communications between and among leaders of each group and level, and with and among candidates, will be facilitated and encouraged through a secure intranet accessible by password from the HCRP’s website. A failure or bottleneck in one of these groups can be isolated and managed without threatening the effectiveness of the entire party or in an entire area of the county; as opposed to the pyramid structure, in which a bottleneck at any level above the grassroots could impede the effectiveness of the entire party, or in a large area of the county.

The Precinct Chair will mobilize and work with two groups of activists—the community representatives and the block captains—in order to identify Republican voters and get them to the polls. Coordination among the Precinct Chairs throughout the county will be maintained through the meetings of the Executive Committee, through communications on the secure intranet, and through periodic meetings and training sessions. By focusing the Precinct Chair role on mobilization, it frees each Precinct Chair to innovate, and gives each one more time to participate in the governance of the party through the Executive Committee.

This model, when implemented, will give each person in the organization a greater level of autonomy and ability to innovate, and provide them with greater access to information, while narrowing the focus of their positions to make their work more effective. In time, restructuring the organization to reward the creativity and leadership skills of our grassroots activists also will help the party recruit more Precinct Chairs.

This model will work only if we recognize and accept that everyone within the HCRP is a leader—a shepherd; and that with such leadership comes responsibility—ultimately, the responsibility to get our candidates elected.

Matching the Message with the Messenger

At a recent meeting with concerned local Republicans, one person kept asking me how we can fix a widely-perceived problem with our party: the gap between the principles shared at the grassroots of our party, and the policies actually championed by Republican elected officials (primarily at the national level). This perceived gap lies at the heart of our party’s credibility problem with our own voters, and with independents, and we must address it if we are to win elections in the future.

What holds the Republican Party together is a set of shared principles about the role of the individual in society, and about the proper and limited role of government in our lives. However, the purpose of the Republican Party (like any other political party on the planet) is not to serve as a debating society or an advocacy group for these principles; it is to elect candidates to public office who will promote our principles in public policy. So, I think the first step in answering this question is to re-phrase it: how do we find, promote, and elect candidates who will promote our principles in public policy.

There is no silver-bullet answer to this question, but I believe we can begin a process, consistent with the strategic plan I’ve proposed, that will address this question. However, before I get to that point, I want to address the current approach that is being taken by the HCRP and why I don’t think it will solve this problem.

The current team at Richmond Avenue is taking a two-pronged approach: 1. they are allowing a group of precinct chairs and activists to use questionnaires, which are designed to identify specific platform planks people support, for the purpose of opposing candidates in our primary or excluding people from becoming precinct chairs; and 2. they are using the party email system, “rapid response” program, and social-networking sites to criticize fellow Republicans, including Republican elected officials. These approaches do nothing to build-up the party in the public’s mind. Narrowing our base and belittling our party’s elected officials is not going to help us win elections. Instead, this approach will only continue to agitate Republicans and drive many people away from the party over time.

The better approach is to first realize that the gap is caused by a systemic problem within the party, and then to address that problem focusing on communication, self-interest, competition, and culture.

First, we must begin to open a dialogue between our elected officials and our party leaders, activists and voters, in order to begin to harmonize the desires of our party with the issues faced by our elected officials on a daily basis in the process of administering their offices. The more we all understand each other, the easier it will be to help each other form and pursue policies consistent with our principles, and to support our officials as they face the daily challenges of their offices. If the only contact we ever have is a brief handshake during the months leading to an election, we can not hope to bridge the gap. This first step is so important to the future success of our party that I will elaborate on it in another post next week, in which I will outline specific ways the HCRP should facilitate this new process of communication.

Second, the HCRP must help create a positive atmosphere in which it will be in our elected officials’ self-interest to pursue our principles in public policy. By implementing the objectives of our proposed plan (including developing a supporting message, raising our own funds to finance our own operations to help get-out-the-vote efforts, and establishing permanent relationships and party infrastructure in every community and precinct), the party will create a broader base of like-minded supporters who will want our principles reflected in public policy. In turn, the need and desire to get the votes of this broader base should create incentives for our elected officials to pursue policies this broader base will support. If we believe incentives work in other aspects of our lives, let’s create incentives for our elected officials, too.

Third, just as we believe in incentives, we Republicans also believe in the positive consequences of competition. However, we distrust competition when it comes to our primary system. It’s time to embrace competitive primaries, by keeping the HCRP scrupulously neutral. That means opening the non-financial resources of the party to any candidate who qualifies to be on the GOP primary ballot, letting the campaign process determine the winner, and then embracing the supporters of the winner and the loser(s) into the party after the primary. If we think competition is good for our economy and our schools, we should use the threat of competition to improve the quality and effectiveness of our candidates and officeholders.

Finally, we need to address the culture of our party. Since the nomination of the famous explorer, John C. Fremont, as the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856, the pool of activists who sustain the party at the grassroots, the pool of activists who fundraise for the party, and the pool of people who run for office, have been drawn from separate and distinct groups, whose members rarely interact with each other. This is as true today in Harris County as it has ever been any where else in the country.

To change this culture, we need to break-down the walls that separate these groups. First, we need to expand our pool of activists: at the precinct level, by filling the hundreds of open precinct chair positions, and separately recruiting election judges and block captains; and, at the community level, by recruiting more people to run for the hundreds of local non-partisan offices at the municipal and school board level. Second, we need to create more interaction between this expanded grassroots base, our fundraisers, and those groups who have traditionally recruited our candidates. Once we’ve established a greater level of interaction, we then need to begin recruiting more candidates for higher office from the expanded grassroots base. This change in culture is a long-term project; but, if it is ever going to happen, we need to start the process now.

So, the answer to the gap is to start now to improve communication, to create incentives to fuel self-interest, to embrace competition, and to begin to change the culture of the party. This process will not fix the gap over night, but it will begin to narrow the gap quickly. As the process unfolds, we will then see the message match the messenger.

Let's not just stop health-care reform, let's fight for a private alternative!

The Health Care debate is now on the political center stage.

Besides enduring the President’s long-winded answers during last night’s press conference, local Republicans have received two emails over the last 48 hours about this issue from the Montgomery County Republican Party and the Harris County Republican Party Chair. While the Montgomery email was concise and focused, and directed the reader to Congressmen and their phone numbers in order to call with objections, the HCRP email was a rambling 650+ word editorial ending with a request for money. Both carried the same message, though: Just say "no" to the current legislation. While I agree with my fellow Republicans that we should do all we can to stop this legislation, we can’t just end this debate by embracing the status quo.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what the HCRP advocates in its email. Chairman Woodfill summarized this position perfectly when he wrote the following: "By controlling the money, the government, not your insurance company, will be the ultimate decision maker." The problem with the status quo is that we already have ceded our liberty over health care decisions to a middleman (our insurer), which, in exchange for giving us a small co-pay and for relieving us of a lot of paperwork, controls our money and ultimate decision-making.

My argument is very simple: neither the insurance bureaucracy, nor a government bureaucracy should control your money or your health-care decisions--you should. The only way to make the system affordable, accessible, and private, is to put control of medical transactions into the hands of the patient and the provider, and reduce the role of any middleman--government or insurance--to subsidizing catastrophic risk through insurance or a safety net. Preferably the primary role of managing catastrophic risk would remain within the insurance industry so that premium income will still be invested in the private economy. Even Medicaid and Medicare could be folded into this system by changing the system of direct reimbursement to providers to a system of providing medical accounts to individuals and using tax dollars to pay premiums to private insurers for catastrophic coverage. Coupled with effective regulation to enlarge insurance pools, guarantee portability and prohibit denial of coverage, these changes would reduce costs over time without rationing.

Ideas for re-engineering the system into a patient-centered, market-oriented system have existed for decades. Rather than only say "no", our party should take the lead in advancing these alternative ideas. In fact, Michael Steele should call a national conference of Republican leaders and leaders of the health care and pharmaceutical industries now, to hammer-out an alternative to introduce on the floor of the House and the Senate and to use during next year's campaign. Taking this positive approach, coupled with stopping the current rush to further bureaucratize health care, should be the focus of our party at all levels.

At a stop sign, the driver eventually proceeds through the intersection; similarly, if all the GOP does is say "no", the Democrats eventually will succeed in passing their health-care legislation. We need to present a positive alternative in order to truly stop the Democratic agenda.

Finally, I must note that the HCRP has claimed a remarkable turnaround in fundraising since the reporting period ended on June 30th. Though we will not be able to confirm the source of these new funds for months, reliable sources confirm that much of the money was paid to the party by elected officials, including incumbent judges, in response to emphatic pleas for help from Richmond Avenue. Demanding tithes from candidates and elected officials is not fundraising, and ultimately deprives these people of resources they will need to fight their Democratic opponents. This approach must stop. However, now that the party has some money, it should honor its outstanding obligations to third parties that have been delinquent for too long. In short, the current team at Richmond Avenue should focus less on editorializing about a national issue and focus more on “healing thyself”.

The Voter ID issue and the HCRP

In a recent interview for the Houston Chronicle, I predicted that I would get some criticism for my observations about the strategy the current HCRP Chair pursued to promote adding the issue of a Voter ID to the recent special legislative session. Never one to prove me wrong, yesterday Jared Woodfill used the party’s email system to again promote his idea for a session to address the Voter ID issue and to criticize my statements. Normally, I would ignore this predictable response, but I want to briefly show how our differences in approach to this issue matter for the future of our party.

Let’s be clear about one thing first. Mr. Woodfill and I agree on the goal of passing and implementing an effective Voter ID bill. In fact, at least 70% of Texans, including people from both parties, consistently have stated they support passage of such a law. Where he and I disagree is over the strategy and tactics for finally getting the law we both want.

Unfortunately, Mr. Woodfill promotes this issue as an "us"-versus-"them", Republican versus Democrat issue that requires a defense of our conservative principles. I do not. In fact, I believe that as long as we discuss the issue this way, we will divide the natural majority who support this idea, and we will continue to lose in a closely-divided House of Representatives in Austin.

This issue is not an "us"-versus-"them", Republican versus Democrat issue, like the 2003 battle over redistricting. That battle truly was a battle of power politics to determine which party would control the Congressional Delegation from Texas. To win it required steeled determination to outlast the other party. The analogy of that partisan struggle to the Voter ID issue is inappropriate.

Nor does this issue present us with a titanic struggle for the survival of our conservative principles. I don’t know about you, but my convictions in those principles are not so weak as to be threatened by the lack of a picture and smart ID card. In fact, our republic and our principles have survived a tremendous amount of voting irregularities and shenanigans over the last 230 years. I am confident that our republic and our principles will continue to be strong enough to survive a little longer until we get the bill we want.

Instead, the Voter ID issue is simply a good-governance issue that transcends party politics. If implemented properly by incorporating the latest technology, it will prevent fraud, and it actually will give both parties the ability to muster their voters and increase turnout by transmitting real-time voting information from the polling place to the county, and from the county to the local political parties. The parties can then use this information at the precinct level to get their voters to the polls--increasing interest and turnout. In fact, all of the arguments over alleged voter suppression are simply wrong, but they gain traction when we make the issue partisan rather than promote it correctly to the 70% of Texans who agree with us.

I believe as the current elected leader of our party in Texas, Governor Perry (who also supports the passage of this law) showed the proper restraint and fiscal sanity when he did not call a special session on this issue. Rather than stomp our feet and yell for a session that is doomed to fail because of the close division in the House, let’s regroup, work on promoting the facts and the benefits of the bill to the 70% who agree with us, and let that natural public consensus put pressure on the Democrats to vote for this law in the next regular session. That is the mature approach, and the approach that will eventually see the bill become law.

In the meantime, rather than publicly attack the elected leader of our party, our local chair should focus his time and energy on getting our local party’s house in order.

P.S. In that same interview, I believe the Chronicle columnist was very fair in her treatment of me and what I said. However, there was one bit of miscommunication that I have clarified to her.

In the column she stated that I believe "school board races should be partisan." Looking back on our conversations, I completely understand how that impression was created by the intensity of my approach to this issue. However, I do not want to convert school board races into partisan elections. Instead, my goal is to encourage Republicans to get more involved in the governance of their communities. If Republicans believe in improving education, and in local control of schools, we have to get more involved in our school boards and districts in a positive way. Essentially, I want the GOP to do more than appear periodically to fight a bond issue; I want our party to work seriously to be a constructive force for positive improvement in the classroom.

Some Republicans already sit on school boards for HISD, Spring Branch ISD, and Cy-Fair ISD (and probably others), and I applaud their efforts, and their non-partisan work on those boards. That is the type of involvement I want to encourage among Republicans in every city and school district in the county--there are over 600 elected offices in this county and most of them involve these type of non-partisan, civic positions. I want Republicans to seek these offices and engage in the governance of their communities.

Lastly, if you have time, I did a podcast interview last night with a gentleman from NYC, the interview went into discssing my principles in great detail, I think you'll enjoy it, click here.

Some Perspective for this Fourth of July

I find myself (like I am sure so many of you do) continually at a loss for words these days. I look for solace in old books, and new—including Beck’s new take on Common Sense,Mark Levin’s Liberty And Tyranny, and W. Cleon Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap.Through it all, I’ve been constantly drawn to the words of Kipling’s If (“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”). Now, more than ever, we need to keep our heads about us, and to focus on what is fundamental and necessary to fix this mess.

This calm approach is especially needed as we end another turbulent week of death (e.g., McMahon, Fawcett, and Jackson), irresponsible behavior (e.g., Mark Sanford), revolution at home (e.g., Obama’s legislative bullet train to utopia), and revolution abroad (e.g., Iran and Honduras). As we head toward the long, July 4th weekend, I would like to offer some perspective.

Every problem has a starting point. Understanding the starting point is the first step toward solving the problem.

I believe the starting point for our current dilemma will be found in the 1880s: the decade in which American scholars began debating the socialist ideas that were sweeping Europe; the decade when Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt first rose to prominence in academia and politics; and the decade in which FDR’s generation was born. Two of the leading debaters were William Graham Sumner, the Chair of Political and Social Science at Yale, and Edward Bellamy, the author of the third-largest selling work of fiction in America in the 19th Century—the utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887.While Bellamy wrote about a utopian future brought about through socialism, Sumner wrote about the devastation such a system would bring to the freedom and wealth of the middle-class because of the burdens and sacrifices they would be called to make in order to create and maintain such a system.

Those of us who thought this hundred-year debate ended with the Reagan Revolution listen in horror as these old arguments shout at us again from today’s 24/7 news cycle. Unfortunately, we are forced once more to fight against the utopian nonsense that government control of our material well-being can wipe all our cares away, and comes without consequences for our freedom.

Those of us who cherish our God-given freedoms, and who see ourselves as “forgotten” in this whole mess, need to focus on four simple words—What; When; Why; and How—and the questions they represent. The path toward finding the answers to these questions is reflected in the following four quotes:

1. What—“…no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but…by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”—James Madison and George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, June, 1776.

2. When—“If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man….”—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

3. Why—“Conservatism means clear common sense, which equally rejects the fanaticism of precedent and the fanaticism of change. It would not have midnight last just because it exists; and yet it knows that dawn comes not in a flash, but gradually…. So the conservative is the real statesman. He brings things to pass in a way that lasts and does good.” Albert Beveridge, Historian and U.S. Senator, from a Senate floor speech, 1905.

4. How—“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.”—C.S. Lewis.

What we need to do is revisit the fundamental principles that formed the foundation of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our civil society. We need to understand these principles, and again have the confidence that they are historically and logically correct. Then, we need to implement them to solve our problems and improve society.

When do we need to do it? We are barreling down the wrong road at break-neck speed. We need to stop right now (but no later than the election of 2010) and turn back to those principles!

Why do we need to do it? Our society can not survive the “fanaticism of change” now enveloping us without the sound common sense of our principles, calmly applied to today’s problems. Society needs the steadying hand of true Conservatism, wisely applied.

How do we do it? The mundane, yet important, work of freedom in our daily lives—at work, at home, and in our neighborhoods--has always been hard, but it has always been courageous and, ultimately, rewarding, too. We must, once again, summon the simple courage of our convictions in our fundamental principles, and act on those convictions. It is both that hard, and that simple.

Remember as we celebrate July 4th, that our founders didn’t end the Declaration with “…hey, this was fun! See you when the war’s over!” They ended that document with a solemn pledge heard around the world and through the ages—the pledge to each other of their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

It is time we keep our heads about us, and calmly make this same pledge. Then, we need to engage together in the hard work of fixing our problems (and the mess Obama is creating) in a manner consistent with our principles.

Have a Happy 4th!

Ed Hubbard

A GOP Agenda for a Metropolitan County

If you’re not from the Houston metropolitan area, you might ask yourself “why should I care who leads the Harris County Republican Party?”

Houston, Texas is the fourth largest city in the nation, Harris County is the third largest county in the nation, the population of this metropolitan area is larger than most states, and (most importantly) this area has been the most Republican-leaning of the major metropolitan areas in the nation for at least a generation. Therefore, the short answer is that what happens here in the near future will help shape the future of the Republican Party for the next decade. And, what we plan to accomplish here is to revitalize the GOP by expanding the party’s base into urban neighborhoods. This will be no easy task, but it must be done. Simply put—we intend to attack this effort as if it were a crusade, and then spread this crusade to other metropolitan counties across the country.

The single greatest challenge facing Republicans who want to change the political dynamic in our urban neighborhoods is overcoming the negative perception of our party in those neighborhoods. Frankly, we are perceived as only caring about the concerns of the most fortunate members of our communities, while so many of our neighbors struggle within perpetual cycles of behavior that destroy any chance for future economic growth and happiness. The question for Republicans is, do we have the will to join hands with our struggling neighbors to help create the solutions for the problems they face, or will we simply stand back and let the Democrats continue to make matters worse for all of us by renewing and expanding the welfare state?

I believe that, by doing the hard work of applying our Republican principles of liberty, responsibility and growth—individual to individual, school to school, and neighborhood to neighborhood—we will turn these conditions around. I am confident that this crusade can work, because our ideas have worked whenever they’ve been implemented. When enterprise zones, privatization of public housing, public/private partnerships for providing community services, and educational choice and competition have been implemented, they’ve worked to improve the lives of people in the affected neighborhoods. But to make this effort work now, our approach must be comprehensive and permanent.

Why is Harris County important or unique to this plan? Harris County is still the largest, politically conservative county in the country, and still has Republican elected officials in positions that can affect the direction and outcome of this effort. Therefore, we Republicans in Harris County must be the laboratory for this GOP effort.

To be that laboratory, we intend to create an environment in which our neighbors in these communities will listen to the GOP again. We will start by talking about the issues they care about—education (including not only the tools for the 21^st Century job market, but also the foundations of character and morality needed to be an effective citizen); economic growth and opportunity; low taxation; limited and effective local government; and a strong defense with secure borders—in a manner and tone that will attract people to listen to us, and join us. To start this discussion, we will become members of every community and offer these metropolitan voters something to vote for.

We will establish a permanent and active presence in every precinct, neighborhood and school district in the county. Framing the issue clearly, a young Marine, home from two combat tours in Iraq, recently made a challenge to a group of conservative activists—if he could risk his life a half-a-world away for strangers, couldn’t we muster the courage to cross the streets of our county to embrace our neighbors, talk to them about our principles, and invite those who agree with us to participate in the GOP? If we truly believe in our principles of liberty, responsibility and growth, this Marine’s question should answer itself.

Establishing a permanent and active presence means more than attending public events to be seen. Instead, we will actively engage in activities that are designed to improve the life of these neighborhoods. This aspect of the crusade must involve creating and participating in activities where our activists can engage with our neighbors, such as community clean-up projects, recycling programs, adopt-a-highway programs, food-pantry and family-shelter programs, child and adult mentorship programs, and sponsoring and teaching adult education and citizenship classes.

As we establish our presence, we will work with members of these communities to develop actual policies consistent with our principles, which address the issues relevant to their lives; and we will help establish networks of civic organizations and community centers that will provide a community infrastructure through which these neighbors can eventually help themselves, rather than turn to government.

Finally, to sustain this crusade permanently we will recruit, train and support party leaders and candidates from these neighborhoods who will press our agenda in their precincts, city councils, school boards, and legislative districts.

Houston and Harris County share many of the elements of the old and young, and the large and small cities and metropolitan counties spread across the country. But they also share something other similar areas don’t have—a conservative political base from which to launch this crusade. If Republicans successfully develop an urban/metropolitan policy agenda here, we will use that agenda as a blueprint to take to every major city and metropolitan area in the country, and thereby help enrich our urban communities while assuring the competitiveness of the GOP for the next generation.

My thoughts about the Tea Parties

I want to thank Felicia Cravens and all the people who helped her organize the local Tea Party events this week--great job! However, I want to share some final thoughts with you about this movement.

I am both a neighbor, and a loyal member of the Republican Party. Although I would like to see this tea-party movement strengthen conservatism and the Republican Party, that prospect will only materialize if the GOP listens to us and responds accordingly. However, in the non-partisan spirit of the Tea Party movement, I want to speak briefly as a neighbor, rather than as a member of any party.

The only way that this movement, or any movement, will lead to needed reform is if we start by being honest with each other. We need to challenge each other to do two things in the aftermath of these events: 1. we need to go home and look in the mirror; and, then, 2. we need to follow the path of the original tea party participants.

We all need to look in the mirror and understand that the person we see is both the source of the problem, and the source of the solution. The government in Washington did not usurp its authority in a vacuum. We enabled its growth when we didn't become involved in the lives of our neighbors, our schools and our communities. We enabled its growth when we asked it to underwrite both our comforts and our risks.

The solution is simple, though the execution will be difficult. We must commit to retaking control of our destinies, and the destinies of our families, schools, neighborhoods, and businesses, or else we will not subdue the current Statism that we allowed to fester and grow. Gaining Liberty was hard work, and maintaining it is even harder. We now must commit ourselves to re-gaining, as well as maintaining our liberty.

Once we've made that commitment, we need to use these tea parties to follow the path of our forefathers by actively engaging in a political movement at every level of government to regain our liberty and regain control of our destinies. In order to regain that control, we need to stop asking Washington for assistance--just as our forefathers stopped asking London for assistance over 230 years ago. In remaining vigilant along this path, we must make the pledge to each other of sacrifice that our forefathers made—the pledge of our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Cheerleading, party self-promotion, and Democrat-bashing will not keep this movement going--only honesty and commitment will. So, as we begin to follow this difficult path, we need to call on our political leaders to earn the right to be the vehicles through which we pursue this movement, which they will do when they recommit themselves and their party to embrace and pursue the fundamental principles of our Republic. My hope and prayer is that my party--the Republican Party--will answer our call for leadership.

posted by Ed Hubbard 4-20-09

New Website Launched

In this first blog as the new site has been launched I want to address a question that I’ve been asked over and over again since last November: “Why are you doing this?” The short answer is: “Because I care deeply about the future of my party, the Republican Party.” My political principles were well-documented on my campaign website during last year’s campaign for the First Court of Appeals, and they form the basis for my proposed message of “Individual Empowerment” contained in the strategic plan. However, to explain why I care about the Republican Party, I want to share with you the basic beliefs and observations I hold, which led me to arrive at those basic political principles.

First, I believe that the story of America is exceptional. The people who voluntarily came and settled here during the 200-year period from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s brought with them a commitment to the basic struggle to accept the gift of liberty, and to balance the exercise of that liberty with the admonition to love our neighbor. Because there was no state or elite class on this continent, these settlers were free to form self-governing neighborhoods as they pushed westward, in which they married and raised families, worked and produced wealth, and created churches, organizations, schools and local governments to protect and nourish these neighborhoods. When it came time to form colonial, state, and national governments, they limited the scope and responsibility of these governments in order to preserve the centrality of the family and the neighborhood to their lives. In other words, our founders committed themselves to live within a localized system of ordered liberty. This system of ordered liberty was the exceptional experiment to which Americans committed themselves.

Second, when, in the mid-1800s, the profound tragedy of slavery finally threatened to tear our country apart, those who were still committed to this experiment, and who believed that it must apply to all Americans, formed a new party, the Republican Party, to preserve and fight for the nation the settlers had created. Over the next century, the party would take the lead in every era to pass civil rights legislation and constitutional amendments to expand the experiment to include all men and women.

Third, when, starting in the 1930s, the Democratic Party became committed to imposing on America some form of social welfare state similar to those embraced in Europe, and our security was threatened by the rise of totalitarianism abroad, the Republican Party became the primary home for those who opposed the welfare state and the ideologies that fed totalitarianism, and who sought to preserve the experiment of ordered liberty to which our settlers committed themselves. A clear example of the differences we began to draw in the 1930s between the philosophy of the Democratic Party and the philosophy of the GOP, are two quotes from that period—the first from a prominent Democrat, and the second from a prominent Republican:

Democrat: Economic security was attained in the earlier days through the interdependence of members of families upon each other and of the families within a small community upon each other. The complexities of great communities and of organized industry make less real these simple means of security. Therefore, we are compelled to employ the active interest of the Nation as a whole through government in order to encourage a greater security for each individual who composes it.

Republican: It is all old, very, very old, the idea that the good of men arises from the direction of centralized executive power, whether it be exercised through bureaucracies, mild dictatorships or despotisms, monarchies or autocracies. For Liberty is the emancipation of men from power and servitude and the substitution of freedom for force of government. …Those who proclaim that in a Machine Age there is created an irreconcilable conflict in which liberty cannot survive should not forget the battles of liberty over the centuries,…. It is not because Liberty is unworkable, but because we have not worked it conscientiously or have forgotten its true meaning that we often get the notion of the irreconcilable conflict with the Machine Age.

As our opposition to the welfare state and totalitarianism continued over the decades, the base of the GOP eventually expanded to include social conservatives and libertarians who shared our opposition to these movements and our desire to preserve our experiment. Although our enlarged party made great strides over the last 30 years in this fight, we now find our experiment again threatened by the new national administration.

I am agitating the HCRP to adopt a new strategic plan because I believe that our history and our principles are important to the future of this county, and that the future of this county is important to the future of Texas and this nation. Harris County, and its surrounding metropolitan area, comprise the largest metropolitan area in this state and nation in which a majority of voters are still politically conservative. We must take this opportunity to show the residents of this county that the GOP’s principles are relevant to the issues that they face in their daily lives in this diverse community, so that they don’t turn for their security to the welfare state.

If we adopt this approach, Republicans will continue to elect our candidates in Harris County, while making the HCRP a model for the party nationally. If we don’t pursue this path, the voting and demographic trends that started in 2006 will consume us here and across this state. If the GOP is to regain the trust of the voters and revitalize the vision of our founders, we must not lose this county to our opponents.

This is why I care, and this is why I am agitating the HCRP to follow a new strategic path.

posted by Ed Hubbard 4-15-09

HCRP's Outreach Vision and What It Needs

Yesterday, many local Republicans received an email letter from Bill Calhoun, the new Director of Outreach for the HCRP. This letter is part of a flurry of recent emails from the HCRP. Because I have been accused of being too negative and divisive, I want to start by pointing out a couple of positive points about what the party is now doing.

For whatever reason, the party is communicating with us--the grassroots--and that is a good development (my guess is that our efforts have played at least a small part in causing this change in behavior). The party is actually implementing some good ideas, like the First Friday meetings, and we should start to get feedback about the presentation of the details of its new strategic plan during the upcoming SD meetings this month and next. The "Roots" idea also holds promise, both as a way to reach out to Republicans who have gotten disenchanted with the party, and to potential Republicans in our neighborhoods. Moreover, it holds promise as an eventual supplement to a broader fundraising campaign. Similarly, Bill's letter shows that there is actually some thought being given to the underlying assumptions that will be incorporated into the outreach campaign now being formulated. This is all good news.

On the other hand, there is a lot less to Bill's letter than meets the eye. In the end, what it says is, "I've figured out that our outreach message needs to be about 'freedom', now please give me some money and I'll come up with a plan." Well...duh...this is a center-right community in a center-right country, so of course a message built around "freedom" (or "liberty" or "individual empowerment") should resonate throughout the county. If this is the first step in the development of an outreach campaign, it is a slow, baby step--and probably an ineffective step.

My strategic assumption is not that Republicans don't know what they stand for, or don't know what beliefs they hold in common with members of traditionally Democratic constituencies. Instead, my strategic assumption is that the problem our party faces, locally and nationally, is a loss of trust.

We have lost the trust of Republicans across all factions of the party, and traditionally Democratic constituencies have not trusted us for decades. We lost trust because of our strident opposition to issues without presenting corresponding positive alternatives, because of the gap between our rhetoric and our actions, because of our loss of fiscal discipline and managerial competence, and because we stopped listening to people who agree with us. Because we lost the trust of the voters, they have, for now, stopped believing us or listening to us. To many people--especially those living in metropolitan areas--the party is becoming irrelevant to their concerns. We have to earn their trust before we can ask for their money or their votes. Imagine if Bernie Madoff now walked up to one of the investors he bilked and said, "Hey, we still agree on free-market principles, so give me some money to invest." Would any sane person in that situation give him a penny? No, because he broke the bond of trust.

I know that some of the things I have said on this blog over the last two months have been critical of our party and its local leaders, and it is often hard to listen to or read such criticisms. However, if we do not correctly evaluate the reality we now face, we will fail to adopt an adequate strategy for the future. Recently, I re-read a short book entitled, The Challenge to Liberty, written by a late Republican leader. Much of what Bill Calhoun is saying in his letter is consistent with what this author said. Unfortunately, the author was Herbert Hoover, and the year of publication was 1934. Although Hoover’s words correctly summarized the Republican understanding of, and commitment to liberty and freedom, he had failed to apply those principles while in office, and the party failed to promote positive policies based on those principles in response to the New Deal. The result was that our party lost the public's trust, and the public stopped believing and listening to our party for decades. Instead, all the party did was say “no” to Roosevelt’s initiatives, based on the hope that the country would come to its senses and return to the Republicans in “the next election”. The next election did not come for 20 years.

Just saying “no” doesn’t persuade voters when what they want to here is “yes”—during such a time, they will listen only to positive policies effectively communicated. Had Republicans advocated positive policies based on a family-centric and neighborhood-centric view of government, which naturally demands effective local government and ultimately protects liberty, the history of Democratic political dominance during the middle of the 20th Century—and of all the harm it inflicted on our society—may have been different.

We are in a time when the voters want to here “yes”. If the First Friday, Roots or Outreach programs are going to help with fundraising and growing the party in Harris County, they first should focus on re-building relationships between the HCRP and the business community, our neighbors, and the traditionally Democratic constituencies through consistent and positive messages and actions. Once those initiatives take root, then we can ask these constituencies to give us their money and their votes. If we walk in with our hand out, we will accomplish no more than we currently do by waving from open convertibles in local parades.

Ed Hubbard

What Am I Going To Do About It? by Aaron Simpson

I was recently posed the question, “what are you going to do about it”. Well, let me tell you. As one of the folks that’s decided to take this Future of The HCRP thing we have here and run with it, I’m going to grow it as exponentially as possible. How? One action at a time.

It has been decided that for right now our goal will be to recruit as many precinct chairs as possible. The 48% vacancy rate is unacceptable and it needs to be cut in half by the next election cycle or, once again, we as a party will be dead in the water. I can sit here and complain that our leadership has known this and has let it go like the old busted houses you see them renovating on HGTV, but what good would that do?

Instead, I’m going to move forward. I have already started meeting with the various leaders of the auxiliary GOP groups in the area including College Republicans in attempt to get their members involved in the process, not just sitting on the sidelines waiting for direction and orders from Richmond Avenue. The younger crowd doesn’t like to be treated that way. It may have worked for the Boomers (sorry Ed) but it doesn’t work for the XYZ generations. We are also working on updating the main website for Future of The HCRP to become more interactive and coalition based. This help drive people to and from all of our respective websites with the goal of making our coalition united as well as draw as much traffic and discussion as possible.

I hope this answers the question, “what are you going to do about it”. This is our plan and we will move forward, move out and draw fire.

Ed Hubbard—Sometimes even the Houston Chronicle gets it right!

I know. You’re thinking I’ve lost my mind. But it’s true: sometimes the Editorial Board of the Houston Chronicle stumbles onto the right point.

Earlier today, the Chronicle posted this editorial about the dilemma facing the Republican Party, and the challenges facing our new national chairman, Michael Steele: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/6245592.html.

Let me be very clear: the team behind this website welcomes the election of Michael Steele, and we will do all we can to support his national effort here in Harris County.

Since late November, we have been promoting a new strategic plan on this website. Last Friday, our national party chose a bold, new course in its selection of Michael Steele as its new chairman. Steele’s goals are consistent with the plan we have been promoting for the HCRP. In his brief acceptance speech, Chairman Steele directly challenged the status quo within our party by declaring, “[w]e’re going to say to friend and foe alike: ‘We want you to be a part of us, we want you to be with us.’ And for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over.” We couldn’t agree more.

Each era of reform within our party over the last 50 years has been preceded by a defense of the status quo. Unfortunately, many of the “rebels” who have joined and invigorated our party since 1978 are now obstructing reform and defending the status quo.

The contours of the HCRP’s plan announced last Tuesday are a defense of the status quo, are not consistent with the agenda Chairman Steele plans to pursue, and are encapsulated in a model that does not fit a political organization.

Therefore, we will work with those locally who support Chairman Steele and his goals in order to reunite this party, and to broaden its base by promoting our fundamental principles to all of the communities in this county, in order to elect Republicans to office. When the HCRP’s actions are consistent with our strategy, we will work with the county leadership; when it is not, we will work to promote Chairman Steele’s goals.

Ed Hubbard

Comment by Aaron Simpson: What's Bugging Me?

As I was thinking about the current situation in Harris County, I started to think about what got us here. Seven years ago the Republican Party in Harris County seated a new chairman. At that time, Harris County was a bulwark against the liberal tide in Texas. It was a reliably red vote and was one of the determining factors that kept Texas a deep red state in national elections. What happened? Three things happened. The loony left got very loud and very organized; the advent of Bush Derangement Syndrome and the fact that, from the RNC down to local parties, we were constantly playing catch-up with the Democrats messaging.

We already know the effect the loony left had on elections starting in 2004 and beyond. When the press’ coverage of the general election becoming more over the top; the Bush victory became an uphill victory in my opinion. I know this to be very close to fact because of the way they covered the war in Iraq. As a Marine returning home from combat, I saw the miss-information spread viciously and the administration fail miserably in its communication of the successes, though at the time very few, of the war in Iraq. I saw these successes. I know they happened. This type of journalistic malpractice is what contributed to and at the same time was a result of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I digress; this is another argument for another time.

We also had a huge problem with the messaging. It seemed that every where you turned you could see Howard Dean somewhere, spouting something negative about the Republican Party, whether it was true or not. Where was Mike Duncan, where was Tina Benkiser, where was Jared Woodfill? The messaging, the rebuttals or even an assertion of our own would have been nice. As a military guy, I’m not inclined to want to sit on the sidelines and wait to be attacked. This is one of the things that drove me crazy about being in Fallujah in the spring and summer of 2004, we were reactionary. That drives Marines crazy and it’s not what we’re meant to do. It’s not what Republicans are meant to do either. We’re meant to constantly have ideas and to take those ideas to the public and pound that message home until the people are sick of hearing it. We’ve failed in that area and it must be rectified.

Over the last few months, I have become more involved with local party politics and have had an opportunity to see firsthand where the good and the bad aspects of the local and national parties butt heads. This is where the observations listed above come from. I have also been involved in a very small movement that has three separate components.

All of these components are separate in that they have specific targets and goals on the micro level, but their macro goal of taking the local and national party into the 21st century is shared. We’ve hit some bumps and road blocks along the way. One of which is the accusation that it’s unchristian to question the competence of current leadership. As a follower of Christ, I take great offense to that. For someone to use the faith of some party members as a tool to keep the reins of power; is in my estimation, wicked. It smacks of some of the things Democrats and Socialists say to justify their oppressive economic and social agendas. “It’s what Jesus would do, for the least of these”. Wicked!

This is a political party, not a church. Although we should be Jesus with skin on when interacting with others on a day to day basis, we should never forget that our nation was founded on the questioning and criticism of the Anglican Church and the King of England. Was this un-Christian? The founders were doing what the apostles did in the time of Christ, questioning the establishment. That’s what we are doing here. I was saddened last Tuesday when I sat in the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee meeting as saw the solidification of the leaderships hold on the use of Christ as his crutch for holding on to power within the party.

This type of political posturing needs to be stopped. It will do nothing but alienate those that would otherwise be a member of our party, but won’t because they don’t want to go to a tent revival when they go to vote. National leaders from Michael Steele, to Mitch McConnell on down all agree that this type of bunker mentality will not work and that they Republican Party should become the “big tent” party it was once before, not at the expense of our core principle or platform, but a “big tent” none the less. I heard none of this at the meeting. All I heard was if you oppose us, you’re un-Christian and that won’t be tolerated. This is the narrow view that will destroy our local party and it has to stop.

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.