Rev. John's blog

"If we're going to be the majority, we're going to have to see we need to grow the party. We cannot compete in the Northeast, the West; we're losing seats in the Great Lakes region. We have a large deficit with women, Hispanics, African Americans -- people with modest financial circumstances. That is not a formula for a majority." - Gov. Tim Pawlenty

In light of the latest Fred Thompson rumors, and how he may be considering running for RNC Chair, there seems to be three schools of though as to what's more important for the future of the Republican party: a return to traditional conservatism, an expansion of the party’s base, or an infusion of new policy ideas. If you're like me and think expanding the base is the most important, I want you to read the above quote and join me in an excercise.

Below, you'll find four pictures of four leaders in the Republican Party. Tell me which one says "expand the base" the least...

A. B.
C. D.

I've given my take the latest Palin controversy here and here, and outside of that I'm done. I make it a rule not put too much faith in "unnamed sources" (especially when one of the people rumoured to be an "unnamed source" publicly says it's all a bunch of jive), and if you want to believe things that the Governor of Alaska who trades regularly with Canada doesn't know what NAFTA is...whatever. The question now is what does Sarah Palin do next?

To answer that I look to the great philosopher Keigergard, or maybe it was Glenn Frey, who simply said, "Take it Easy." She's scheduled to speak in February at the big Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C. Until then...I wouldn't do a damn thing. Relax. Welcome your grandchild into the world. Enjoy Christmas. Enjoy the New Year. Get back to being Governor. There's really no need to think aboot 2012...especially when there's still 2010 to worry aboot.

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Then, after a few months rest, and after a speech at CPAC that you know is going to bring the house down, it's all a matter of introducing people to Sarah Palin. I say "introduce" as opposed to "re-introduce" because the woman that America has met over the past two months wasn't Sarah Palin as much as it was John McCain's running mate. The job of the V.P. is to do nothing else but advocate for the Presidential candidate, essentially just throw out chunks of red meat to the crowds and stand behind McCain saying, "Yeah, what he said." Palin has her own narrative yet to tell, and to stand on her own record.

An example of this would be the economy. All this talk aboot how bad the economy is...Sarah Palin was the only one running this year that had any economic background whatsoever. As Governor of Alaska she oversees 20,000+ employees and an operating budget of $11 Billion, which $11 Billion more than the operating budgets Obama, Biden, and McCain ran combined. Warren Buffet, life long Dem and a guy who knows a thing or two aboot making money, is a huge fan of hers from their business dealings. Prior to joining the McCain ticket she was interviewed on the business channels all the time, so while MSNBC was calling her an idiot and a Jesus freak, CNBC was saying what a great pick she was.

There were a lot of serious people who saw something special prior to September 1st. The rest of the country needs to meet that Sarah Palin. Boning up on issues I'm not that concerned aboot. When you have cats like Randy Scheunemann (foreign policy), Larry Kudlow (economic policy), and if he's not planning a run himself, Newt Gingrich (domestic policy) all as supporters, there's nothing that can't be learned. And as for energy policy which she's an expert at herself, I seem to recall a certain President-Elect saying that energy independence was going to be a top priority of his first year in office.

The best part is that the people she has to make the case to, the moderates and independents, stopped paying attention Wednesday morning. The right is in the love. The left will hate her no matter what. The middle she needs to impress has gone back to fantasy football. By the time September of 2012 rolls around, they'll see an entirely different candidate. And who's to say she's even going to run in 2012. She's only forty-four years old. If she finishes a second term as Governor she'll still only be fifty, younger than most people who run for President. There's even the chance of Senator, especially if/when current Senator Ted Stevens is expelled from his seat. The main reason everyone's talking aboot 2012 is because, now that 2008 is over, what else are we going to talk aboot?

Sarah Palin has a bright future a head of her, and while it might not be in the next four years, I can't imagine it not being in national politics. There was something else going out there besides "appealing to the base," and even if you believe that the 20,000+ crowds she was drawing were all die-hard Republicans, anyone who doesn't think she can build off of that simply wasn't paying attention.

The GOP needs some new blood and bold ideas. Paul Ryan is the perfect combination of both.

Ryan, 38, is a six-term congressman, former speechwriter for Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp, and was at least at one point rumored to be considered as John McCain’s running mate. More importantly, he’s one of the GOP’s young guns who has been sounding the alarm on how we need to “…take our timeless principles and apply them to today’s problems and be the reform party we used to be.”

"…the energy he would bring to the party and conservatives generally would be immediate. The first impact would be felt in the fund-raising coffers of an NRCC also led by a new face, probably Pete Sessions of Texas. If in two weeks a Ryan-Cantor-Sessions team begins the first of a weekly Thursday briefing on the issues facing Congress…the response from the grass roots would be huge.” - Hugh Hewitt

Draft Paul Ryan for House Minority Leader

Crossposted at JohnBrodigan.com...

Apparently there are people within the McCain campaign, in the event of a loss on Tuesday, who are setting the stage to blame Sarah Palin for the loss. Arguing that the person most responsible for the crowds, the excitement, the fundraising, and the volunteers would be the one responsible for the loss is above my pay grade, but that seems to be what's coming.

Yes, I am well aware what the polls say about her not having the experience to be President. Obama doesn't have the experience either, but because change is coming and experience doesn't matter in a change election and we are the change we are waiting for, it doesn't matter. That's because it's all spin, something the McCain campaign has failed miserably at. The numbers are also a reflection of that trainwreck of a Katie Couric interview (through no fault of Ms. Couric) that they never should have had her do in the first place...but "The Mismanagement of Palin" is a blog post of another time.

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The fact is the McCain campaign is behind, and when the campaign is behind going into the days before an election, fingers start to get pointed. A lot of those fingers seem to be pointed at Gov. Palin. A lot of the fingers doing the pointing seem to be coming from "anonymous" McCain staffers...who used to be Mitt Romney staffers (if you're like me an believe everything you read on the Internet), but that too is a blog post for a different time. Anyone who is pointing to Sarah Palin as being the reason the McCain campaign has been doing so poorly in the past month is quite simply wrong.

Some things to keep in mind...

1. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that the economy collapsed. This is this most important one, and you would think one that is pretty obvious. The polls were essentially tied the day of the bailout vote. As the Dow Jones dropped, so did McCain's poll numbers. We're not talking quantum physics here.

2. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that John McCain didn't take a stand against the bailout, which would have a) been true to who he is, b) given the House Republicans an opportunity to break from President Bush, and c) put him on the side of the American people, who opposed the bailout by a general margin of five to one.

3. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that the McCain Campaign let Obama get away with his misleading ads aboot McCain's healthcare plan, get away with using the usual Democrat politics of fear to scare seniors into thinking McCain was going to take their social security away, or get away with the "Obama Tax Cut" that isn't really a tax cut.

4a. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that Joe Biden and Joe the Plumber make a better case for John McCain than John McCain does.

4b. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson make a better case for John McCain than John McCain does.

4c. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, who don't like John McCain, make a better case for John McCain than John McCain does.

5. It is not Sarah Palin's fault that no one ever explained to John McCain you can't be a Republican running for president and have the media like you, or that the media was never his friend in the first place and only used him when they needed a Republican they could always count on to publicly criticize other Republicans.

Could John McCain have picked a running mate that could have delivered him the election? I doubt it. With all the criticism of Palin being a bad choice, I've yet to hear anyone make a case for anyone else. It's also, in general, criticism from people who always want to tell you what the Republican party needs to do and what John McCain could have done to win...even though none of them are Republicans and never wanted him to win in the first place. Had he picked Romney/Pawlenty/Ridge/Lieberman, these same people would be criticizing McCain for not "thinking outside the box" by choosing someone like Palin or Bobby Jindal (R-LA).

Don't get me wrong, I haven't given up hope for a McCain victory on Tuesday. The internals of some of these polls don't jive with the end result, and the MSM seems to be ignoring the same signs of Republican voter turn out that they ignored in 2004. A longshot? Yes, but not impossible.

But what if he does lose? Are we really going to put all the blame on Sarah Palin, someone poised to be a future leader of our party? Or are we going to put the blame on John McCain, who is barely the current leader of our party...and who is the one that's running for President in the first place?

Three things:

1. I know some of the "movement conservatives" will be in a tizzy over this, but let's try and look at the big picture. John McCain is running to be President of the United States, not president of CPAC. That sometimes means appealing outside of the base.

2. Now that McCain is leading Obama in YouTube hits, having different ads every day showing different sides to his candidacy is a good thing.

3. On a day when we're (once again) talking aboot the Clinton's, the money shot at the end with Hillary is pure gold (plus we all knew this commercial was coming when she first said that quote).

Mark Halperin had two interesting notes from a John McCain town hall meeting today:

1.  He said that "we have to drill here and we have to drill now," which is an obvious nod to Newt Gingrich and American Solutions.  People on this site have mentioned how we need our own MoveOn and how American Solutions might be it...

2.  He also said that Obama, "should call on Congress to return from their vacation and deal with the energy problem now," which is a nod to the Guerilla Congress that is going on as we speak.

Could this be the begining of the base being fired up and/or the closing of the pesk "enthusiasm gap?" 

More importantly, where do we take it from here?

(As a side note, it's frustrating when your party is thinking of nominating a Jewish vice-president with the name "Cantor," and you have five or six "Jazz Singer" jokes that only you find funny.)
 

What if Mitt Romney, instead of trying to re-invent himself as a born again social conservative (and then continue to re-invent himself after every primary loss), ran in the primaries as himself?

What if, in light of the current economic turmoil and a Democrat led congress with a 9% approval rating, we had a candidate with executive experience in both government and the private sector, and who had no ties to President Bush?

(And I ask these questions as a McCain supporter who mocked the Hewitt/K-Lo ethuiasm for Romney like everyone else)

I'm sure you've heard the one about, a guy walks up to the bar and the bartender says, "There's no way, no how the Republicans can win this year." And while you would expect that from fair and balanced media outlets like "Newsweek" and MSNBC, there are a growing number of our own people walking around feeling the same way. And if they haven't already given up, they're threatening not to vote everytime John McCain has the slightest idea that isn't in lock step with "The National Review."

So when I see articles like in today's Wall Street Journal, " Not All Democrats Want To Ride Obama's Coattails," I say to myself, "Self, just why the hell can't we win?" Instead of giving up or whining whenever our candidate doesn't pander specifically to us, let's brainstorm on ideas on how to take the fight to a Democrat controlled congress with a 9% approval rating. For example, there was one part of the WSJ article that caught my attention:

"Operatives from both parties predict that there will be about 75 competitive House races in November. Among the most vulnerable are 26 freshman Democrats and one freshman Republican."

Those are 26 freshman democrats who were voted into Congress on promises, most of which congress didn't even come close to fulfilling.  The biggest  is how the D's were going to lower gas prices. Remember Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer being driven down the block in their SUV's to hold a press conferences at the local gas station? So here's my idea...what if we campaigned on John McCain's "Lexington Project" the same way we did with the "Contract for America" back in 1994?

At $4.20 for a gallon of gas I can't think of a better contrast than McCain's energy plan where no idea is off the table (including alternative energy, conservation, and off shore drilling) and the D's plan (as per a recent article from Politico.com) of, "driving less and waiting for the wind." If Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi think driving less is the winning argument, maybe they'd like to write my boss a letter excusing me from having to drive to work.

Campaigning on the Lexington Project is just one idea. Maybe instead of giving up so easily, our time would be better spent brainstorming on more.

We'll be discussing this and more this Sunday on PCLIVE! You can visit us on Facebook too.

(I originally wrote this back in March and thought I'd share)

A major issue on the minds of your average voter, and another one that the R's always seem to concede to the D's that they shouldn't, is health care. Zogby did a recent poll on whom voters think is best on health care and the results were Hillary Clinton 36 %, Barack Obama 27%...John McCain 13 %. This has to change.

I think a main reason for the extreme discrepancy in this poll is the simple fact that R's don't talk aboot health care, and why they don't I have no idea. The health care policy on McCain's website makes sense to me, so why not talk aboot it? Also, there's an area of health care the D's don't talk aboot, and that concerns personal responsibility. One of the reasons health care costs are so high is because the amount of preventative health care people need drives up the cost of non-preventive health care. Simply encouraging people to live healthier would be an angle not often used when discussing health care.

John McCain even has two surrogates on his side to help: Mike Huckabee, and his daughter Meghan.

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I had mentioned Huckabee's passion for health issues when I asked what's next for Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee is the poster child for taking personal responsibility for your own health. At one point he was extremely fat and a pork chop away from Type II Diabetes. Instead of complaining aboot the cost of insulin or the fact that restaurants cook in trans fats, he changed his eating habits, exercised, and lost over a hundred pounds. Huckabee can talk about how you should take responsibility for your own health because he took responsibility for his health. Plus, campaigning with someone who is the cat's pajamas to southern evangelicals couldn't hurt John McCain either.

His daughter Meghan can help with a slightly different health issue, and one that neither party talks much aboot. So sayeth Ms. McCain on her blog [in March]:

"I've been surprised by critical comments regarding my weight and body shape. It recently reached a ridiculous level when someone handed me a business card for a plastic surgeon and suggested I needed liposuction. I am proud of my curves and have always loved my fuller figure, as should every woman who is not a size "0". I want to be a positive role model for my little sister and all of the other young women who read my blog and help perpetuate a more positive image for women, regardless of their body size. I feel empowered to tell everyone that it's important to maintain a healthy weight that works for them - not everyone is going to be model thin, nor should they expect to be. To every young girl reading this blog, it is inner beauty and happiness that makes a person beautiful, not a number on a scale."

Is there anyone that can deny that's a problem? How many young women do you know that can relate with what she's saying? Is any candidate in either party talking aboot this? Plus speaking politically, if it's McCain vs. Hillary, Clinton's supporters are going to be quick to play the gender card. How can they when McCain's daughter is the only one talking aboot self esteem/weight issues in young girls?  (June update: Plus, aren't we looking to attract Hillary voters?)

(And for what it's worth, I've yet to see a picture of Meghan McCain and thought that she's fat.  Not to mention, who the hell walks up to the future first daughter to say "hey fatty, you could use som plastic surgery" in the first place?)

This is an election where Republicans can't afford to concede any issue to the Democrats, especially one as important as health care. And before people get  carried away, I'm not suggesting a nanny state or regulation mandating what people eat and that they feel good aboot themselves.

What I'm saying is that people have their own stereotype on what we as R's and/or C's think aboot health care, and by John McCain simply acknowledging voters concerns and campaigning on more of a "lead by example" approach to health care, he could stand out more and help sell his health care plan in ways people understand better than just talking aboot tax credits and markets.

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