Patriot Program

Last month after the House passed Waxman-Markey with help from 8 GOP votes, Robert Stacy McCain called on conservatives to stop giving money to the NRCC: Not One Red Cent. I thought this was an over reaction at first. But then I stopped by the NRCC to see if they were actually supporting any of the 8 cap and tr8ors. I clicked on their Patriot Program and learned that "The NRCC unveiled ten incumbent Members who, because of their outstanding efforts as "Patriots," will be rewarded with participation in "Patriot Day" on June 25th." But was there a list of these "Patriots" anywhere on the NRCCs site? No. I had to resort to Google news to find out that:

Among those on the list are Reps. Dan Lungren, Ken Calvert and Brian Bilbray of California, Judy Biggert of Illinois, Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, Thad McCotter of Michigan, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, Leonard Lance of New Jersey, Christopher Lee of New York and Dave Reichert of Washington.

Matching the two lists up we find that the NRCC's Patriot program is in fact providing comfort to two traitors: Reps. Leonard Lance (NJ-7) and Dave Reichert (WA-8).

So on second thought, yeah, by all means conservatives should definitely stop giving any money to the NRCC until Lance and Reichart are kicked out of the Patriot Program. But that is not enough. Duncan Black and I don't agree on much policy wise, but when it comes to politics,  we agree a lot. Responding to RSM, Atrios wrote: If you ever demonstrate an ability to actually raise money for these organizations, they might start caring what you think. Before? Unlikely.

But this isn't really what the netroots did. They didn't move their party to the left by throwing money at the DCCC. Quite the opposite. Instead they created their own institutions, a parallel party, that allowed them to support the candidates that they trusted. So instead of leading a boycott of the NRCC, conservatives should be raising money for candidates challenging those Dems who are vulnerable to cap and trade.

But how can we do that? The left has ActBlue which allows bloggers to get together and create fundraising pages that allow easy one-stop shopping for donating to Democratic campaigns. So where is our ActBlue? Why can't we go out and create a page allowing fired up conservatives to vent their anger at the NRCC by giving their money directly to challenger campaigns? Slatecard is retooling. So is Rightroots. Meanwhile ActBlue is enabling the nutroots to raise money for Michael Jackson Fans AGAINST Peter King.

Conservatives are fired up about Obama's spending and imminent taxing disaster. Independents aren't far behind. We need to make sure our infrastructure is in place to best harness the incipient wave of Obama anger.