Erick Erickson

Say it isn’t so. But it is. Thanks to Erick Erickson (Redstate) and Angry White Dude for being all over this, much to the NRA’s chagrin.  I’m getting that feeling that I have when dealing with the Repubics (thanks, Mark Levin) in the US Senate. It’s the feeling that there’s something nasty crawling on your skin.

My support for the NRA has been on the wane for some years now. Like other members, I’ve seen comments such as “I had a basic membership and they kept harassing me for more funds” and ”I felt like they were no longer supporting the Second Amendment or myself as a gun owner”. There are plenty of these comments out there and they’re not hard to find. In my own case, they kept sending me unsolicited materials, such as videos, promptly followed by an invoice. Annoying, to say the least.

Let me say up front that most of my buddies are gun owners and most are members. I’m going to actively urge everyone I know to cease support for the NRA forthwith. Fortunately for us, there is a viable and growing alternative for gunners in “Gun Owners of America”. These folks haven’t forgotten who and what they stand for. The list of the NRA’s transgressions against its membership and the Constitution is long. Shame on me, I had been following this story at a distance. When I saw hints out there that the NRA, in its misplaced zeal for covering its own pathetic rear end, were turning their backs on a solid Reagan conservative in favor of that slimy, walking wart Harry Reid, I went ballistic.

It’s reminiscent of the sell-out of the AARP membership by its leadership, for cozy political favors by the Democrat Congress. I can’t confirm the actual numbers, but the figure I have seen is that it cost them over 150,000 members. That’s not chump change.

The ‘Repubics’ in the Senate and House have seen first-hand what a hostile and angry Patriot Movement can do to their re-election prospects. Hear that, Lindsey? Just keep telling yourself how irrelevant we are. You too, McCain. JD Hayworth may be a flawed candidate, but he never assaulted the First Amendment. Anyone remember McCain-Feingold? Or, let’s see, the ‘gang of fourteen’? Or how about McAmnesty? Yeah, the one McCain is trying to make you forget about. McCain needs to go.

Like the Republican leadership, at least before the Conservative Patriot Movement, the NRA’s leadership has lost its way. That’s a shame. But we as Patriots and gun owners cannot support the sellout of our Constitution, and by extension our country, for political expediency. For those of you that think it will do any good, or just want to vent, the NRA’s number is 800-392-8683. Knowing gun owners, I have a feeling that they’ll be somewhat less inclined to be forgiving than seniors to the AARP. Go on to Angry White Dude’s site for June 29, 2010 to see a list of the NRA’s perfidy. I think that “Gun Owners of America” is going to see a big uptick in membership.

There is an object lesson for Republicans here. This is what happens when you violate the trust of your base. The days where we’ll sit back and take this crap are gone… whether AARP, NRA or RNC… we have choices. We can vote with our feet, we can back Conservative candidates and we can support a gunowners’ organization who shares our fundamental love of God, Country and Constitution. HOO-RAH!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

First of all tonight, I would like everyone who reads this column to read Erick Erickson’s article for Friday, March 26, 2010 on RedState.com. I have long been an admirer of Erick’s work and this time he has taken the bit in his teeth. Erick has articulated exactly what a lot of us have been thinking.

Erick Erickson

We have a rogue government which shows every indication of continuing to abrogate the principles of freedom and liberty upon which this land was founded, and the head of that government is behaving like this country is his fiefdom and we serfs to his monarchical tyranny. There is a tipping point here. Whether we have reached that point yet or not is a difficult thing to gauge.

The founders took a lot of abuse before they rebelled. They, like we, saw it as an action to be taken only in extremis. Yet driven to what they saw as a position of intolerability, take it they did. These were not wide-eyed radicals, but mature, reasoned and educated men. Most stood to lose everything and understood that once begun there could be no turning back.

No one, least of all people like Erick or myself, would want to see open strife in this country as long as there was any recourse to redress by election or through the courts. Along with the rising anger in this country as more and more ‘details’ of the monstrous 3,000 page bill are revealed (Nancy Pelosi: “You have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it”), is the increasingly voiced fear that Barack Hussein Obama and the Demarxist Congress would somehow manufacture a ‘national’ emergency and there would be no elections come November.

I personally think that would be a very foolish thing to do. But there is no doubt that the DeMarxists are even, as this is being written, working to steal the election using a ‘universal’ registration of voters – registering of illegal aliens. By passing an amnesty for some twenty million illegal aliens now residing in this country. Such a welfare-dependent, largely uneducated class of people would easily be led to vote for the padrone who is furnishing the goodies. In fact, that is very much how things work in the Latin American countries where the bulk of the illegals come from.

Stealing elections is something the Democrats have a lot of experience doing and I would expect them to take this route first. In their overweening arrogance they will expect complete success. We need to make sure we have some some surprises for them. In the final analysis we can put absolutely nothing past them. They have given ample proof that there is no depth of dishonesty, dishonor or connivance that they will not plumb.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

If you only read one thing this Christmas break, make sure it's Erick Erickson's post on rebuilding the party with technology. At the heart of it is an admonition not to confuse blogging with "technology." As Erick writes:

That a person can run a blog, has a Twitter account, edits and posts video to YouTube, has 1000 friends on Facebook, or can install a Joomla/Drupal/WordPress/MovableType/etc. site and customize the CSS does not make that person a technologist.

This is SO true. I've been in more than a few settings where a politician will want to talk to bloggers first about technology, not unlike how people approach Erick for his advice on tech. Yet all the bloggers would want to talk about when it came time for Q&A was politics not technology. Bloggers tend to be more tech savvy than the average, but what really drives them is politics and policy. Blogging is ultimately about good content not technology, just as a strong party has to be about a good message supported by today's technology.

What Erick is talking about is recruiting the people who build the tools, not just the people who use them, however avidly. When Ev Williams started Blogger and then Twitter, he wasn't thinking about how these tools could be used to revolutionize politics. He was just out to build a cool tool -- and opening up politics was just one of many applications of the technology.

The GOP needs geeks and engineers to build the tools. 115,000 people have just been laid off in the technology sector. There needs to be a concerted effort to identify those who are politically libertarian and conservative and get them to work building tools for the movement. I don't have any illusions that the majority of this group are on our side, but if we are better organized it won't matter. Even if we only have a pool of 10,000 to pick from, that's about 100 times better than what we have today.

But as much as we need people who are focused on the pure tech -- and this means more than just skinning the latest Web 2.0 fetish -- we still need better political operatives who will understand a good idea when it comes to them and won't cut the technology off at the pass. This doesn't mean they personally have to do technology, but they need to appreciate all the ways the Internet upends the traditional playbook.