john ensign

What is the relationship between these two stories from the Hill? Ted Stevens getting convicted of all counts for, in essence, corruption:

Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history and patriarch of Alaska politics, was found guilty of all seven felony charges for making false statements.

John Ensign trying to blame John McCain for a disastrous Senate Republican showing:

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on Monday said John McCain’s presidential run is making Senate races “more difficult” for the GOP.

They reflect a delusionally out-of-touch Senate establishment. On the same day that Ensign's colleague starts the march off to prison, he is blaming the guy who tried to clean up his own party. Could this be more out of touch?

By the way.  What is the job of the NRSC? Torecruit candidates and raise money. We are mostly playing defense. John Kennedy was a good recruit, but we don't have anyone in Arkansas. But how did they do on fundraising? Not so hot: "DSCC doubles NRSC funddraisng ... Again." Or "DSCC crushes NRSC in fundraising."

How about the fact that Congressional Republicans just aren't that popular ... because we haven't changed our ways? The numbers demonstrate abject failure. After all, we have 27% approval, while the Dems have 34%. Oh yeah. And Bush is in the single digits, along with right-track/wrong-track. And we've had 9 straight months of job loss.

Maybe the problem is us. The lesson of this election for Republicans cannot be about John McCain, although he has his faults. It has to be about the establishment and us. Our leaders have lead us astray. It is probably time to find new leaders. Rank and file Republicans get that. That's why the last two guys standing were the farthest from the establishment: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

Until the establishment in Congress and party accept that they are part of the problem, we are just going to continue to lose more seats and continue to destroy our party and our movement. McCain isn't doing that.

Note: in the first version, I said "indicted" not "convicted" because I desperately need an editor.

John Ensign said a lot yesterday in a very small number of words:

The Senate Republicans' top fundraiser Thursday said he is telling colleagues this is a bad year for members of his party to be up for election.

"I'm telling them if you have an 'R' in front of your name, you better run scared," said Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). [...]

Mr. Ensign dismissed reports that contributions to the Republicans by disgruntled small donors are down this year. He maintained the party's contributor base is intact. The Republican Party long has boasted that it is the party of small donors while the Democratic Party has had to rely far more on wealthy contributors to finance election campaigns.

He said the Republican Party never suffered a loss in small donors, only a shrinkage in the net amount of money raised - a decline that he said was not the result of small donors being disgusted with excessive Republican spending in Congress but of the party having been mailing "bad" lists that had driven up fundraising costs. That problem has been eliminated, he said.

Well I for one am resting a lot easier now.

Ensign's strange remarks (quoted in the Washington Times above) speak volumes about what's wrong with the right. Ironically, it is not that we are behind technologically but rather that we've become obsessed with it.

That may seem a little off-kilter so let me explain.

In the world of conservative non-profits and Republican campaigns the wrong type of thinking has caught hold, a type of thought that says with enough voter demographic databases and precisely targeted email lists, we can do anything. This school of thought has a close relative which argues that if we just build blogs, create videos, and sync our Twitter and Facebook accounts enough, we'll win the public back to our side.

Unfortunately, politics doesn't work that way. Keeping up with the technological Joneses is actually the bare minimum of what the right should be doing. It takes little strategic vision to insist upon high-technology web sites, well-produced video, or precise mailing lists. All of these things are good things. What we desperately need more of is a return to the public square on the part of the right.

Instead of continually trying to refine Reagan-era political strategy, we ought instead to be creating post-Reagan conservatism, one that rejects the small-bore politics of photo-ops, earmarks (pro and con), and cowering before the press in favor of a 21st century conservatism that realizes politics is done less in the halls of Congress and more in the television and computer screens of the home. A conservatism that isn't silent on technology, the environment, and the global economy.

And how about a conservatism that actually tries to explain itself in language that makes sense to the average person?

That last point is especially critical. Most people don't really care at all about policy. Nor should they. What they do want is to hear today's issues addressed in a reasonable manner by someone who loves the country and its people. With that in place, victory follows. Even with a "bad" mailing list.

Matthew Sheffield is the creator of NewsBusters and executive producer of the fake news show "NewsBusted."