Katon Dawson

In my endorsement of Ken Blackwell yesterday, I decided to leave the other candidates out of it and reserve my comments on why I didn't endorse the other candidates for another day. As I make these comments, I don't think any of these guys are bad people who'll destroy the party, but they're the wrong choice to build it back up. Here are my reasons for my non-endorsements.

Chip Saltsman and Katon Dawson: I actually like both of these guys. I think they've been given a bum rap on some dubious racial charges. That said, I don't think they seriously have a shot at taking the job. The RNC doesn't want the media to have a "racist" RNC Chairman meme to run with the next two to four years, no matter how flimsy charge.

Mike Duncan: Want to send America and the GOP base a message that you've learned nothing from losing seven (probably eight) senate seats and twenty-one house seats? Try re-electing the same Senate leader, the same House leader, and then to top it off, put the same guy back in charge of the RNC. Duncan's run is unprecedented and that it has a chance to succeed shows how troubled the GOP. We need fresh blood.

Saul Anuzis: Saul Anuzis knows how to use Twitter. So do you several other million people. The challenge is not to use new technology but to leverage as a tool for political success. Can Anuzis do that? Judging by the results of his leadership in Michigan I have to say no. Show me that you can turn around a state before you try and argue that you can change the course of the national party.

Michael Steele: I like Michael Steele, but his leader on the moderate "Republican Leadership Council" as well as his response to being challenged on it are trouble for his candidacy. Nothing has really changed what I wrote a month ago, quoting Steele's own comment to CBN News:

Wake up people. I mean, what are you going to do? Are you going to kick these folks out of the party? I have watched this party self disintegrate for the last four or five years. I’ve watched this party isolate itself from itself.

This may be a unique opportunity to build a relationship or a bridge between the conservatives and the moderates in our party and so she asked me to serve on her board and I said well this will be good. It’ll be a pro-life conservative voice on a board with a pro-choice leadership that is looking to elect moderates. We have to elect moderates in the party.

For all you little folks out there who think that you’ve got me on this: you don’t. My being on this board had nothing to do with lessening my conservative values or somehow appeasing them or compromising them. It had everything to do with reasserting them.

Let me give a conservative assessment: What Steele said here is the equivalent of John McCain’s GOPAC statement: “Calm down.” Ultimately, this doesn’t explain the objection. In the video, he compares his service on the board of the Republican Leadership Council to appearing on Bill Maher. Bill Maher isn’t a Republican moderate who aims to “reclaim the Republican Party.” Nor to go on Bill Maher does it require you partner up with Planned Parenthood and the Log Cabin Republicans.

Steele will enter with far more mistrust than any candidate than perhaps Duncan. We don't need a party chairman that the base of the party is lukewarm to.

Other than winning one election of his own in Maryland in a Republican year (2002), he has no real track record of success to indicate that he'll be able to rally the GOP base in the same way that Blackwell would.

With Democrats winning large majorities in the House and Senate, it's difficult to see new Republican leadership emerging from Congress in the next couple years.   House and Senate Republicans will be playing defense and managing the losses, with little opportunity to move the ball forward on any of the Right's agenda. 

If the Right is to begin rebuilding, leadership will have to come from the outside. That is good.

We are at an inflection point for the Right; a moment in history when the Republican Party is undefined and listless, capable of being either renewed or captured.  The opportunity to mobilize around new leadership is the opportunity to re-take the Republican Party from the entrenched, atrophied Republican establishment.

The next opportunity is the RNC Chairman race in January of 2009.  It will be decided by fewer than 200 Committee members, but there is precent for the blogosphere to have a profound impact on leadership races.  We could do it in the RNC Chair race, too.

There are a great many candidates (and more ever day, it seems; Marc Ambinder reports that Jim Nussle is in and Newt Gingrich is interested).  However, the RNC Chair covers a wide variety of roles - from fundraising to operational management to communication; strategy and tactics - and it's not at all apparent that any of the candidates could possibly excel at every role.  Some are interesting, but others seem like minor functionaries looking to be elevated to a bigger fiefdom. 

That may be fine when the RNC Chair is just a support role to the Republican President or Congressional leadership.  But the RNC Chair will be in a unique position of Party and movement leadership in years ahead.   The Party will need both the tacticion and the strategist.  And the most important role of the RNC Chair may well be that of visionary leader.

So, who actually embodies the Republican Party ideals best?  I've previously suggested Fred Thompson would be an ideal fit as an RNC General Chairman - a communicator who gets the ideals, the policy and the message - while leaving the role of RNC Chair to the administrative manager.

It looks other people are thinking the same thing.  According to DC Examiner...

Republicans desperate to rebuild their party are looking for a new leader, and former Sen. Fred Thompson may seek the job. Thompson, a Tennessee conservative and former actor, is mulling a run for chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The American Spectator's Quin Hilyer says "there is more detail to the story"...

First, note the distinction between "General Chairman" and "Chairman." The potential Thompson run envisions a two-tiered system like the one that worked under Reagan with Paul Laxalt as General Chairman (but that didn't work so well recently with Mel Martinez as General Chairman). The General Chairman usually provides overall direction and philosophical moorings, and acts as the public face of the party doing media and speeches, etc., and also is available probably for big-money phone calls and events -- but the Chairman, with an Executive Director under him, is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the RNC. Think Chairman of the Board vs. CEO, perhaps.

Quin also says Katon Dawson "knows how to get things done politically."   In light of the contention that Dawson is close to SC Governor Mark Sanford, that seems like a potential pairing [Fred Thompson as General Chair; Katon Dawson as Chair] that could appeal strongly to the limited government/leave us alone vision for the Republican Party. 

Hilyer's source says that Fred Thompson and his team are "looking at the lay of the land. If there is an indication of a wellspring of support, he will get in quickly."

If the grassroots Right wants to have an impact on the Republican Party, this is their chance to do it.

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As the GOP recovers from a drubbing at that ballot box that served them with an eviction notice at the White House and a foreclosure on many seats in the house and senate, a reorganization is in order.

Crucial to a successful reorganization is the selection of it’s next national chairman.

Florida Senator Mel Martinez

After the losses which cost them their majorities in the house and senate during the 2006 midterm elections, the powers that be, hastily installed Florida Senator Mel Martinez as the new chairman. At the same time they also elected Mike Duncan, a veteran political strategist and former Treasurer General Counselor to the RNC, to run the “day to day operations” of the national committee. In other words Duncan was actually the Chairman and Senator Martinez was to be the face of the party.

It was an arrangement that did not last long.

A few months into this arrangement, Senator Martinez stepped down and Mr. Duncan had the title all to himself. Not that it mattered. Whether it was his fault or not Republicans were outspent, out argued , outmaneuvered and voted out.

Outgoing RNC Chairman Mike Duncan

I will not blame Mike Duncan for the hemorrhaging of Republicans in this election cycle. That began before he took office, less than a year ago, and it simply continued for the time period that he was in office as chairman. It is more than likely that no individual chairman of the RNC could have prevented the losses Republicans suffered but we do know that the chairman did not help prevent them from happening.

So I do not blame Mike Duncan but I do harbor ill will to the party officials who gave up after 2006 and installed quick replacements to head up the Republican party. It was quite apparent that the party was simply trying to just get through the last two years of President Bush’s term in office. The RNC leadership were more like caretakers than leaders. They did not seek to adopt a leadership that was cutting edge and enthusiastic about revolutionizing the capabilities of the party organization and preparing us for the mother of all elections, the presidency.

It is the same complacency that helped cost Republicans their majorities in congress. Elected officials lost the anti establishment thinking that won them favor back in 1994. After becoming “the establishment” they slowly began to forget that government was there to work for the people not for the people running government.

So here we are saluting a new President-Elect, a new Democrat President-Elect. One who will be partnering with a majority of legislators who are also Democrats.

It might sound depressing to fellow Republicans but the truth is it is that for a number of reasons it is not depressing:

• Can’t Get Much Worse -We have just about bottomed out. It truly can’t get much worse so the prospects for improving our numbers in the next election are good.

 

• Liberals Gone Wild -With Democrats in total control of government, there is little to hold them back and prevent them from showing their true colors. When those true colors come out, Americans will realize that the direction they offer is too sharp a turn to the left for their tastes. The last time they had total control was in 1993 when Bill Clinton was President. After two years of liberals gone wild, Americans gave control, of both the house and senate, to Republicans for the first time in forty years. It was something that Republicans could not achieve on their own. It took the combined left leaning radicalization of today’s Democrat party to bring that about and it is about to happen again. In fact the greatest challenge that the new President will face comes from his own party. He will be struggling against them and fighting them in an effort to lead from the center rather than the left.

 

• The War - Although the economy helped push the war off the front burner, the changing tide of the surge in Iraq also made the war less of an issue because violence and combat was down and it was being won. The war in Iraq did not help Republicans in this election cycle but not because it was unnecessary, as democrats claim,  but, as I explain in the link referenced here*, Americans became weary and leery of the war. While the surge was delayed and the administration wavered, violence spiked as a result of a resurgence of radical Islamic terrorists in Iraq. That is when Democrats successfully exploited a declining resolve to continue an effort that people were beginning to think was becoming a quagmire. Since the increased deployment of troops into Iraq, the situation improved and there is light at the end of the tunnel. As a result, despite the cries of candidate Obama to end the war, President Obama will not be withdrawing all of our forces from Iraq anytime soon.  Now that he has seen the national security data that demonstrates the dangers of his misguided promises as a candidate, as a President he will not be so quick to screw things up. Ultimately Republicans will be proven right on the issue.

 

• The Economy - Typically our economy goes through cycles of growth and contraction every ten to fifteen years. More accurately, just about every 11 years, we encounter economic turmoil brought on by the cumulative effects of industrial shifts, world events and other related circumstances. That being said, it is how we maneuver through these cycles that determines their severity and the length of time that we endure them. The liberal propensity to raise taxes and redistribute wealth during these times does not help. Those policies simply deepen the crisis and draw out the cycle. If the knee jerk, liberal tendency towards more taxes and an expansion of government does occur, Republicans will be able to stem their losses and start increasing their numbers. The current crisis that we are experiencing is not a result of Republican economic policy. It is a result of their complacency and unwillingness to differentiate themselves from liberals when it came to spending. Our own President had no problem with cutting taxes, a good thing, but he also never cut spending and neither did fellow Republicans in congress.

All of this allows for those Republicans, who are in office, to offer alternatives to the counterproductive liberal agenda that will undoubtedly dominate national policy. To effectively achieve that, Republican members of congress need to reestablish their fiscally conservative roots and inherent sense of an offensive strategy when it comes to national security. The fact that, as Republicans, we choose to eliminate threats rather than tolerate them will be made much clearer with liberals in control and it must not be ignored.

Now that Republicans are not in control we now have the luxury that Democrats had. The luxury of not having to defend our leadership. Democrats will now have the chance to be held accountable for everything that happens. They will have to take blame for the results of increasing taxes, increasing unnecessary regulations and increasing the size and cost of government. With their leadership comes responsibility. With responsibility comes credit as well as blame. After eight years of taking blame for all that is not liked, Republicans can now luxuriate in being able to place blame on Democrats as they have done to Republicans.

But while those Republicans elected to congress do their job by providing alternatives to liberal policies and maintaining their role as the loyal opposition, our political leaders must hit the ground running.

The question now is, who is best suited to reorganize and reinvigorate Republicans? The person needed to rally Republicans must be articulate. But a good speaker is not all that we need. The person who is made the new chairman of the party must have a passionate desire to advance the cause, incredible organizational skills, the ability to delegate responsibilities to the right and most qualified people, endless energy and stamina as well as creativity and resourcefulness and a proven record of success.

The new chairman needs the same type of vision and commitment to conservative principles that the freshmen members of congress who were elected in the 1994 Republican revolution had. The new chairman must have a vision which understands that the best government is the government that gets out of the way and allows freedom to flourish by defending it at home and abroad and by insuring that opportunity is available to all.

Currently, there are seven frontrunners. They include:

 

Mike Steele

Michael Steele - GOPAC , former Lt. Governor of Maryland and unsuccessful candidate for US Senate in 2006.

Chuck Yob

Chuck Yob - Successful Michigan businessman, GOP fundraiser and Michigan National Committeeman

Saul Anuzis

Saul Anuzis - Chairmanof the Michigan Republican State Committee

Alec Pointevint

Alec Poitevint - Georgia’s Republican National Committeeman

Katon Dawson

Katon Dawson - Republican Party Chairman of South Carolina , the state that had the best performance for Republicans during this election cycle.

Jim Greer

Jim Greer - Florida’s Republican party Chairman

Chip Saltsman

Chip Saltsman - A former Chair of Tennessee’s GOP and the former campaign manager of Mike Huckabee’s failed candidacy for the republican presidential nomination.

Mike Huckabee

Speculation has not only Huckabee’s former campaign guru on the list, Mike Huckabee himself is rumored to be a potential contender. So is one of Huckabee’s former opponents for the GOP presidential nod, Mitt Romney.

 

Of all these names the one person who I believe could do the most for the Republican National Committee is Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney

Romney has been successful at every job that he has undertaken. He is passionate. He is articulate, savvy and has an eye for recruiting those who are the best at their jobs. Mitt Romney could do wonders for the party. He would be able to provide the GOP’s, get out the vote, 72 hour program with great improvements and he would create a top notch center for Republican organization, communications, fundraising and creative strategy.

Problem is that I want Mitt Romney to be able to run for President. I am looking forward to either him or Sarah Palin being our 2012 nominee. Becoming the political leader of the party does not help him establish the bipartisan image that a Presidential nominee needs. If he did as a good a job for the party as I think he would, having been the chairman of the party he rebuilds, could help him get the party’s nomination though.

However, I feel that a truly smart RNCchairman would involve Mitt Romney and utilize his expertise. Doing so would keep Romney free to expand his nonpolitical credentials while still allowing for his Midas touch to assist behinf the scenes.

As for the other names mentioned, Mike Steele, Katon Dawson and Jim Greer are the only names that really interest me. Each of them have demonstrated ideological superiority to one extent or the other and have achieved outstanding results for Republicans.

Former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich

One name not mentioned but is at the top of my list, is former Maryland Governor Robert Erhlich. After losing reelection in the 2006 GOP sea of change, Bob Ehrlich has not been discussed much. That is a shame because he happens to be one of the best in the newer generation of conservative politics. He was the first Republican to be elected governor of Maryland in almost 60 years. Through it all Ehrlich maintained his principles and conservative ideology. Not once did he try to win favor by acting like a democrat. Instead, he successfully implemented conservative ideology into government application. He also happens to be articulate and effective in his ability to explain and deliver the conservative message.

 

Sometimes referred to as a Kempite Republican, Bob Erhlich could be just what we need to rekindle our spirit and rally the cause.

Whoever the grand poobahs of the GOP hierarchy install as chairman, it is my greatest hope that they recruit the right people to carry out the mission that is ahead.

Patrick Ruffini

People like political Internet champion Patrick Ruffini who could incorporate the most cyber savvy organization politics has ever seen and Ralph Reed who is a master at reaching out and organizing the grassroots.

Ralph Reed

Being the minority party is not a problem to be feared. Becoming the minority is what we needed to fear and now, we are there.  So the worst is over. Now we have the chance to take advantage of what Democrats took advantage of for a long time, minority status and the ability to place blame on the powers that be that comes with it.

From here we can only come back, and if we take the right steps, we can come back quickly. To do so will require that our first steps be the right steps . In this case that would be done by picking the right person to map out our future and recruit the brightest lights to help illuminate the fast track to the reinvigoration that the party is capable of.

 

 

Q: What’s the problem with Barack Obama jokes?

A: His followers don’t think they’re funny and other people don’t think they’re jokes.

According to an American Spectator item this morning, the race for RNC Chair appears to be over. Or maybe it's not. But the game of who is in and who is out has some tongues wagging.

It seems the South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson has been campaigning for the gig since last year sometime (Ok, not really. Just since the convention, according to the AS piece.)

Dawson, the owner of an auto-parts-supply company, has been calling GOP donors and fundraisers, among others, telling them he has lined up enough votes within the 168-member national committee to make him a prohibitive favorite for the job.

"He's made it clear he doesn't expect John McCain to win the presidency," says one RNC fundraiser who has received such a call. "Katon's an ambitious guy. He's made no bones about the fact that he wants the RNC job."

But no one takes seriously the notion that Dawson is anywhere close to having a large voting bloc of RNC votes. "There are too many others poised to get into the race," says one RNC member. "We're looking at between 10 to 15 potential candidates and maybe seven or eight of them already have constituencies on the committee. No one is in a position to call this thing over, particularly since our next president, John McCain, gets to pick the next chairman."

That point is something that Dawson has seemingly overlooked, and his aggressive campaigning at a time when most Republicans are fighting hard to get McCain elected President has angered a number of Republicans because they understand why Dawson, who has been a local GOP chair in South Carolina, and won the state party job in 2002, is running: in part, to help jumpstart a presidential bid for the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford...

Dawson was actually campaigning for the job during the Republican Convention, something that angered not only the McCain campaign, but other Republicans with longtime ties to the RNC.

Apparently, some people are upset because Katon Dawson is actively campaigning while they're trying to elect John McCain. On the heels of all the "reform the rightroots movement" posts, this may stirke some people as odd.

I'd like to throw this out for discussion. Given all the chatter about reforming the GOP, is it bad form to start a campaign for Chairman months before the election?

I suspect it will only be another 36 hours or so before we see a lot more people jockeying for the RNC gig. After all, it is one of the three most visible positions within the GOP if McCain should fail to hold the White House. However, how early is "too early"? Should the body be cold before campaigning begins? Does it even need to be dead?

On Friday, Marc Ambinder provided the latest scuttlebutt on the potential candidates for RNC Chairman. The names mentioned in the piece, in this order, include:

• Alec Poitevint, National Committeeman for Georgia, and the piece says, favorite of McCain insiders, though whoever leaked that was probably not trying to do him any favors.
• Chuck Yob, former National Committeeman for Michigan
• Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party
• Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party
• Chip Saltsman, Mike Huckabee's campaign manager and former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party
• Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party

We'll be following this race very closely starting November 5th (assuming there is a race and McCain doesn't win). This job becomes symbolically more important if Republicans are the out party, as the chairman becomes one of the three public faces of the party with the House and Senate Republican leaders. This probably means the most public RNC Chairman's race in the party's history this winter.

The big question to my mind is if a grassroots favorite will emerge from this pack a la Howard Dean. RNC rules were recently changed to welcome candidates from outside the committee -- though in practice this had been waived to make room for many of the President's appointments.

The South Carolina State Republican Party’s new national McCain ad looks like a crass attempt by State Party Chairman Katon Dawson to boost his own RNC Chair campaign even if he damages John McCain in the process.  Dawson is considered one of the leading candidates to become the next RNC Chairman if McCain loses and has been openly running for the job since at least 2007.

Dawson just announced that he’s running the ad in Minnesota during the national convention next week, according to him as a way to help McCain by rebutting Obama’s “multiple houses” attack.  That’s pretty far fetched.  Sometimes state parties get involved in presidential buys in their own states, but never on a national level.  This is the McCain campaign and RNC’s job and by running ads in Minnesota Dawson is distracting the press from McCain’s biggest message opportunity of the race.

Even worse, his “defense” is helping Obama revive the seven houses attack.  McCain’s campaign aggressively rebutted Obama’s housing ad last week and it’s mostly dropped out of the news as a result.  All Dawson has done is dredge it up again.

There is a lot of talk around DC about who will be the RNC Chairman if John McCain were to lose. I generally hear about four candidates:

• Saul Anuzis, Chairman of the Michigan GOP
• Katon Dawson, Chairman of the South Carolina GOP
• Jim Greer, Chairman of the Florida GOP
• Shawn Steele, incoming National Committeeman of the California GOP

There is also talk that non-RNC-member elected candidates could run. (note that RNC rules require that the Chairman be a member of the Committee, but that can often be fudged with a supportive state party)

If McCain loses, the RNC Chair would likely be the public leader of the party. It is unlikely that Mitch McConnell or John Boehner, the presumed leaders of the Congressional party, would have the time or the umph to be public leaders like that. (although, I have at times thought that Boehner could do it)

The RNC Chairman's race will also have strong implications for the 2012 Presidential primary. Mitt Romney is widely seen as having a substantial foot up because of the scope of his organization for 2008. It is likely that he would have a preferred candidate in the RNC Chairman's race to keep tabs on the whole process.

We all very sincerely want McCain to win. But the maneuvering over the Chairman's race is going on full-speed ahead and we intend to follow that in addition to the Presidential race, Congressional races, party growth, etc.

Consequently, please share information about this with us. We get a bunch as it is, but the more people reach out, the more we can document what is happening and make a difference in the process.

Dawson is also coming from a very red state. Republicans have 8 of 9 statewide offices and the last 7 special elections. While Dawson is quite confident that John McCain will carry his state in November, he offers a warning:

Early presidential states got to see the power of [Barack Obama's] grassroots network. We are well prepared to defeat him soundly. ... But any state that does not prepare does so at their own peril.

I asked if increased African-American turnout would create a problem for some legislative seats, and he responded, again, quite confidently, "we should win some seats we would not win normally," due to "partial birth abortion, gay marriage, which are the pillars of the Democratic platform."

I asked about divisions in the state party. Governor Mark Sanford, loved by national conservatives, has a very rough relationship with the state legislature. And there was a brief and decisive primary between Senator Lindsay Graham and Buddy Witherspoon. (Graham won by more than 2-1) Dawson repsonded that "tension has made for a healthy party" and pointed to agreement on issues like tort reform, medical malpractice, taxes, and other issues.

Witherspoon had been the state's Republican National Committeeman, and he stood down to challenge Graham, focusing on judges, immigration, and similar issues. Witherspoon's RNC spot was eventually taken by Glenn McCall who I previously interviewed.

Interestingly, the Gang of 14, for which many conservatives have attacked Graham -- and John McCain -- was seen as a strength in the primary by Dawson:

Lindsay has tacked some really big issues. The really big factor was two Supreme Court Justices. ... Now that we are in the minority, I can say that Lindsay was right.

I had remembered Beltway conservatives explain that this was going to be the decisive issue in the primary. I guess not so much. The other issue was, of course, immigration, but Dawson noted that Governor Mark Sanford and the legislature "fixed the immigration problem in South Carolina."

Lastly, Dawson expressed a lot of excitement over Tim Scott, who will likely be the first post-Reconstruction Republican African American to serve in the state house. Dawson said that with conservatives like Scott and McCall, Republicans are showing that we can make inroads in the African-American community without giving up our principles.