Mike Duncan

Bill Smith, ARRA Editor: Over the past year, while participating in several national conservative events and serving as the national political director of Conservative Solutions ("Let's Get This Right") in the support of the republican presidential campaign and 23 races for Congress, I met many committed young conservatives working and supporting the Republican Party. In their exuberance and excellent online efforts, they have invested themselves in Rebuilding the Party. They also wish to see a change in the leadership of the GOP. However, even if they are correct that the Republican National Committee (RNC) needs new leadership, it will be the delegates ("old timers") who will decide the fate of the Republican Party.

As detailed in prior articles, the Republican Party needs a person who is able and willing to be the conservative spokesman for the values and principles of the Republican Party. The Party does not need a leader who bends to pressure from incumbent elected republicans. If we stopped and asked people on the street "who is the Chairman of the Republican Party," very few people, even republicans, could answer the question. However, if we asked"who was the Chairman of the Democratic Party" more people could have answered the question. Why? Because the democratic chairman was more visible and outspoken than Republican Chairman Mike Duncan.

This year, let's hope that the RNC delegates will look seriously at the other exceptional candidates for chairmanship of the RNC. We need a person who 1) is a skilled spokesperson capable of challenging the democrat incumbents and their positions and espousing conservative principles, 2) understands web 2.0, social networks, working with the new media (bloggers, vbloggers, et ál) and the power of an independent free market Internet and does not try to controll all communication solely through the RNC website, 3) is visible and inspiring thus able to recruit others to join and work with the party, and 4) is honest and open in calling out Republicans when they fail to live up to written Republican Party principles and the Party's platform.

Today's 16 year-olds will vote in 2 years and the 14 year-olds will vote along with their older peers in the next presidential elections. These young conservative voters are active in the new media and social networking. The number of young voters either lost or gained to the GOP will be influenced by the person chosen to be the new RNC Chair. While having willingly supported the current chair, I also agree with a majority of conservatives that it is time for a change in the leadership of the RNC.

 However, CNN reports:

For the third straight day this week, incumbent chairman Mike Duncan picked up backing from the party membership, earning the support of Arkansas committee members Jim Burnett and Reta Hamilton. In a letter to party members, Burnett insisted that Duncan not be blamed for the party’s electoral drubbing in November. Instead, he wrote, Duncan managed to raise a record amount of money and compile a substantial e-mail list in the face of a Democratic headwind. Meanwhile, Michigan GOP chairman Saul Anuzis scored the support of Rhode Island GOP chair Giovanni D. Cicione, who published a letter on Anuzis’ blog praising the Michigander’s energy and commitment to technological innovation. Duncan leads his opponents with 22 public endorsements, followed by Anuzis, who has 13. South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell each have 12 endorsements. Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele has nine pledged votes, and former Mike Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman has none.

The Tolbert Report identified:

Raising money and compiling email lists are certainly important; however, many younger members of the party are looking to candidates such as Chip Saltsman, Ken Blackwell, Michael Steele, or Saul Anuzis to bring a fresh focus to the party, one that welcomes new members and embraces new technology (two areas where the party did not do well in 2008.) But with few Young Republicans represented on the RNC, there may be little chance of having this concerns considered. As of this posting, Chairman Doyle Webb (the only other Arkansans having a vote on the RNC) has not yet committed to any one candidate. By all reports, the race is still wide open with the vote to take place on January 28. The question remains will the members of the Committee stick with Duncan out of loyalty to him or will they listen to many party members who are looking for a change.

If the168 RNC members, who have the future of the Republican Party in their hands, want to actually see what the party will be very shortly up against, all they have to do is read Peter Wallsten's, Los Angles Times' article, entitled: "Retooling Obama's campaign machine for the long haul" and inwardly digest.

For extra reading on this subject, please go to: Transcript: The Post's Lois Romano Interviews David Plouffe/ Jan.10, 2009, The New Politics: Barack Obama, Party of One//John Heilemann Published Jan 11, 2009, and Michael Scherer/Jan. 15, 2009, courtesy of TechPresident.com.

The placing of Obama's grassroot army at the local, constituent level of wayward Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike has even caused concern among Democratic Party leaders. Jerry Meek, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party stated, "The party needs to be rooted not just around one individual, but it needs to have a grass-roots base that can survive the times and even endure past whoever may be in office."

What is clear, or should be clear, to all is that the Republican Party can no longer play by the same rules as it has before and hope to compete not only with the local Democratic Party but now Obama's grassroot army as well.

Our local Republican parties must start growing their own local grassroot online structures themselves if they hope to be able to even play in the same league as Obama in 2012.

ex animo

davidfarrar

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.

 When I read that RNC member Gary Emineth, the North Dakota GOP Chairman, organized a coalition to demand an unprecedented "special" RNC meeting before the RNC Chairman's election, I had my usual reaction: "Another meeting?...ugh...what a waste." 

On campaign after campaign, I've bemoaned the fact that too much time, out of a typical 14-hour workday, goes to useless time-wasters.  No, I'm not referring to staffers who surf the Web, look at their friend's pics on Facebook, or play practical jokes on the guy or gal in the next cube over.  Those serve an important purpose compared to the biggest, most useless, waste of time on most campaigns: the never-ending, often unfocused meetings where little, if anything gets accomplished, except teeth grinding, nail chewing and overeating.

Thus, I've come to hate the word "meeting."  "Let's get together on," or "rendezvous about" or "discuss over coffee," are preferable.  Meeting sounds so official, institutional, excessive.

But then I read on, and opened my mind...and sipped some coffee.

This special RNC meeting, which RNC Chairman Mike Duncan has now called, has made an impact even before being held.  It has traveled a road that most other meetings never dare travel.  RNC members have successfully coalesced around an idea, a plan, and quickly put it into action.  They have been pro-active.  They have shown leadership.  They have provided much hope for the future of the Party.  They have already taken a step towards accomplishing their goal -- a more open forum for major party decisions.

Just as important, the RNC members have built on the ideas of others, even more low-down in the totem pole of official Party power: grassoots organizations outside the official Party heirarchy.  Since Election Day, several organizations, old and new, have pushed and prodded open the RNC Chairman's race. 

Americans for Tax Reform has held meetings and is planning a debate of their own.  Rebuild the Party, an organization I'm particularly proud of, has secured the endorsement of 5 out of 6 candidates for RNC Chairman and built an organization of over 10,000 people who want a stake in the future of the RNC.  ChooseYourChairman.com allows regular people to contact the RNC members in their state expressing support for one of the candidates for Chairman.

These and similar organizations share a common goal, the best interest of the Party as it seeks to revive itself.  They might differ in their approach, but that's what debates are for; debating the specific tactics and approaches our next RNC Chairman should take should drive the agenda at the (cough, cough) meeting on January 7th at a currently undiclosed location.

Emineth was beaten up at first by the blogosphere for this apparently heinous quote in The Hill, 'At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the public thinks; it matters what 168 of us think.' Yet, when put in context (which he provided for us via blog post and in a follow-up Hill article) one understands that this quote resulted from the same frustration shared by many Republican activists.  Emineth, a sitting RNC Chairman, has felt powerless to make a different within the RNC power structure.  This powerless feeling has permeated Republican activists and organizations as they've felt obliged to cater to the will of a Republican White House, and at times, a Republican majority in Congress.  

Emineth, and the coalition that called for the (cough, cough) meeting see the opportunity at hand: an open field, the lack of a mandate.  In such a situation, the RNC members play an important role, electing the next Chairman.  In the past, most of these same RNC members have merely had the chance to approve the RNC Chairman for cosmetic purposes.  

If our elected RNC members don't even have real power in the Party, should we expect the grassroots to be empowered? 

Emineth and the coalition behind his effort have taken a baby step that shows real promise for a more open, productive and innovative Republican Party. Even if they had to call a meeting to do it.