I promise you I trying really hard not to be "generic conservative Frederick supporter," or however the establishment wants to label us. I really have no problem with Pat Mullins as chairman either, but its really hard to swallow the fact that SCC threw out a chairman elected by the party and installed their own choice without any consultation or approval of anyone in the party.
Like I've tried to say before, this isn't so much about conservative vs. liberal, but who gets to actually run the party. There are both moderates and conservatives who are just as dedicated to grassroots work and growing the party as the other. What is going on here is a slap-down of the grassroots by the party establishment and its political leaders that control what goes on in those meetings.
I just can't get past the idea that we are now expected to rubber-stamp State Central's choice, that they get to decide who runs the party and not the people - moderates and conservatives alike - who man the phones, knock on doors, talk to their neighbors, put out the signs, work back to schools, and man the polls. Hell, I trust the guy who juts shows up to a rally or two more than these guys who have developed little fiefdoms of power that are just dragging this party down. And sadly, it seems there is not much we can do but be good little Germans, let them tell us what to do, keep working hard, and in the end keep losing.
I hate to sound so pessimistic, but I was at the 08 Convention, and I took it seriously what I was doing and how I was voting. State Central makes me feel like I don't matter, and I know a ton of people who feel the same way. We find time in our schedules to be apart of this party, to be apart of the process of selecting our leaders and candidates. And when we speak as a party, this den of thieves decide we aren't smart enough - not like the hacks and consultants that dominate the Establishment of this party - to know what we are doing. So it has to be fixed.
Sadly, many in the party have been blinded to what is going on by the effective Jeff Frederick straw man these guys have created. Like I said, moderates are as much apart of the grassroots as conservatives, but too many of them have fallen for the trick, for playing on their Frederick paranoia to fully understand what they have allowed to happen. What has happened ins 200+ people have overturned the will of a party and a Convention with barely a whimper of opposition. This is not what a party striving for a "big tent' should be doing, is it?
Well Frederick is gone now, what excuse are the moderates and their mouthpieces going to come up with next? How many more excuses are they going to find before they realize that blurring the partisan lines won't work, that trying to beat the Democrats on their issues isn't going to work. We can't win without conservatives. John McCain, the moderates main man, lost horribly in November because he does what all moderates do - try and fight on Democrats terms instead of forcing our terms and our vision as a pure contrast. This is what it appears to me that so many of the High Republicans in power in Virginia, scared to be conservative and run on true conservative issues that win. We think because Obama and the Democrats have won, we have to placate them and fight for table scraps. When the Democrats where in the minority under Bush, they energized their base by opposing the president and eventually built up enough momentum to win back the government. We need to follow that model. But that revival cannot happen in Virginia so long as our party machinery spits in the face of the regular members, take out leaders that were elected by the party they don't like, and elect leaders that we have no say in.
Right now, I'm inclined not to support Pat Mullins at the Convention based on principle, as a protest to the entire sorry and insulting ordeal the SCC has put many of us through. At the Convention, I refuse to be a rubber stamp to a group that had no respect for the will of the party.
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