How the GOP can come back: A *practical* suggestion.

I think that RS McCain gets why we lost in 2006 and 2008 exactly right:

…the Democrats did something very smart after 2004. Instead of freaking out over those “values voters” and getting all down in the dumps, they got busy organizing and raising money so that when the GOP hit a long streak of bad moves and bad news in 2005-06, the Dems were ready to take advantage of it. A day of organizing is worth a week of blathering about “strategy,” and an hour of fund-raising is worth far more than a month of navel-gazing op-ed columns pumped out by the punditocracy.

But the pundits always want to over-intellectualize everything, because that’s what they get paid to do, and the consultants always want to talk “strategy,” because they’s what they get paid to do. Grassroots organizing, candidate recruitment and fundraising — those are the three things the GOP needs to focus on in the near term.

Read that, and read John Hawkins’ helpful six keys… and then actually do something about it.

Moe Lane

PS: Whining does not count as “doing something about it.” Neither does demanding that the Party drop everything to concentrate on your pet issue, stapling your hand to your forehead about how the awful Party never listened to you, and/or threatening to move out to the countryside with a full load of ammo and survival gear. All any of that does is depress people who are trying to actually fix things.

PPS: No, I don’t particularly care if you like that characterization or not. Was there anything else?

Crossposted at RedState.

I’m sorry. Red Dawn shouldn’t be on this list.

I’ve seen Red Dawn more times than I can count when I was a kid, and this is back in the day when that meant watching it on VHS, but ye gods and little fishes! – that movie was awful. I don’t care what NRO thinks.  Personally, I’d add Iron Man to the list, but only because doing so thoroughly mocks the antiwar movement’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to list cowardice and hypocrisy among the American virtues.

Via RS McCain.  I have no quibbles with either of his additions.

Moe Lane

PS: I hear that World In Conflict absolutely rocks as a video game, though.

PPS: “WOLVERINES!!!!!”

What? I like awful, sometimes.

Crossposted to RedState.

Not to be all self-reflexive and stuff…

…but I think that RS McCain’s link to my Waters post is interesting because it’s showing a certain confluence of interests.  As some of you may know, I’m a former Democrat myself (like RS McCain, in fact): and as most of you have worked out by now, I’m a good GOP Party man (decidedly unlike RS McCain).  And while I’m sympathetic to a lot of libertarian notions – enough to define me as one of those Dread Moderate Squishes on a variety of topics* – I’m not one.  300 million people in this country: we can’t run it all via town meetings.  That being said, everything he wrote after: Continue reading Not to be all self-reflexive and stuff…

Snakes on a bill!

…look, you simply have to endure the pun.  Plus, yes, yes: “Snakes.  Why did it have to be snakes?”

File this in the “Elections have consequences” folder.  R.S. McCain:

Democrats in Congress are pushing legislation that would devastate the hobby — and damage the small businesses — of a group of American hobbyists: Snake collectors.

The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act (HR669), sponsored by Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam.) and co-sponsored by several House Democrats including Alcee Hastings and Ron Klein of Florida, has got the “reptile geeks” up in arms

Essentially, somebody apparently watched some deep ecologist agitprop, got into freakout mode, and now wants to pretty much ban the import of animals into the USA.  At least, that’s how the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers is framing this, and when you’ve got Alcee Hastings and Neil Abercrombie on one side of a debate and a bunch of sixteen year old kids who like boa constrictors on the other I know who I instinctively trust to have a better grasp of reality.  Hint: it ain’t a bunch of Democrats.

The good news is that this only has nine co-sponsors, so it’s not too high-profile (they must not have been able to figure out a way to sneak it into the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Debt Bill).  The bad news is that it’s not too high-profile, and the Democrats have sufficient numbers on hand to pass whatever damfool legislation they choose. Including bans on snake importations.

As I said: elections have consequences.

Crossposted at RedState.