It’s a difficult thing for me on this blog to decide how to handle an issue like Health Care, because many of the Congressmen and women the GOP will be targeting heavily in 2010 are NRA A-rated, and I do not wish to damage the NRA’s political reputation by suggesting folks ignore the gun issue. But we all, to some degree, have to balance interests. So for those readers who are looking for some paybacks for what Obama and Pelosi have foisted on us in the realm of Health Care, I have some advice.
- The first step is to identify key races in your state. If you’re lucky enough to not have any Obamacare traitors in your state, pick a neighboring state, or a state where you feel you have some connection or interest.
- Do everything you can to raise the profile of his or her opponent. Facebook and Twitter are two highly valuable tools for the engaged activist. Generally speaking, if find Twitter superior for activist work, but Facebook isn’t bad either.
- When it comes close to election time, that’s when it’s time to start volunteering. Politicians typically have a wide variety of volunteer work they can use, and that kind of thing gets noticed and appreciated very quickly. Volunteers are worth gold, especially if they are willing to make phone calls or knock on doors. This doesn’t take much time to do. At most you’ll give up a weekend or two.
- If you don’t have the time or dedication for volunteer work, being a pocket book isn’t a bad alternative. All things being equal, money is probably more important than volunteering to help bring votes to the table, because money helps get your name in front of voters. The great thing about donating is, even if you’re not a constituent of the politicians, by being a donor you will have some sway. It doesn’t honestly take that much of a donation before you’ll carry as much weight as a constituent. If you don’t have time to volunteer, and many people legitimately don’t, spread some money around to opponents of the Obama/Pelosi axis. It doesn’t take millions, or even hundreds, to have an impact.
If there’s one bit of advice I could most give for 2010, and probably 2012 too, it would be — don’t just bitch about how much things suck. If all you do is bitch all things will ever do is suck. This is the reason liberty loses in the political process. People who love liberty are very good at complaining that liberty doesn’t get a fair shake, but are very bad at inserting themselves into the process and doing the difficult things to make sure it has a place at the table. There are lots of reasons for this. The chief reason being that liberty minded types are not all that interested in getting halfway toward liberty. They want it all. I can sympathize with this, because that used to be me not too long ago, but things just don’t work that way. Maybe they should, but they don’t. If all we can get is half-way toward liberty in a Constitutional Republic, that’s certainly better than living in a Social Democracy while feeling good about yourself for being true to your principles. It’s time to jump into the pen and wrestle the pigs. You’re going to get dirty, and he’s going to like it, but if you want to feast on bacon, you don’t really have an alternative, do you?
Here is the problem. The NRA is a single issue group. Also if this tyrannical government is allowed to continue with passing bills that are wholly unconstitutional, then the second amendment doesn’t matter. As we are no longer a constitutional republic, we are a banana republic and law means nothing.
NRA is a single issue group, and it very much needs to be. Bitter will be doing a post shortly explaining why every liberty minded interest group needs to adopt the NRA model.
I might add that on the gun front (which very closely parallels the liberty front), you don’t even have to research candidates in Pennsylvania. I’m doing that for you at PAGunRights.com. And, if anyone wants to know where I would advise voting for the unendorsed opposition and knowing you’ll be safe for gun rights, just send me a message on Twitter or email me. I will be frank about which pro-gun federal Dems have solid opponents on the gun issue.
The problem is that replacing a Dem with a Repub isn’t going to fix this. Don’t we remember the Patriot Act and Iraq?
Yes, the Repubs are less bad than the dems, but that doesn’t mean that they are GOOD.
I think the best strategies would be to:
(1) Get active in primaries that matter and try to create change from within and
(2) Encourage third party candidates that split the statist vote. For example, support an independent that runs on a national-security/welfare platform. When we support independent candidates that just split the liberty vote we don’t do ourselves any good. This is dangerous as your support could lead to a total fascist or communist being elected.
Honestly, our best hope is probably working through the states and to a lesser extent local government. It may almost be better to accelerate the implosion of the Fed gov while supporting strong leaders at the state level.
I’ve joked about it elsewhere, that maybe it is time for some Cloward Piven strategy. The path the govenment is on is unquestionably unsustainable. To be blunt, the country is in hock up to its eyeballs. The people who are only dimly political aware of the situation we are in are in that condition because they are comfortable and seemingly unaffected. Eventually the bill is going to come due in a way that can no longer be put off, disguised, or ignored, even by the most oblivious among us. Only then will more of the people get their heads out of the sand. I’d almost consider voting for every big government prick on the ballot just to hasten the process.
Not that I’d advocate that. it is just this, I know the system is going to break hard. No way around it as I a see it. The dems and the repubs are the parties of massive government and slightly less massive government right now.
Chris:
Priority one is punishing the Democrats. We’ll deal with the Republican problem later. That involves a primary strategy for dealing with Republicans who don’t live up to our expectations.
Yes. I, don’t suppose I can disagree with that. One big problem at a time.