Ordinary Sway

I was fortunate to be able to follow the Scott Brown campaign from early November through the FANTASTICAL! election night of January 19. Along the way, from my desk here in SC, via the wonders of twitter, the on-the-ground bloggers, the video cams inside Scott Brown campaign offices, the televised debates, and the many citizen reporters I saw folks phone banking, watched the “block walks”, viewed Scott Brown’s campaign stops in diners and parks. From the humble beginnings of his campaign through the ROAR of victory and oh-so-satisfying takeover of “the Kennedy seat”, the Tea Party Nation was both visibly and subtly involved, and in many opinions can claim some responsibility for winning that Senate seat.

And next on the radar for the folks who participated in the Scott Brown election is the determination to take another “Kennedy seat”, that of Patrick Kennedy in Rhode Island. I’m bringing you the first stirrings and collective strategy of the Tea Party Nation so you can have the “JOY!” of following this effort and really see how our autonomous Tea Parties work together across social medias, across state lines, across blog rolls and live streams and the twitterverse to elect conservatives.

NorsU on Twitter was one of the most proliferic tweeters of the Scott Brown campaign (along with BradMarston who is running for Mass State Rep himself). Following these two men on Twitter allowed almost a moment-by-moment look into the daily campaign. So when Patrick Kennedy recently said “Brown’s whole candidacy was shown to be a joke” the Twitterverse and Blogosphere exploded! And plans were quickly made among the same social media patriots who figured so prominently in the Scott Brown campaign to unseat Patrick Kennedy in November.

A post today on RedState will give you a taste of how the Twitterverse and Blogosphere are reacting. You can follow a few links there to see how grassroots groups and individuals are planning to implement the same support for John Loughlin as they did for Scott Brown. Granted this effort will not have the same “theater” as the election of the Forty-First Vote, but I believe it will be a great example of how the Tea Party Nation and social media can influence elections and support and ELECT more conservatives.

So fire up your Twitter account, follow NorsU and a few other prominent “Unseat Patrick Kennedy” voices and watch us work!

One of the efforts that I recommend all conservatives check out, join, and participate in is the Independence Caucus. I do find the websites … yes there are a few companion websites to visit … a little confusing, but I have heard that they are working to steamline their sites, yay. So I’ll include links in this blog to take you to some of the pages I’ll talk about.

The Icaucus Home Page provides a series of videos which are extremely helpful in explaining how we got here. In the right sidebar you’ll see a link “Click here to find out how to join forces with us!” which will bring you with a few more clicks to this page with a national map where you can select and join your state group. You can also join several other groups of interest such as Candidate Vetting Questions or Marketing Materials.

The mission of the The Independence Caucus is to find, vet, endorse, and elect Congressional candidates who have committed to “Fiscal Responsibility through Adherence to Constitutional authority”.

To accomplish this, I-caucus has developed a process that properly identifies and qualifies the principles of any and all congressional candidates.

The process is an 80-question interview which is sent out to Congressional candidates. That questionnaire is available as a downloadable PDF file here.

Once the candidates return the questionnaire, they are interviewed online via “go to meeting” software with a panel of IC members from their local districts/state. The candidate can give a 7 to 10 minute talk on why they are running for office, then the questions that the candidate answered “no” to are discussed with the candidate offering rationale for their answers, and then a series of pre-submitted questions are asked of the candidate by the moderator. I have sat in on three interviews for local Congressional candidates in the past week (these are the only three candidates who have submitted their questionnaires thus far in my area) and you can listen to those hour-long interviews here:

Jim Lee, SC District 4

Neal Collins, SC District 3

Richard Cash, SC District 3

Further discussion via comments is available at those pages. Once all the candidates for a district who have agreed to participate in the interview process have completed their interviews, the IC district members vote on which candidate to endorse, and the Independence Caucus will then work toward that candidate’s election, from primary through general election. The Independence Caucus folks have worked for months on this process, and my personal experience is that these interviews offer the voters opportunities to get very specific questions answered, and an depth discussion of a candidate’s convictions, and offer the candidates the opportunity to have a knowledgeable and committed group of local voters working toward their election.

Our friend Harry Kibler at RINOHUNT has passed along news of a good resolution from a meeting that took place today between Tea Party/Conservative organizations and the Chairman of the Greenville County GOP. I’ll just drop his report here. Please visit RINOHUNT, they are doing GREAT work at a very high level of watchdogging our state, and very importantly, reaching out to many conservative/Tea Party organizations in SC, coordinating communication and events, which is a GREAT service to our movement.

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I am pleased to announce the outcome of a meeting early this afternoon. The leadership of the upstate coalition of conservative organizations met with the Chairman of the Greenville County GOP to discuss the Greenville County and State GOP plan to implement a Tea Party Republican organization. The Chairman eloquently stated the goals of the County and State GOP to move the Party toward conservative ideology and adherence to the Party platform by incumbents and candidates. The coalition stated their position that the organization of a Tea Party Republican organization was offensive and would create unnecessary problems between the two organizations. We maintained that although our goals were the same, we desired to be independent from the GOP. Furthermore, we agreed that during the next precinct reorganization we would become involved through the precinct level.

After both sides aired their positions, it was mutually agreed that the County GOP would abandon their plan to create a Tea Party Republican organization and the website for the TPR would be taken down as soon as practical. The County Chairman has contacted the State Chairwoman and communicated our agreement with her. She has also agreed that there would be no attempt by the State GOP to start a Tea Party Republican organization in any County in South Carolina. Realizing our shared goals, they have decided to create a liaison that will work to reach our mutual goals by maintaining direct lines of communication between the State Party and our Grass Roots organizations. A representative will be selected to serve as the liaison from the State Republican Party and that person will work closely with the Leadership of our individual organizations.

A press conference will be set up at which time the grass roots organizations and the State Chairwoman will publically announce this agreement. We expect this announcement to take place within a few days.

Since the plan for the Tea Party Republicans has been withdrawn there is no need for a protest at the Executive Committee meeting on Monday February 1, 2010. The Chairman of the Greenville County GOP has invited everyone to attend the Executive Committee meeting and has assured us that we will be welcomed with open arms. Please make plans to attend this meeting, but leave your protest signs for other battlefields. The location of the meeting is Greenville Technical College TRC Building. The time of the meeting is 7:00 PM.

I am very pleased with the results of today’s efforts to work together to return our County, State and Nation to Constitutional limited government. If you have been sitting on the sidelines and waiting to get involved we need your help. Today’s results are a great example of what can happen when you get involved and are willing to work together.

Please visit www.rinohunt.net and join a truly conservative organization that is working to resist socialism, rebuild conservative government and restore our Constitution. Please send this newsletter to your friends and family to help spread the word. RINO season is here.

Sincerely,

Harry Kibler

Founder, RINO HUNT

I’m just gonna use the word “gay”. It’s easier, we’re all adults and know the issues and definitions. In the same way it annoys me to read “him- or herself” in manuals or text, having to slog through “homosexual or lesbian” throughout … just deal with it.

At various times in my life I’ve felt more or less strongly about gay issues, and I think those times have coincided with different gay friends and coworkers I’ve had. For some years I don’t give much thought, other times I wonder why this is such a huge issue when I see my pals living regular lives, much like mine, caring about their pets, their grades, their moms, striving to do quality work, contributing to our community, playing sports, working through life’s strife.

I ponder why conservatives and Christians have such a problem with gays in the military. I’m going to try to keep my focus on that issue. My premise will be largely the same whether I’m talking about gays in other roles of society, but this is the issue of the day. I concede that the Bible has some straightforward things to say about the sexual acts of homosexuality:

I Corinthians 6 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And

Romans 1 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

So Christians and some conservatives point to God’s word as their reason to deny gays the honor of serving in the military. AND I WOULD ABSOLUTELY AGREE WITH THEM! … if … they used the same passages/measurements of worthiness to also deny that honor of military service to people who are adulterers, thieves, greedy, slanderers, swindlers, deceivers, those with malice, envy, the arrogant, insolent and boastful, the gossipers, the heartless, the ruthless as also listed in those same Biblical passages.

The Bible says in Isaiah 59

Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

Sin is sin. And if one sin disqualifies you from military service then all should, because we are separated from God by any and all sins. Equally. We are not MORE separated from God because of homosexuality than we are by greed. Or envy. Or gossiping. We are not FURTHER away from His Grace because of an immoral … or shall I say to many the “distasteful” sexual sin of homosexuality than we are of the quite socially acceptable sin of regular boy/girl sexual immorality. Or even adultery. Are divorced/remarried people unfit for military service? Are men or women who have cohabitated with the opposite sex unfit for military service? Because God’s Word judges those sins on a completely equal footing as homosexuality. Do we disqualify liars from military service? Arrogant men? Greedy women? It is we humans who provide a sliding scale of which sins are worse, or more wrong, or less acceptable, or disgusting. So if it by the Biblical definition of sin that we keep gays out of the military, then I cry FOUL!

I’ve never served but I’m pretty tired of having folks who HAVE served tell me about the morale issues and so on. What morale issues? You think that a soldier who has qualified mentally, physically, emotionally, and psychologically for military service is going to be peeking at you in your well fitting uniform? Leering at you across the shooting range? Copping a feel in the foxhole? SERIOUSLY? The women in the military have learned to deal with blatant sexism and harassment, and you’d be a fool and disingenuous to argue otherwise. Grow up.

There are gays serving heroically and wonderfully in positions and roles with incredibly high stakes already, life and death situations. Doctors. Police officers. Firemen. And yes, in the military.

Now there can be other conversations we have about gay marriage. Gays adopting children. And I will say that any overt sexual display in public whether it be at a Gay Pride Parade, or a Mardi Gras Parade in New Orleans makes me uncomfortable. But that is not tonight’s discussion.

My conviction is that we should accept patriotic Americans as soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, coast guard and honor and respect their dedication to putting themselves in harm’s way and keeping us safe.

This came across my desk 2 days ago:

The South Carolina Republican Party has announced the formation of the South Carolina Tea Party Republican Organization. The official announcement will be made at the Greenville County GOP Executive Committee Meeting on Monday February 1, 2010. The Executive Committee meeting will be held at Greenville Technical College TRC Auditorium Building. The meeting will start at 7:00PM. The address is 506 S. Pleasantburg Dr. Greenville, SC

I understand having done some furious research and conferring that this is not the FIRST attempt by a state GOP party to co-opt a very successful Tea Party movement in a state, and I think it is something we will have to contend with more and more. Michael Johns had a blog Thursday about a similar situation in Florida. My preliminary investigation revealed that a few top officials in the SCGOP approached a few members and local tea party organizers in Greenville SC about helping them form Tea Party Republication Groups in exchange for “a seat at the table.” When it seemed as if the majority of Tea Partiers were not down with the plan, several sources reported the following remark made by GOP leadership; “We are going to do this with or without you.”

Here are some excerpts from correspondence sent out by Greenville County GOP leadership:

The Tea Party movement is the great awakening from the slumber we have all found ourselves in. Although the Republican Party has been led astray by some that have compromised the very principles that they were founded on, Greenville County Republicans continue to uphold those founding principles with great prejudice.

Because of this, we would like to create an endorsement of candidates for public office that designates them as “Tea Party Republicans.”

The ability to get such endorsement would come from a council made up of Tea Party Organizers, Young Republican Leadership and Greenville County Republican Party Leadership (with full authority from the SCGOP).

Now why is this SCGOP offering coming out of Greenville SC? Because on April 17, 2009 there was a Tea Party at the Bilo Center in Greenville, SC with more than 10,000 patriots in attendance, the biggest Tea Party in SC last year. So the potential is have a big impact in a county that hosted a huge event last year. Well as a member of the team who planned that very successful Tea Party at the Bilo Center, I can ASSURE the Greenville County Republican Party Leadership that they will indeed have a big impact …

… because the local/state Tea Party groups in SC intend to show the Greenville County Republican Party and the state SCGOP what a real Tea Party looks like when we have a Rebellion Tea Party against the Greenville County Republican Party. This is a declaration of war against the Real Tea Party organizations. Several conservative organizations will make our voices heard by these Tea Party Hijackers as we Rally on Monday night outside the Greenville Technical College TRC Auditorium Building (address above) with protest signs. We will start forming outside the building by 6:30 so we can watch the hijackers as they enter the building. Now is the time to take a real stand for the Tea Party principles.

I urge the Tea Party Nation to loudly quell such hijacking by your state GOP; this is not the first and it will not be the last until the Establishment GOP Leadership gets the message … we are not for sale for a “seat at the table”, we’ve seen how disastrous that has been in the past. We have not rallied and called and donated and blogged and registered voters for the past 12 months to hand it over to those VERY organizations who could not hold the line at fiscal responsibility and support of true conservative candidates before now. WE are the Tea Party Nation. You can have a seat at OUR table. If you support and run conservative candidates, we will vote for them. If you will not, we will find our own and support and donate to and vote for them.

If you are in the Upstate SC area, please plan to attend. If you are not, please blog about this situation and inform your local Tea Party leaders. It imperative that state GOPs not be successful in their attempt to take over legitimate Tea Party organizations, databases, memberships for their own purposes, and that if they try, we are ready, and let protest situations like this in Greenville, SC serve as warning for them.

I will always consider Scott Brown a hero. Of a magnitude of Washington, Lincoln, Reagan in that millions of people will grow up with greater liberties and self determination because of these months he’s campaigned relentlessly. His actual accomplishments in the Senate may be as average as any Senator in any state, past or present. And it is likely just the hand of God that determined that he would be the right man in the right place at the right time to save our Republic. But he will be.

I will pray for him to embrace humility because with today’s instant all consuming media he will be heaped with praise and cries of destiny fulfilled that heroes of the past, be they men of sterling character, or just those average men in the right place and the right time never experienced. imagine the pressures.

And I will feel in no way kindly toward my conservative peers who may chip away at future disappointments with him. He’s been very plain about his convictions. It may even serve us all well that a “moderate” Republican becomes the vehicle through which we regain our country.

and yes I am writing this before Election Day.

Last night was one of those that I spent so frustrated and angry about how our country GOT HERE! I have in the past (before my recent awakening) gave a glance at other countries who seemed to have surrendered to crushing regimes and dictators and in my arrogance thought “Well they should have DONE something before it got to that point.”

I am so ashamed of that now.

Because we are right there.

And it will be by God’s grace, which we have experienced since the birth of our nation in the form of our liberty and the exceptionalism that liberty spawns, that we will/may recover. I say “may” because I’m not yet recovered from my angst of last night. Some days I am so afraid that too much power will have been grabbed by this administration for the small percentage of patriots who have awakened and joined those who have been SCREAMING for years to overcome. I believe that we will have great victories at the polls this year, but I fear that those victories will not be numerically enough. Or that we will not use our victories for complete reversal and denunciation of all the policies and laws that have already been passed.

And our current congress/senate members are not helping me overcome my angst. WHY are they not standing outside the closed doors? WHY? Why are they still oh so politely conforming to the niceties and cordiality of that institution which has become a dung heap of corruption? I had this post halfway written earlier today and then I read vassar’s RedState Diary. Oh so much more elegant than my I’M MAD WHY WON’T THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS DO SOMETHING! wailing. So pat me on the head “now now, there there” then rush over to read that.

And sometime around mid afternoon today I’ll have a soda, plug in my fax machine, send some Dems a fax that pictures lemmings going over a cliff into a swath of pitchforks, look at my bank account to see if I can afford another $25 to Scott Brown, and make a few more calls to my friends inviting them to my meet and greet in a few weeks for Jim Lee, candidate for SC04.

And it really has helped to watch this video America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians a few times. Hmmm … is there any way to put it on “continuous play”?

I can’t remember. Not for reasons that have anything to do with imbibing adult beverages. I’m just not a big fan of the Auld Lang Syne, let’s recap the year, top 100 list of, blah blah blah. No family parties. Usually no special celebrations. Perhaps I had stocked up on snacks and was watching a few movies that I missed during the year. OH! And calming down my border collie who suffers from loud noise trauma. Darn those fireworks!

There are some New Year’s Eves past that I do remember of course. A grand “dress to the nines” corporate event I was invited to, complete with horn blowers and balloon drop. The year my then boyfriend’s band had a gig at a local establishment. The Y2K watch, that was some fun eh?

I am quite certain, though, that I will remember this year’s New Year’s Eve next year. Not so much for any big parties or plans. I will either be heartsick, mournfully and regretfully remembering the last NYE that I had some expectation that good would triumph, being mistakenly hopeful that we could elect enough local and national conservative candidates to STOP the destruction of our economy, health care system, and national defense …

OR

I/we will be celebrating the end of a long year of hard work during which Americans stood up against tyranny, many conservative candidates were elected through sacrificial funding and campaigning, and our nation is finally on the verge of fragilely yet steadily regaining personal liberties and economic balance in anticipation of the reemergence of free market capitalism bolstered by a return of representative governing.

And I may be gleefully celebrating the devastation that we had delivered to all those politicians and media slimes we despise so much, and their special interest suck ups. OH PLEASE LET ME BE DOING THE HAPPY DANCE NEXT New Year’s Eve!!~!~!~~!~

One of the blogs I read daily not only for info and entertainment, but to soothe my troubled angst is http://hillbuzz.org/

Those gay guys in Chicago lay it down hard. They are definitely amusing and snarky (two GOOD qualities), but they are also well informed, and best of all … PISSED AS ANYTHING!

They are great writers and just put it on the line on many issues, but their trademark target is Obama’s treatment of Hillary during the campaign. They supported her and despise him and his administration and now the Democratic majority.

So I was PSYCHED to read the following in their column the other day as they pondered the future in regards the Dems passing healthcare:

We do not, however, think Republicans are tough enough. They aren’t fighting socialism hard enough. The GOP is not offering up a solid enough rebuke of Democrats’ behavior, with a firm battle plan to take back the country and set us all on a course towards prosperity again.

If Republicans did that, we don’t know where we’d end up on the spectrum, but think we’d be able to culturally stop calling ourselves Democrats at all if things reached that point.

And in reading the comments section I saw many similar comments saying basically there are people willing to call themselves “former Democrats” if only the Republican party will get their act together.

It is maddening. It is one of those things that I cannot wrap my brain around, how clearly we can see that the Republican party will be strengthened, not weakened, if we run to our strengths and call out LOUDLY and BLUNTLY the progressives/liberals. sorry for all the caps today. but I am yelling.

(These are the same guys, btw, who brought me to tears with their apology to the Bush family, the comments to that article now number over 1,300, very heartening when you need a fix of something good.)

I’ve always been a conservative, but admittedly it’s never before been the defining characteristic of how I viewed myself. It was the foundation of my decisions and thoughts, but more like a character trait, not how people defined me, such as “She’s a conservative and as such blah blah.” I was the ‘spay/neuter lady’ or ‘our editor” or even sometimes ‘his girlfriend’ or ‘DJ’s sister.’ But over the holiday I bet many of us were newly defined this year, as I was, when during a dinner I attended I was pointed out as the one who knows all about that healthcare thing.

As we are drawn into conversations while we spend downtime with friends and family this season about the healthcare bill, the big spending, and the myriad issues that we live and breathe each day that others give a passing glance to as headlines, where do we start? Some want to argue; those I ignore for now, if there are others around who are even only mildly but genuinely curious about asking questions and/or testing their conclusions based on their own observations. (People used to ask me in my spay/neuter field how to convince the guy down the road with the pit bull chained to a tree to neuter his dog. I’d tell them they could either spend fruitless hours trying to convince the currently unconvinceable, or they could spend those same hours giving good info to six other people who were looking for solutions for their pets … Which was more productive? Which gave you the result you wanted?)

So where DO I start when I find people who genuinely want more information, or even are ready to insert themselves into the process? I tend to overload with info, and to give them a list of all the websites and blogs I visit daily, all those I follow on Twitter, all the bookmarks I have sorted into categories that I can use to fact check … well it would make their HEAD EXPLODE! I began getting angry and frustrated and needing an outlet for such even before last year’s elections, so I was able to build my connection base as events unfolded, but to jump in now? Yikes.

Yeah, each person will be different and their questions and concerns will give me guidance on where to direct them. And I’ll figure it out as I go, with something a little more personalized than “watch Fox News” or “read the Constitution.” (Yes Cold Warrior, your blogs will be part of my chats also.)

It’s just a new realization for me, a recent activist myself, that “Civics 101, the 2010 version” has now become part of my responsibility as a patriot conservative, and I don’t want to screw it up.