"I Am Compelled to Fight"

“I volunteered to fight in this war.  I have risen through the ranks and now find myself on the front lines with an army of New Media warriors following me into the fray.  It is no longer a choice to fight; I am compelled to fight.”  -Andrew Breitbart

I did volunteer to fight in this war, fifteen years ago when I began my involvement in politics.  It happened this way: there was a meeting at my church talking about how to attend political conventions and learn the political process to promote prolife views.  I definitely wanted in on that.  So I did more than vote in the general election for the first time that year.  I voted in my first Republican primary, and attended my first Republican convention.  And it was like crack.

In the years since, I’ve had opportunities to work on campaigns, attend candidate forums, walk blocks and make phone calls, and meet a ton of dedicated people who love this country and want to see it governed well. 

Then the financial crisis threatened us.  Then the bailouts happened.  Then THIS happened.

So then I had an opportunity to start a tea party, organize protests and rallies, become a media spokesperson, and give speeches and presentations.  Oh, and meet, educate, and train a ton MORE people who love this country and want to see it governed well.

My philosophy has always been, since I started in politics, that I had a responsibility to share my knowledge.  If I knew how to do something, I wanted to teach others how to do it too.  If I learned about an issue on the ballot, I wanted others to have the same information. 

Sometimes that has made me a challenge to people who just don’t eat and breathe and sleep politics.  I get that.  In fact, my own family blocks me on social media because they know what my feed looks like.  But by the same token, I get phone calls asking for information about candidates.  I have people who drive by my house before each election to check the signs in my yard.  Being a political junkie has that upside: the ability to influence others.

People have urged me to run for office for years.  My stock answer: “No.  Never.”  I’ve seen how difficult elections are.  I’ve seen some great people chewed up and spit out by the stress and the strain of running.  Campaigns are often brutal, nasty, frustrating, and draining.  I’ve never felt called to run for any office; I much prefer being in the campaign, working behind the scenes.

Until now.

As a tea party leader, I’ve wanted to be independent of the Republican Party for many reasons.  I wanted to be free to hold Republicans accountable.  I wanted to avoid the charge of being a Republican auxiliary.  I wanted to focus on the core beliefs of tea party: fiscal responsibility, free markets, following the Constitution.  I handed the precinct over to another passionate volunteer so as not to shortchange either the tea party or the Republican Party.  But I’ve stayed involved in Republican politics, even serving on the Rules Committee at the Republican Party of Texas’s State Convention last summer.

But my county is in trouble.  The largest county in the largest Red State has been turning blue before my eyes.  I’ve seen what progressive policies are doing in other states, in other counties in my own state.  I’ve seen what they’re doing to us as a nation.  And I can’t watch from the sidelines anymore. 

I don’t have the confidence required to believe the current leadership in the Harris County Republican Party is able to handle the Battleground Texas assault, the technology gap, the lack of strategic partnerships or the messaging shortcomings we face.  And I refuse to sit through another election cycle wishing I could do more.

It is no longer a choice to fight.  I am compelled to fight.

I’m announcing that I am going to run for Harris CountyRepublican Party Chair in 2014. 

There will be a more formal launch coming soon, but I wanted to let all of you know my intentions and ask for your support with tackling the issues we face.  As I put together the campaign organization, I’ll be asking for your help, whether you live in Harris County or across the country.  This county is rapidly becoming Ground Zero in the political struggle against progressive policies, and it is going to take a massive effort to fight them back. 

It’s going to take an army.

#WAR

Weary

This week was a kick in the gut.  

Boston. West, TX. Boston again. Other events that didn't get so much publicity.  I lost sleep and had my heart repeatedly broken all week long.  It's hard being a news junkie.  

And I didn't have anyplace to put my frustration, my ache, my anger.  Then I remembered this old place, and so here I am.  I know I'm a fail for letting it go five months without posting, but I've been kind of busy writing elsewhere.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, speculation ran wild on the type of perpetrators who may have done this evil.  Various media asshats showed their true colors this week.  This is the one that finally sent my rage nuclear.

Andrew Breitbart's book isn't titled "Righteous Indignation" for nothing.  He was livid that the good, decent, hard-working Americans who embraced tea party values were maligned time and again.  It infuriated him that people like us were blamed, vilified, lied about, and marginalized in the mainstream media, all with the aim to defeat our efforts to make this country better.  His mission was to take on the mainstream media, call them out, expose them, and rob them of their power to define us.  He encouraged us to become citizen journalists, citizen ombudsmen, citizen activists.  And people are answering the call.

I just wish it were more.  

Every day I fear that there aren't enough of us doing enough to fight back at everything they're throwing at us.  I already know there's never going to be a day when this fight is over, not in my lifetime.  I'll never retire from this, not really.  And I am not saddled with a full-time job around which I have to work my activism, so I'm able to absorb more than a lot of people.  

My heart is broken for all those people lost this week, and their families and friends.  But at the same time (and I don't think it diminishes anything the victims are going through) my heart is also battered and weary over the uphill battle the rest of us face.  We shouldn't have to fight so hard just to keep a good name, but we do, and there's no amount of wishing that will change it.  

Saul Alinsky was a pretty awful bastard, but I do find this quote helpful:

As an organizer I start where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be — it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.

So that's where I think my head is going to be for the next few weeks.  I need to think about the stark reality we face.  I need to come to terms with exactly what the situation is on the ground in America.  And then, God willing, I'll be able to start thinking of ways to change it.

This Guy is Teaching Children. Sigh.

Chadwick Harvey is lazy.  

In his recent piece “Tea Party Uses Religion to ManipulateWorking Class Americans Into Buying Their Dogma” Harvey makes a number of unsupported assertions, attempting to cast the tea party phenomenon as an elitist con-job perpetrated on ordinary religious Americans. 

Harvey begins with his interpretation of what seems to be Marx’s quote regarding religion being “the opiate of the masses.”  He claims that Marx believed religion was used as a tool of oppression by the wealthy classes.  Harvey states: “…society seemed to be defined by a class struggle in which the wealthy brainwashed the working class with religion to influence them to work hard and produce more goods so that the rich could continue to get richer.”  But a quick search of Marx’s ENTIRE quote provides a different view:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

Now, I’m no fan of Marx, but even I can see that Marx said nothing like the words Harvey is putting into his mouth.  Mischaracterizing a quotation in order to balance an entire argument upon it is no way to begin a serious conversation about the role of religion in tea party politics. 

In his full quote, Marx is referring to religion as (in his view) a coping mechanism for the suffering that the lower classes undergo at the hands of the wealthy class, not a tool of those elites; a balm, not a yoke. 

Harvey goes on, building from his error, to cast the tea party as a vehicle for elites to manipulate middle-class religious conservatives:   “In America today, one need not look any further than the Tea Party and its influence on middle class evangelicals to find Marx's theory proven correct.”  So Harvey sets up his thesis: The Elitists cooked up Tea Party to mollify those losing economic ground every day by distracting them from the serious economic issues of the day and diverting them to social issues with far more light, but less heat. 

However, Harvey immediately begins to “prove” his assertions with unsupported statements:

When the movement burst onto the scenes of American politics in 2009, it was a group of unpatriotic typical elite Americans complaining that they had been taxed enough already. As the movement grew, a large number of middle class evangelicals joined. In addition to the fiscal issues and national debt concerns that led to the formation of the Tea Party, the movement has adopted a strong focus on social issues that is more typical of religious right-wing evangelicals.

• ·         “unpatriotic” offered with neither definition nor explanation
• ·         “typical elite” also offered with neither of the above
• ·         “a large number of middle class evangelicals joined” as opposed to evangelicals being intimately involved in the origins of the movement

As one of the original organizers of the February 27^th 2009 tea parties, I was a participant on the organizing conference calls moderated by Michael Patrick Leahy.  Those recorded calls constitute a historical record that documents the type of people responsible for launching this movement.  They weren’t rich people.  They weren’t elitists.  They had no connection to agenda-funding billionaires or vast troves of financing (such as exists on the Astroturfed Left).  The organizers were instead stay-at-home-moms, small businessmen, professionals – the middle class, in short.

But the proof Harvey attempts to cite concerning elitists is the establishment of the Tea Party Caucus in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Michelle Bachmann in July of 2010, an event that took place a full SEVENTEEN MONTHS after the beginning of the nationwide tea party movement.  He compounds his error with citing the names of wealthy congressmen with religious ties.  He names:

1) Trent Franks, wealthy oil businessman from Arizona who is a faithful member of a Baptist Church.

2) Joe Wilson, a wealthy Real Estate attorney from South Carolina who is a faithful attender of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia.

3) John Fleming, a wealthy businessman and long time Sunday school teacher who last year on MSNBC infamously complained that he has only $400,000 left over at the end of each year.

I hate to remind Mr. Harvey, but a good number ofRepresentatives and Senators are very wealthy including:   

• ·         Sen. John Kerry
• ·         Sen. Dianne Feinstein
• ·         Rep. Nancy Pelosi
• ·         Sen. Claire McCaskill

All of these are, by the way, higher on the list in terms of wealth than Franks, Wilson or Fleming.

But it isn’t merely wealth that’s disturbing Harvey; apparently all of these are (gasp) religious people.  And what’s worse, OPENLY religious people.  THAT’S the issue he seems to have.  However, he doesn’t take this objection anywhere:

While the overwelming (sic) majority of congressmen and congresswomen are affiliated with some religion, not all choose to share their religious dogma openly. Not surprisingly, the percentage of those in the Tea Party caucus who share their religion openly is more than double that of the rest of Congress.

They SHARE THEIR RELIGION OPENLY.  MORESO than the REST of Congress.  Scary religious people, talking about their religion.  That’s all he has. 

Or is it?  He continues:

The motive is not hard to figure out. Members of the Typical Elite Americans Party have little else to offer the middle class, so they use religion as a toy to create a culture war. This leads to working class evangelicals voting against their personal best interests due to their reliance on a religious dogma that gives them hope that although they are the losers in the class struggle, they can be winners in the next life. 

Harvey renames tea party with “Typical Elite Americans” in an attempt to be cute, and then claims the tea party has little else to offer the middle class except religion, the means of perpetuating a culture war.  He doesn’t explain how this works at all, how a movement devoted to lower taxes and spending, following the Constitution, and personal responsibility is cleverly being used by elites to manipulate working-class evangelicals into “voting against their personal best interests due to their reliance on a religious dogma that gives them hope that although they are the losers in the class struggle, they can be winners in the next life.”  

Harvey essentially charges that religious tea party members are being spoon-fed a social issue narrative designed to distract them from the real economic issues facing the nation.  Or something.  He really never even gets around to addressing the economic situation at all.

Ironically, at the same time, Harvey takes the mainstream-media-driven narrative about the tea party straight, no chaser; he swallows the spoon-feeding that the MSM have been doling out for years, and attempts to regurgitate it.  And he doesn’t even do that skillfully or originally.

His piece ignores the tea party involvement in the Health Care Town Hall meetings where average citizens quoted the Constitution at their representatives; the massive tax-protest rallies around the country and in Washington D.C.; the nationwide effort to support Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts; and innumerable other issues unrelated to social issues and religion.

Essentially the only thing that Harvey does seem to be offering, when you wade through all the nonsense, is this single huge revelation:

Harvey thinks religion is for stupid people. 

That’s his entire complaint – that the tea party has religious people in it.  I could have slept in; I can get that anywhere, from much smarter and more articulate people.

Public Property, Private Use

As a tea party leader, I've organized several rallies and protests around the Houston area.  When we held our first rally on the grounds of Discovery Green, we paid hundreds of dollars to secure the venue and insurance and the proper permits.


When we held our huge Tax Day Tea Party April 15, 2009 that brought over 11,000 people to Jones Plaza in downtown Houston, we spent thousands of dollars to secure the venue and insurance, as well as pay for off-duty officers to provide security and crowd control.  


When Occupy decided to start a Houston chapter, however, we never heard of permits, or insurance, or security.  Tents sprung up around the park, people camped out, and the group even made use of city power without paying.  That always struck me as wrong and inequitable.


We in the tea party have always been willing, and usually been able, to pay for the use of public property such as parks and public buildings.  We believe in following the rules, and in doing what's right while we call attention to the miserable state of the finances at all levels of government.


So when I saw that the ads from supposed "tea party" District Attorney candidate Mike Anderson were shot in an actual courtroom and NOT on a set, I got a little miffed.  Did Anderson, who retired as a judge but who occasionally serves in that court, PAY for the privilege to use county resources to film an ad for his campaign?  Was that even legal?


It may or may not be, but the principle is what gets me.  


I don't know much about county politics, but I know any D.A. race is contentious; especially so here, after Harris County went through the Rosenthal scandal.  I'm not working on D.A. Lykos' campaign, and there are a few cases where I want to ask some serious questions about her office's policies.  But after paying our way so dilligently for so long, and seeing the Occupy crowd get special treatment from the city, I decided to see if an ordinary citizen can get a hearing on this type of complaint. 


So today I'm filing a complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct over this ad.  We'll see what happens.  It may amount to nothing.  But I'm tired of seeing ethical lapses brushed aside with an "Oh, well.  Nothing you can do about it."  Let's see whether Anderson filmed the ad properly by paying for the use of public facilities.  If so, fine.  If not, then I want an explanation.  And possibly a refund.

Bill Kneer Wants You to Shut Up

The Patriot Statesman posted a piece this week in response to this article from precinct chair Dale Huls, where Dale made the case for reform of the leadership of the HCRP.  Bill Kneer penned the piece to take up the defense of Chairman Woodfill, which we'll take a closer look at below.  


The article begins by quoting Huls, then offers this: 


While the accusations of the well-intended yet misguided seem to fire up a few against our current leadership the accusations made are just flat wrong. 


The accusations are "just flat wrong" Kneer says.  One expects a point-by-point refutation to follow.  Instead Kneer continues:


So let’s take some time to highlight the positive things that have happened within Harris County over the last decade under the leadership of Chairman Jared Woodfill.

• 4 out of 5 Republican sweeps within Harris County
• Well over $10 million raised to support the local party
• The Harris County Republican Party has remained debt-free
• In 2010 presided over the biggest victory in the 62 year history of the Harris County Republican Party
• Under the leadership of Jared Woodfill the local party has stood strong for our conservative values and has never caved in to pressure from the left

Ever the cheerleader, Kneer defaults to the party talking points.  Four sweeps in five terms looks impressive, certainly.  But claiming to have raised over $10 million becomes problematic.  A look at the Texas Ethics Commission reports reveals 80% of contributions in that quarter came from campaigns. The debt-free claim is silliness, because an entity that would lend to the HCRP would require at minimum some kind of accounting or audit, something the leadership runs from.  Moving on to the 2010 election, it would be instructive to see what the HCRP did in order to achieve this.  (There might have been something else going on during 2010 to boost conservative voter turnout, but I can't think what it might have been.  Maybe some original grassroots political movement or something.) 


Now the last item: "stood strong for conservative values" and "has never caved in to pressure from the left."  Kneer can't resist picking up the pom poms again, and attempting to recite platitudes as proof.  Which conservative values?  Fiscal responsibility?  And WHAT pressure from the left?  Pressure to do what?  Kneer, again, never says.  


Kneer tackles one of Huls' points this way: 

These misguided critics would take the great conservative record and spin a different story, “The HCRP leadership has laid bare a record of incompetence and mismanagement with respect to raising funds in the largest voting county in Texas (3^rd largest in the nation) to adequately fund HCRP facilities and operations.”

This statement is not only wrong but it is a downright lie. The truth is, that while no one is perfect Chairman Jared Woodfill has done an incredible job at growing our party within Harris County. Under the leadership of Jared Woodfill the County’s political map has become so red that the only chance a Democrat has is being appointed through the courts.

Again with the platitudes, Kneer is short on details.  "Incredible job at growing" the party.  The "political map has become so red" that no Democrats stand a chance.  Perhaps Kneer and company think repeating a lie makes it true.  A quick look at this map and this map show how much in denial they are at Richmond Avenue.  The fact that Democrat Bill White won Harris County in the 2010 election for governor will have long-reaching implications - Democrats are in control of the ballot board and serve as the election judges for early voting.  Ask True The Vote whether they think that's "so red" in this county.


Kneer then jumps back onto the financial picture, repeating "ten million dollars" as if it were a mantra to ward away vampires:


Chairman Woodfill does not ask for money, just to save it in the bank account and collect dust. Chairman Woodfill does the responsible thing. He plans a project, documents the plan, counts the cost, then and only then he goes out and gets the money to complete the task at hand. This is the responsible thing to do and he is done well for the last10 years. Under Jared Woodfill’s leadership our Party has grown and remained debt-free in the process.

Interesting.  I would wager there are members of county party leadership who would beg to differ.  But this also looks like an invocation of Luke 14:28 - "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?"  Problem is, without budgets or audits no one can know whether this is true.  You can't COUNT THE COST that you can't see; without audits and budgets there is no way to evaluate this claim.  Kneer claims Woodfill does all these things, then offers no proof but his say-so.  Isn't that remniscent of what Nancy Pelosi wanted Congress to do - approve things and THEN evaluate them?

Kneer next tackles a charge that has not been made.  He sets up his straw man by saying he always hears complaints of Republicans turning into RINOs or weak defenders of conservatism.  But not Jared!

Throughout his lifetime, Jared Woodfill has stood strong for the social and fiscal conservative values embodied in the Texas Republican Party platform. There’s not been one time where Jared Woodfill has caved in and betrayed our commonly held beliefs. He has stood strong in the battle against those on the Left as well as those on the Right who would have us leave the time-tested principles and convictions that have brought us victory.

Again, Kneer has no examples here, merely his word.  But that doesn't matter, because the charge has not been made.  Nothing to see here.

The job of the Harris County Republican Party chairman is not to do all the work by himself. It is to lead our local Party and be the spokesperson of “we the people” that make up the base of our County Party. To spread the vision of the Republican Party to all those who do not know who and what we are and stand for. There’s no one here locally that articulates our conservative message is consistently, and precisely, as Chairman Jared Woodfill.


I would argue that the chairman of the party is supposed to manage, grow, and maintain the party as well.  But going with Kneer's definition of spreading the vision, is this why the Outreach Committee hasn't met in ages?  


Now the pitch: 


Let’s not change generals the night before the battle, and take a chance on losing our nation. Jared Woodfill has been a great leader, a man of honor, integrity, and consistency.


Yes, great leaders never changed generals.  Not Lincoln.  Not Truman.  And this same argument was used in 2010 against the current Republican Party of Texas chair Steve Munisteri; he'd never be able to be ready for the fall election, he'd take too long to learn what he needed to know.  In mere months, however, Munisteri had pulled RPT out of huge six-figure debts, and back into the black in time for the 2010 election.  And notice how Kneer equates a Woodfill loss to a chance at "losing our nation."  What kind of awkward hyperbole is that?  


Kneer closes with this:

Since 2008 I have stood by Jared Woodfill and fought as hard as I could to help grow our local Party and save our nation. And since 2008 I have had the same people consistently nipping at my heels complaining about everything we do while they do nothing.  It is easy to criticize, especially when you do nothing to assist in growing the Party.  Every two years we hear from the same malcontent faction.  After the Primary, we don’t hear from or see these critics offering to lift a finger to help the Party, but come Primary time, they are there prevaricating and criticizing without having served the Party in the interim.

I call on all those who continually find fault and complain to man up, shut up, and help us defeat Democrats in November!

This is the best part of the whole piece.  Kneer charges unnamed critics with being biennial malcontents, only criticizing the party when primary elections roll around.  Who are these non-working malcontents, Bill?  


Would it be Dale Huls, who joined the party as a precinct chair in 2010 and, in addition to working with the Clear Lake Tea Party on their board, has worked on his wife's campaigns for state house, served on the board of Saddle Up Texas, attended Clear Lake Area Republican meetings and has attended Republican conventions as well as conservative rallies in Washington D.C.?


Would it be David Jennings, who has researched and then posted more information about the party than the party itself?  


Would it be Paul Simpson, founder of Conservatives in Action - a group who helps precinct chairs manage voter information in their precincts?  Paul who dares challenge the way HCRP is doing things, and who hopes to improve, strengthen and grow the HCRP?


We don't know, because Kneer doesn't say.  But Kneer DOES say they should shut up.  Bill would prefer critics to remain silent, but why?  Is it not possible to both criticize an organization AND work for its success?  


Aren't the two sometimes the same thing?  


Edited to add - It'd be very interesting to go drop your opinion on to Kneer's article, just to see whether they are moderating comments as well.  Most posts don't have comments, but that could be because they write such crap.  So go on, leave a comment, and report here below whether your comment made it to the light of day!

Living With Romney?

I know, I know; a lot of people are bummed that Santorum dropped out of the presidential race.  Newt's still chugging away, but mathematically there's not much hope for Newt.  What the upcoming primary voters in states yet to hold a primary actually do is looking less and less important to the eventual outcome.


However, that doesn't mean that people should drop their favorite candidate in the primary and just vote for Romney.  Protest votes and sending a message are fine strategies, and I applaud and encourage them, and will engage in them when Texas votes.


But eventually, we'll get to the place where Romney has accumulated enough delegates to be the Republican nominee.  That's a prospect that fills few reform Republicans and conservatives with glee.  So then what?


Jimmie Bise Jr. has an answer.  Go to the site for his radio show "The Delivery" and download the podcast from April 4th.  Listen to the whole hour.  Jimmie rants about the Romney candidacy, and does it in a way that I find quite eloquent.  But Jimmie doesn't just rant.  Jimmie proposes a Grand Bargain.


I couldn't say it as well as he does:




"I've reached a compromise in my head with the Republican Party...


"I am going to extend some credit to the Republican party.  I am going to vote for Mitt Romney.  I am going to do my very best, consistent with my ability to keep my own intellectual integrity intact.  I am going to recommend to my friends that they vote for Mitt Romney... I want Mitt Romney to beat Barack Obama.  I will do whatever I have to do to drag this dead horse over the finish line.


"That's what I'm going to give the Republican party... Republicans, that what you get from me.  I don't want to do this, I don't like doing this, but I will do it.  I'll do it because, quite honestly, you have me behind the eight ball.


"But know this, Republican Party; after November, I am no longer behind the eight ball.  And I don't have to do anything else for you at all...


"So here's where the compromise comes in...  I'll drag his bloated ideological corpse where it has to be...
but I want something in return... You have dragooned me into doing something for you....


"I'm telling you, you're not going to have me locked to this oar forever... after November, you start paying me back...


"I will not do this again.


"No more, Republicans, I'm done with this.  WE are done with this.  All those tea party people that right now you think you have under your thumb, they're there till November."






Hear the rest at The Delivery, and tell me what you think.  I think I could live with this, the way Jimmie puts it.

HCRP 4/2 Meeting Recap

Last night's Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee meeting was... interesting.  As I wrote on HTPS this week, there were rumors of several resolutions being offered, and those were the talk of the meeting.  There's no way to know what motivated people, but attendance was the highest I can recall, both among precinct chairs, candidates, and visitors.


One highlight of unity before getting into the conflict: the Local Government Committee's report contained a resolution opposing the Houston Feeding Ordinance, which passed the committee unanimously, and which was adopted by the executive committee with their report.  So HCRP's MEMBERSHIP is on record as opposing the attempt to control efforts to feed the homeless in Houston.  The Local Government committee deserves props for making this issue part of their report, and the membership should be pleased to know that the resolution will be brought before Houston City Council today.  A lot of the time resolutions passed in these meetings don't appear to matter much, but this one does; it carries official weight of the party in opposing a bad ordinance.  That's all to the good.  Kudos, people; well done.


And what of the other resolutions?  


AUDIT


Randy Kubosh offered the resolution to ask for a monthly financial accounting, which was ruled out of order, since it would involve a bylaws change.  Changes to the bylaws require some notice ahead of the meeting, and thus this resolution truly was out of order.  Bylaws changes are proposed through the Rules Committee, which operates with a natural (and understandable) reluctance to propose a lot of changes to the bylaws.  That said, a member who wanted to increase reporting, or make changes to the accountability requirements would have to navigate Rules committee meetings, hope that the committee approved the changes, wait for the Rules committee to notify the membership of a proposed change with proper notice, and then wait for the meeting at which there was enough of a quorum in order to vote on a change to the bylaws.  


It's a little maddening, sure.  A lot depends on the members of the Rules committee, and whether they judge the change to be acceptable.  But making bylaws difficult to amend is purposeful - it ensures deliberation before changing rules or procedures that are already in place

• so members have proper notice of structural changes to their organization
• so that everyone knows ahead of time what is being proposed
• so membership has time to digest the effect of the proposed change

Still, proposing some financial accountability on the floor of the Executive Committee meeting is one way to begin building support, but the members calling for this kind of accountability next need to begin drafting changes to bylaws and circulating them among the membership.  If the Rules committee sees a very large and passionate portion of the membership supporting this move, they will have a difficult time ignoring it.  Petitions from the precinct chairs, anyone?


FUNDING CONVENTION


In response to the news that the party would be charging candidates to speak at the upcoming April 21st convention, Ed Hubbard and other activists in the county challenged "the way we've always done things" and called for the leadership to request donations from those in attendance instead.  Ed went so far as to start a pledge drive to prove that the grassroots would indeed step up to the challenge and pay for the event.  A resolution to that effect was offered last night as well.  Most opponents felt that charging candidates from between $500 and $5,000 to speak was certainly a practice that should be stopped.


The short story is that, though there was no way to mandate that the party charge individuals an admission fee, the final amended resolution threw the issue back to the Advisory Committee (made up of the county's Senate District chairs) and scrapped the candidate fees.  Though Chairman Woodfill complained about it to the Chronicle, Hubbard's thinking here is sound:

• since the candidate-funding model began, there has been an influx of new precinct chairs
• those new chairs and activists are still learning how the party operates 
• many have been brought to the party through tea party and grassroots efforts
• many have ties to low-budget, grassroots candidates who would be at a disadvantage using the candidate-funding model

All that is important, because the arguments last night from those who wanted to keep the model were along these lines:

• we've done it for a long time now, what's new?
• this is a political stunt
• candidates ASKED for this back in the '90s
• candidates benefit most, why not have them pay?
• tea parties charge candidates, why not the party?

You already know what I think of "We've always done it" thinking.  And as for a political stunt?  Is there any time that this resolution could be offered when leadership or its cronies would NOT say that?  Any hint of criticism of the leadership seems to bring out the same sad cast of characters, blustering and arguing that "the critics never do anything to help" and similar arguments.  As one who has seen over the past several years how very MANY of these critics of the party leadership have given their time and effort to work with and for the party, I'm disgusted with those old lines.  


If candidates indeed asked for this model back in the '90s, it would seem even then that forces in the party were hoping to keep low-budget (read: not backed by big money) candidates from reaching that audience.  No need to have an opportunity to critically assess EACH candidate, just the ones who can afford it.  Sure candidates, benefit, but so do the attendees, and shutting some out for not having a fat checkbook effectively favors candidates in an election, and should stop.


And the tea party charge?  Tea parties have charged for tables and booths, just as any other exhibitors would do.  What they have not been known to do is charge candidates to become part of a speaker roster.  If anything, tea party has given candidates more exposure, for less money, than any political party so ill-funded has been able to do.


This resolution was debated furiously; at one time opponents of the resolution attempted to table it into irrelevance, which the body refused to do.  It finally passed, and we will know soon what model will take its place.


POLLAND REBUKE


Before the resolution to rebuke Gary Polland for his support of Mayor Parker in his Texas Conservative Review could be offered, a hasty motion to adjourn (well after normal meeting adjournment times, to be fair) was made, seconded, and passed.  It's no wonder EC members were weary after the prior measures, and were ready to go home.  It seems that resolution will have to be brought up in a future meeting; however timing was important on this item.  Polland's endorsements will be going out during this primary season, and the EC lost an opportunity to let him, and primary voters who receive his newsletter, know that he has lost credibility in Harris County.  


We'll see what happens at convention, in the primary, and at the next EC meeting.  Change is slow, people, but sometimes it does come.