Don’t hold this against be but in a weak moment at the “Mass Meeting” (barely filling a small room but 10X larger than the average Biden rally) I had a moment of weakness. I filed an application to join the local party and now I’m having second thoughts. Big time. Why?
Lemme tell ya – it is NOT because of the people involved. Near as I can tell they are all very good people. What’s wrong is their focus. I’d already slapped down my application and fee (which will be repeated in June because that is when their annual membership dues come due – eye roll) before I realized what should have been obvious: this local committee (party nub, clique, whatever) sole purpose is to elect Republicans. That’s it. Okay well, they do have a scholarship program and I suppose they have an additional interest in expanding the local party – but all that goes back to putting Republicans in office.
Now I have no problem with this per se, but my own purpose, my own goals are somewhat different. For one thing, I don’t give a whit what brand of politician holds any particular office. My question is are they for liberty or agin it? If they want to start and fund more government – they are agin liberty. Plain and simple. Don’t skew my words – I do NOT advocate anarchy – and I DO believe some government is necessary. But we’ve lost sight of the meaning of limited government.
To this end, I’m far more interested in holding our elected officials accountable. I’d rather put their feet to the fire to entice them to make what we’ve already got in place work or get rid of it. With getting rid of most government entities and programs taking top priority. Lots of politicians talk about limiting government, few, VERY few follow through. Such is never in the best interest in the Party and thus takes a back seat.
My secondary interests this year is actually on par with the Republican Party as a whole – get Republicans elected. This year. That “red wave” the pundits so slovenly talk about is needed this year more than ever but talk is cheap. We need action. We need results. We need voters.
The problem with this little committee is it seems all they are prepared to do is put up signs and make phone calls – more or less. Sure some will sell raffle tickets to benefit the scholarship fund. Some will raise money for candidates. What I do not see is any interest in getting more citizens involved. For me this is basic. As long as we have a disinterested and disheartened citizenship, we will see lackluster election returns.
Next month’s meeting will be a week later than usual – why? Because they meet on the first Tuesday of each month and in March of this year that day falls on Primary Day. Was there ANY talk about getting voters to the polls? No. Not one word was said about such things.
So… remorse. I like these people but I feel my time is better spent posting here. If I can get rolling on signing citizens up to vote all the better but realistically, I could register every qualified citizen in my county and not make a drop in the bucket overall.
The GOOD NEWS!
The GOOD news is, I may have cone across an idea to foment widespread registration. Our new county Registrar was there – she’s my new boss, election official-wise. We’ve been talking about getting citizens registered and she seems enthusiastic about this. I keep asking about registration forms. She mentioned how “easy” it is to register online. While I’m not so sure about that, one thing did strike me – a QR-code. I did the quick graphic below using Canva.
The idea of the QR code is to put it on display so citizens can scan it rather than type in a URL. Of course, shared digitally, this graphic can be linked directly to the web page as this one is so no scanning is needed.