The GOP Speaks
You’ve followed the national debate within the Republican Party about the political tactics it ought to use in an effort to better the country, retake Congress and challenge President Obama for the White House in 2012. But what do Republicans at the local level think?
I got curious, so I started e-mailing a questionnaire to various Republican Party County Chairmen — ultimately I hope to reach them all. I’ve only sent e-mails to folks listed on an official GOP home page as a state chairman, a county chairman, a county vice-chairman, or a member of the county executive committee. (If anyone ever catches someone who doesn’t fit that bill featured on the site please let me know so I can remove them.)
The responses are reprinted exactly as they arrived in my In-box.
The questions I posed are here. I chose them because they reflect some of the most controversial issues roiling the national debate, though there were many more I would’ve included if brevity weren’t so important for getting responses. The main site is here. It’s bare bones but functional. I’ve posted ten responses thus far in random order. As yet I am not fixing grammar or spelling. It’s just too time consuming at the moment. Maybe I’ll get to it eventually. Meanwhile go easy on the spelling and grammatical errors. They aren’t the point, and lots of folks are informal in their e-mails.
So, basically, if you thought Beck and Hannity were paranoid thugs, you haven’t met the Republican rank and file.
Breathtaking. One presidential election doesn’t go their way – you know, like for pretty much all of American history – and they completely lose their shit.
— Chet · Oct 7, 06:42 AM · #
Great project.
Strangely, they seem to be ordered by sanity. I thought #1-around 5 or so were quite impressive, and then it got into various shades of yikes (except #10. She was also impressive).
To Chet’s point, with county chairs and other local officials in an opposition party you’re pretty much selecting for the crazy. After all, if you didn’t think the current system was particularly bad, why would you bother putting in all that time? I know the local Democratic chairs (and I say this as someone who’s recently voted for a lot of Democrats) were the ones most likely to believe that Bush was just a day away from suspending the Constitution completely and declaring war on Bolivia for kicks.
— sidereal · Oct 7, 07:23 AM · #
Enterprising!
— Tony Comstock · Oct 7, 11:02 AM · #
Okay, so I read a little more and I am STOKED! This is one of those It’s-so-simple- I-can’t-believe-I-didn’t-think-of-it projects!
The GOP Speaks (In Their Own Words)
Produced and Directed by Conor Friedersdorf
Photography and Editing by Tony Comstock
Original Score by Peter Suderman
Raw inters to YouTube and Blog
Producer/Director’s diary on the blog
Sound Track on iTunes
Pre-sales for the DVD
Theatrical screening, lecture and debate tour
It’s a lay-up! Money in the bank!
Except I’m going South for the Winter, so you’ll have to find your own Tony Comstock. Shouldn’t be hard. Indie filmmakers are a dime a dozen.
Good for you, Conor! This is a great start!
— Tony Comstock · Oct 7, 11:19 AM · #
Yeah, this is a really nice idea.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 7, 01:19 PM · #
OK I take it back. Now Conor is trying to generate some genuinely new information, news content, i.e. doing real reporting. He’s not as bad as Glenn Beck on that metric.
— nb · Oct 7, 01:28 PM · #
What read into this is a general resistance to government over-reach, which is a healthy response. A more direct question I’d like to see answered directly is “What do you see as the role of religion in Government, and what stance should the Republican Party related to government and religion?” — another question would be — “Do you think The Republican Party should continue the Bush Doctrine as it once related to pre-emptive attacks on countries suspected of promoting terrorist acts against the U.S.?”
But these are just my concerns — the role of religion and the tendency to intervene militarily. I’m wondering if the Republican Party would do much better by clarifying it’s relationship to organized religion, and it’s ideas of intervention/non-intervention in foreign affairs, escpecially related to terrorism.
Good job.
— mike farmer · Oct 7, 02:11 PM · #
I butchered that.
What I read —— what stance whould the Republican Party take — its relationship —- its ideas
— mike farmer · Oct 7, 02:14 PM · #
re: role of religion.
The principles of Christianity can effectively exist on their own, but — it seems to me — they are more constant when anchored in a spiritual and narrative universe.
The problem is how those principles compete in practice. Are they coequal with Constitutional, democratic and strategic principles, are they lesser, or do they supervene?
The only answer that makes sense: in politics, more praxis less logos.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 7, 03:03 PM · #
Of course, as JP will tell you, to govern effectively you must cultivate the appearance of religion in everything you do. So there’s that.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 7, 03:06 PM · #
“Of course, as JP will tell you, to govern effectively you must cultivate the appearance of religion in everything you do. So there’s that.”
What is “the uncanny terrible question is what becomes of a culture full of people who want to believe but can only playact it”, Alex?
— Tony Comstock · Oct 7, 03:37 PM · #
Sarg, I guess my concern is when victimless behavior becomes something to be regulated or outlawed. There’s many behaviors which Christianity frowns upon, but does the Republican Party take a neutral stance or does religious prohibitions mingle with government reglation, laws and policy.
— mike farmer · Oct 7, 03:38 PM · #
Give me ‘enervation and decay’ for a thousand.
That’s why it’s so very important to preserve and extend America’s self-animating idea-myth of shining city and moral destination, and why some of the conservative opinions of the last several years are so irredeemably pernicious.
If the Sermon on the Mount no longer makes you tremble, you better hope you get goose bumps from the Gettysburg Address.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 7, 03:45 PM · #
Great idea, Connor. I like.
So far, about half of the responses struck me as being written by people who inhabit the same reality as I do. We may draw some different conclusions from that reality, but I can imagine productive conversations with those folks. We could discuss things like the questions Mike Farmer raised (proper role/scope of government, interventionalist foreign policy, etc).
The other half, though, wow. I wouldn’t even know where to begin (and the reverse would no doubt be true as well: they’d look at me like I’m a space alien). These are the “OMG, commienaziObama!” and “OMG fags!” ones.
— Rob in CT · Oct 7, 03:49 PM · #
“If the Sermon on the Mount no longer makes you tremble, you better hope you get goose bumps from the Gettysburg Address.”
Damned if i can find it now, but in the midst of the Officers’ Rebellion Against Torture, a friend mine sent me a “What It Means to Be an Officer in the US Army” pamphlet that was produced in the 1950. Reading it made me weep, both with pride for what this nation is and can be, and for despair at all that we threw away in the name of safety.
I’ll hit Google again and see if I can’t drag it up.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 7, 03:51 PM · #
Mike, that’s a really tough question. The easy answer is to say that government has no business enforcing morality, but that’s not quite right. Incumbents who ignore or contradict the morality of their constituents will not last long in office, and governments that forget they preside over morally charged animals will often commit great and possibly delegitimizing errors of law and administration.
Law must inspire moral support. The problem is the dynamism of moral language: one generation’s evil is another generation’s preference. The answer in the literature seems to be to bet on procedure: if the legislative procedure is cognizable and just, or, to use a concrete example, the jury system is cognizable and just, then legitimacy won’t have to depend on any particular outcome going one way or the other.
I guess the not-so-satisfying answer to your question: if the people really give a damn about stopping victimless crimes, then you should probably try to stop victimless crimes. If not, then not.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 7, 04:02 PM · #
This is fascinating stuff—you earned my donation with this project. If you decide to do more in this vein, you should also look at Democratic chairs, albeit with a different set of questions—it would be good to have compare-and-contrast.
— Dan Miller · Oct 7, 04:13 PM · #
I’ll second what Dan said: local Dem responses to another set of questions would be interesting as well.
Then compare/contrast the locals with the national parties. I bet that would be fun.
— Rob in CT · Oct 7, 04:46 PM · #
Great idea! It’s too bad that the responses go from bad to worse and fit into a familiar pattern: scattershot RINO hunting, media-blaming, ill-defined use of the word “freedom” and not much else. If these count as ideas, the word has lost all meaning.
— rj · Oct 7, 05:15 PM · #
“Great idea! It’s too bad that the responses go from bad to worse and fit into a familiar pattern: scattershot RINO hunting, media-blaming, ill-defined use of the word “freedom” and not much else. If these count as ideas, the word has lost all meaning.”
What seems to be emerging is that we’ve traded one inept opposition party for another, and perhaps entered an era where only through gross incompetence can the party in power be dislodged. At least that’s the way it looks to me, and is what I have in mind when I say there’s is too much free surface area in the contemporary political scene. You can only run from one side to the other for so long before the water catches up with the you and the boat capsizes.
What one might hope for is that Conor’s project might serve to promote conversation about what it means to have a functioning opposition party. That’s what I had in mind when I started participating at Culture11 after last year’s election and why I followed my favorite writers/thinkers at C11 to The American Scene.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 7, 05:35 PM · #
Sarg,
My ideal society is one in which society regulates its own morals and government punishes violations ofa coercive nature. If we aren’t free to choose a moral path, in other words, if we are forced to be moral, then we aren’t choosing morality, but rather obedience to the state’s moral code. Our understanding of morality becomes weaker and weaker as moral choice is removed in favor of regulations and laws, and our ability to struggle with moral dilemmas is weakened, so that spiritual growth is retarded rather than enhanced.
— mike farmer · Oct 7, 06:09 PM · #
Interesting project. I hope you can add what state the individual responses are from where it is not indicated.
I thought one of the most accurate responses was #5:
“The pundits seem to think that the leaders in the conservative groups are using the members to do something. In each of the groups I have seen in person, it is exactly the other way arround. The members are using the organization and it leaders to accomplish something of importance to them. The leaders are merely attempting to stay ahead of the parade.”
After reading the local leaders I don’t think the grassroots will follow pundits like Frum. This is still the party of Limbaugh and Palin.
— Mercer · Oct 7, 08:44 PM · #
Probably best not to read too much into this (particularly if you are a Republican). Pols at the county level are mainly followers, boosters, cheerleaders. The inward-looking thinking required to reverse a decline like that currently experienced by the GOP has never come from that level of any party.
Politicians who try to ride that wave of ill-focused resentment (cf the quote cited in the comment just above) will never succeed. It remains to be seen whether anyone can discipline and lead that energy, rather than merely being propelled forward by it.
— kth · Oct 8, 01:31 AM · #
And also (apologies for the double post) one would like to see how county-level Dems answer a comparable set of questions. But the really fair comparison would have been in 2002 or 2004, when they too were smarting from an electoral rebuke (though not as severe as the Republicans got in 2006 and 2008).
— kth · Oct 8, 01:43 AM · #
I found it interesting that there was an almost perfect synergy of proper use of English, thoughtfulness, and politeness. Things don’t normally pan out that way.
— Tom_Meyer · Oct 8, 03:45 PM · #