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Morton Blackwell in his “Conservative Republican Participation,” urges us to “build a new majority party which opportunists cannot cripple again by selling out conservative principles.” Read his fourteen “types of action” for strengthening conservatism in the Republican Party. Here is number 10. “Defeat the ambition of too many elected Republicans to subordinate to their complete control the Republican party committees in the state, district, or locality where those public officials are elected.”

Three elections of substantial interest to conservatives are rapidly approaching within Virginia’s 10th Congressional District.

Local Tea Partiers could greatly enrich these races by conducting candidate forums or debates to spotlight the underlying policy issues in these contests:

March 6: the chairmanship of the Loudoun County Republican Committee (LCRC)

May 22, 2010: the Republican chairmanship of the Tenth Congressional District.

June 8, 2010: the primary election for the Republican candidate for Congress.

The most imminent contest is between Candace Strother and Mark Sell for chairmanship of the LCRC, but the most imminent deadline is the filing date to become a Loudoun County delegate [”candidate”] to the May 22, 2010 Tenth District Republican Convention.

The Tenth District Convention deadline is 5 PM, Saturday, February 20, 2010 in Ashburn.

The Tenth District chairmanship race is between Howie Lind and David Schmidt. 

And the June 8 House of Representatives primary candidates are long-time incumbent Frank Wolf and newcomer Jim Trautz.

We shall likely be writing more about the Lind-Schmidt and Wolf-Trautz races later on. 

Already, Tea Partiers have been organizing and holding debates  in Virginia’s Fifth District Republican primary.

Here is what one debate moderator, Robert Tracinski, relates about his experience - -

“Which brings me to the debate I moderated on January 22. According to debate organizer Mark Lloyd, of the Lynchburg tea party group, he initially secured [Virginia state senator Robert] Hurt’s commitment for this date back in November, going out of his way to accommodate Hurt’s schedule in the General Assembly. But then later the Hurt campaign started to make sounds about backing out, which they did officially a few days before the debate.”

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“The Hurt campaign seemed to think he could skip the tea party event and no one would particularly notice or remember. Instead, everyone who even glanced at the front page of the local paper knows that Robert Hurt blew off the tea party movement. For a Republican politician running for office in the Year of the Tea Party, that’s a political debacle.”

* * * * *

The tea party supporters are people who want to support the Republican candidate—and boy do they want to defeat Tom Perriello. But they have been disappointed too often by Republican politicians who toe a small-government line in Farmville (and yes, that really is the name of a town in the fifth district) while voting for bailouts and big spending when they get to Washington. As candidate Mike McPadden put it, ‘We had a conservative movement in 1994, and it was over in six months. In twelve years, while the so-called conservatives ran our House of Representatives…look where we are after 12 years from 1994 to 2006. Are we better off?.’” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

No Policy Softball Exchanges in Candidate Forums

The Tea Partiers have no personal career investment in the current Republican structure. They expect no campaign funds which could be shut off if they cut too close to the bone in their policies. Few Tea Partiers will be heartbroken should they be denied “access” to the inner sanctums of the current Virginia GOP Establishment.

With our liberty and our values at stake nationally, what we need are probing and policy-oriented candidate forums among 10th District Virginia Republicans - - - without viewing our candidates either as celebrity white hats or villainous black hats; and with ad rem, not ad hominem discussions.

And our Tea Partiers are the best ones available to conduct these forums.

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UPDATES FROM . . . REDSTATE 

“UPDATED !URGENT - State GOP comes after Tea Party groups in South Carolina”

karenmartin: “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.”

AND POLITICO

“South Carolina Republicans unite with tea party “

Andy Barr: “The South Carolina Republican Party announced Monday that it’s uniting with tea party groups in the state to share resources, coordinate messaging and push the GOP in a more conservative direction.”

AND THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“Dan Coats, lobbyist for fat cats, plots Senate return”

Timothy P. Carney: “Populist anger is burning over bailouts, overspending, government growth, and the closed-door Washington collusion between the wealthy and the powerful. This anger has Democrats worried. But if Republicans nominate Coats, a Beltway insider specializing in corporate welfare, the Tea Party might be tarring and feathering the GOP as well.”

 

 

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