On the Mike Gallagher show, I heard a debate about endorsing candidates for office. The office in question is the 23^rd district in New York. There is a candidate that went through the nominating process for the party and has the Republican Party endorsement. She is very liberal on most issues. There is also a Conservative Party candidate that has values closer to those of most conservatives around the country. The debate is which should we get behind, the one that got the party nomination and is liberal or the conservative candidate who did not place high in the party nominating process.

Newt Gingrich has endorsed the Republican candidate for the office. He is catching a lot of flak for endorsing her because of her liberal views. His take on the issue is that you sometimes have to accept candidates that are not 100% with you on all the issues. He cited some examples when he was running for Speaker of the House and after he obtained Speaker. Lee Habib, the Mike Gallagher show political expert, seconded the endorsement by Newt. He cited the example of the Democrats recruiting conservative Democrats to run in Republican districts and winning.

Callers to the show were not necessarily so forgiving. Most were tired of having liberal RINO Republicans voting with the Democrats to destroy important legislation or pass Democrat legislation that is equally destructive. Their point is that it is better to have reliable conservative votes than having unreliable RINO votes.

My position is somewhere close to Newt’s position. It is most important to win and be in a position to direct the affairs of the House and Senate. Second is passing or defeating certain legislation. That said, it is also important that people in your party have certain “core values” that are important legislatively. That does not mean that the candidate has to have all Republican “core values”, just those that will enable the important legislation to get through.

Then we have to decide what are the most important “core values” that a candidate would have to have in order to get an endorsement. In my humble opinion, the candidate would have to be a fiscal conservative. That is that the person would only spend federal money when it was absolutely necessary to spend federal money. The person would necessarily need to desire to follow the Constitution. Now, I would not necessarily expect that the candidate have exactly the same view of what is Constitutional. But, a desire to follow the Constitution would solve most questions on whether to fund a particular federal program. That would be about all that I would require the candidate to have as “core values”.

Some of you are going to ask about social issues. Social issues are important to me. I am as pro-life as anyone in the country, but I also am realistic when it comes to politics. If we require all Republican candidates be strictly pro-life, we would deprive ourselves of some good legislative candidates. Notice I said legislative candidates, not Presidential candidates. A Presidential candidate would need to be pro-life to get my endorsement because the President directly impacts life issues. Legislatures only indirectly deal with life issues, so a pro-choice candidate is not necessarily a liability. But a candidate that is not with you on financial issues can destroy your legislative agenda very fast. That is why financial issues are the hard and fast “core values” that I require in a candidate.

If there are two equally good candidates and one only meets the financial values and the other adds the social values, of course I would endorse the candidate with the social values.

In the case being discussed in the 23^rd district of New York, you have two candidates to choose from. One has been selected by the Republican Party and the other by the Conservative Party. From what I know of New York politics, it is impossible for a Republican to win without the endorsement of the Conservative Party. The reverse would also be true. When you look at how the person would vote, both would follow the Republican line most of the time (using a generic Republican, not this liberal one). So in essence, the Republican Party is running two candidates in this election. Since that is the case, I would endorse the candidate that is closest to my position. That would be the Conservative Party candidate, not the Republican Party candidate. My reasoning is that the Conservative Party candidate would vote with my position almost all the time. The Republican Party candidate would vote with the Democrats more than the Republicans. That is not a Republican candidate that is worth endorsing in my opinion.

I am not saying that Newt Gingrich is wrong. He looked at the party label after the name and made his selection on that basis. He did that because he is a Republican first and a conservative second. I, on the other hand, am a conservative first and a Republican second. That is the main difference between us.

The Tea Parties are now in our past. They were wildly successful as far as participants are concerned. There were a lot more people that turned out than anyone expected. A partial count had the total at about one million people. That count only included about one third to one half of the sites that had Tea Parties.

The main stream media and the liberals are trying to downplay the Tea Parties any way they can. The worst was from a Clinton era holdover Janeane Garofalo on the Keith Olbermann show. She declared that all Tea Party attendees were racists. Her reasoning went this way: Barack Obama is a black man. All of the people at the Tea Parties were protesting against the government and Barack Obama, so therefore, all the people at the Tea Parties were racists. That is flawed reasoning. It is true that Barack Obama is a black man. It is true that all of the people attending the Tea Parties were protesting against the actions of the government and Barack Obama. Nobody was saying that Barack Obama should not be President. They were just saying that he was not acting in a responsible manner. There is a huge difference. But, Janeane Garofalo was not talking to the attendees or even liberals. She was talking to the black audience. If she could convince blacks that the Tea Party attendees were racists, then she could defuse the issue for blacks. Anyone with a brain could see through her arguments. Keith Olbermann could not see through her arguments. He treated them as if they were absolutely true.

I read some comments from participants in the Tea Parties on Lucianne.com. All of them were positive and saying that we now need to continue to work to change things. The consensus was that we need to work from within a major party, probably the Republicans as they are the closest to our position. There was some talk of a third party, but that was rejected because it would guarantee another term for Barack Obama and that cannot happen.

Right now, there is a lot of energy about the wrong direction the country is headed. There is no single group or person that is leading the charge. Until there is a single person or group, the movement will continue to be scattered on the issues. The central issue of taxation and spending is agreed on, but the rest of the agenda is unfocused and blurry for most of the participants in the Tea Parties. In the comments I read there was a lot of talk of a Reagan stepping forward. There will probably not be another Reagan in my lifetime, but there can be a strong leader. Some of the previous leaders, like Newt Gingrich, were discussed and dismissed. Most of them had too much baggage from past encounters. Newt’s problem was sitting on that couch with Nancy Pelosi. He will never be forgiven for that mistake.

The strong leader that steps forward has to be sure of what needs to be done. The message has to be clear and simple. The message has to be consistent. The message has to be positive. The leader has to be inclusive of all people. The Mike Huckabee example where he trashed a strong segment of the Republican Party because he did not like their religion cannot be allowed to be part of this leader’s character. Right now, there is a vacuum that needs to be filled. There are many people that have tried to fill that position and failed. We do not need a RINO, we need a true conservative. In fact, the message from the Tea Parties was loud and clear. If you are supporting wasteful spending and excess taxation, you are a target of the Tea Parties. The politicians in power got the message; it is up to us to make sure that they continue to hear it.

On the way to work on Thursday, I listened to Mike Gallagher. He played a clip of a TV appearance he had with a Democrat operative. I do not remember the name of the operative and it is not important. But, she was intent to make the point that Rush Limbaugh was the head of the Republican Party and that he was the Warden.

Mike Gallagher tried to dissuade her of her misguided idea to no avail. She had been programmed to say those two things and she repeated them over and over. Her comments were said in a very dark fashion. Mike Gallagher was laughing and having a good time. Her idea that Republicans were somehow in “prison” was not going to sell with someone like Mike Gallagher as the person you are talking to. He is too happy and friendly.

But, in going with her theme of the Republicans being in “prison” and Rush Limbaugh being the Warden, who else tells his “prisoners” what they need to do to break free. The Republicans are in bondage to Democrat socialist agenda items. Every day Rush Limbaugh tells his audience what they need to do to break free of socialism.

The Democrat operative tried to say that the Republicans are where they are because of Rush Limbaugh. That could not be farther from the truth. The Republicans are where they are politically because they have not been listening to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt and the other conservative talk show hosts. I might make a correction to that last statement. They might have been listening, but they did not act upon the information they were given in all those radio talk shows. Had they listened, the Republican Party would have a majority in the House and Senate and there would be a Republican President in the White House. I am not saying that everything that the talk show hosts say is perfect and should be implemented, but most of it should.

What the Republicans need to do is get the best Republican thinkers together and have them come up with something like the Contract with America that Newt Gingrich did in 1994. A new Contract with America will not work. It worked once and it will probably not work twice. But, having all Republicans working from the same playbook would be a real change. The one thing you can say about the Republican Party is that they do not have a common playbook. That is why the Contract with America worked so well. Everyone was on the same page in their discussions and the country was in total shock that Republicans actually agreed on something for a change. Democrats always work as a top down authoritarian party. All Democrats are given their playbook and are expected to follow it to the letter. Republicans on the other hand do not give anyone marching orders and this has caused mass confusion at times.

These best thinkers should include ALL Republican thinkers, including the leading talk show hosts. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are the leading thinkers in talk radio. They should assist in developing any Republican playbook that would have a chance at succeeding. They talk to the public every day and know what the public wants and needs. They are not isolated up in the ivory towers in Washington, D.C. So often we think that only people in Washington, D.C. can come up with ideas. That is not true. When I worked for the federal government, the worst ideas came from Washington, because Washington had to make rules for the whole country. Rules that came from our state were good because they were local. That works the same for things that will work for the country. Washington based thinkers have a Washington based world view. These thinkers need to have various views from the country, not just Washington.

The Republicans can win again as early as 2010. But, we have to get our act together. We have to find good candidates and we have to fund their campaigns. We need a playbook that everyone can agree are the core issues that all can support. Then hammer the Democrats on those core issues until they cannot stand it. When we retake the House and Senate, we need to remember what got us there. We need to maintain fiscal discipline. We cannot repeat the excesses of the past 20 years. That will allow us to have the majority as far as the eye can see. If we lose sight of what we want to accomplish, then we will fall out of power again. Just remember what our lack of focus brought us in 2006 and 2008, nuf said.