The other day in the Baltimore Sun, Mary Kane, Candidate for Lt. Governor this past election cycle proclaimed that Maryland won’t elect another Republican for forty years. With all due respect to Mary Kane, whom I consider to be a friend, she is mistaken. It wasn’t too long ago the national media The Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and other leftist media in 2006 and 2008 how the GOP was a National Party NO MORE, and wrote the obituary for the GOP. What a difference four years makes, this last election, we took back the house, majority of the governorship and state legislatures across the country. In addition we won senate races in IL, an d PA two states that John McCain and President George W. Bush lost in 2000, 2004 and 2008. We haven’t won Pennsylvania since George H. W. Bush won in 1988.
With that said, I don’t think the Maryland GOP is dead in the water. We need to regroup and find a candidate today as well as a MD GOP Chairman that can inspire the MD GOP base, raise money, and with a positive agenda, educate the electorate. We need someone who is charismatic, inspirational, and articulate someone who can handle the media (by pass them and talk directly to the people). We need to have a Chairman that will fill every slot on the ballot in 2014; we can’t have a state wide race without fielding a candidate for all top three slots. The old Baltimore County GOP in the 60’s thru the early 80’s ran full slates. Maryland Republicans need to run in herds not solo acts. With that said we need to promote quality candidates who are credible. We can’t just get behind anyone who has the money to pay a filing fee to run. In Maryland’s 16th district we had three good candidates and one not so good. However none wanted to run on a slate as a result they all lose and spent about the same amount of money. It costs the same amount to put one name on a sign, as it does to do four names on one sign. The Democrats are masterful with this concept, they run in herds and kill us every time, they all sing from the same song sheet music. As a result they speak with one voice. We need to adopt the lefts tactics NOT THEIR IDEAS. We need to have a platform for State GOP candidates. We can no longer run as Democrat Light and expect to win, we have been trying this playbook since the 1980s, and how has it worked for us? We need to have someone run against every Democrat. Not one democrat should be running unopposed. The truth be known even in Blue Maryland more people agree with our views, than the radical agenda of the Left. As President Reagan stated at the 1975 CPAC Conference in Washington, DC “…raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues…”
One Republicans need to adopt a no compromise stance. Democrats’ idea of compromise is when we cave in to them. No, more shall we given, because we want to be liked in the press and have them say nice things about us. Face it in Maryland, the Baltimore Sun nor the Washington Post, will never say anything positive about a Republican. Print media is a Dinosaur and they are headed the way of the Dinosaur. We need to make effective use of New Media as Morton Blackwell stated NEW MEDIA is the single greatest breakthrough in political campaigns since Direct Mail. We need to use it to mobilize our team.
We need to increase voter registrations, how many of us have seen on off years Democrats at the supermarket registering voters? We need to get into college Campuses around Maryland and fund College Republican organizations to recruit new Republicans to the GOP. We are the party of ideas, without us there are no new Ideas; Fact if it weren’t for Republicans Maryland wouldn’t have the University of Maryland’s Flagship campus in College Park, BWI Airport (Friendship Airport) would never have been built, nor would the Baltimore and Washington Beltways or the John Hansen Highway, or the ICC! All of these milestones in Maryland were shepherded by Republican Governors. Democrats in the legislature Opposed Friendship Airport, the Beltways, John Hansen Highway and the ICC! Maryland Moves forward when we have a Republican Governor. Democrats have done nothing but squander the treasury on their special interests like the Big Unions, Big Green Lobby and NEA - AFT!
Yes, we had a loss this past election day, in Maryland, time for grieving is over the loss is over, we need to move forward now take action if we want to win in 2014! The Democrats start running the day after election day, while we wait until the spring of election year to decide to run. We need to go and spend the next three years educating voters, offering an alternative to Tax and Spend politics of O’Malley – Brown and all important start fundraising now.
My advice to all legislative district chairs for the GOP. Create a PAC for your district, start voter registration drives, raise money for the PACs you set up. Find the unregistered voters in your district; bring over the democrats who are tired of paying high taxes. We need to reach out and educate voters in becoming Republicans, not adopted the failed policies of Democrats to beg and plead with them to join us. We need to win the day with better common sense ideas. The days of Connie Morella, Mac Mathias Republicans are over. No, more can we walk like Democrats and expect them to vote for us, it doesn’t work. We need to offer stark contrasts between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in Maryland.
If Blue Massachusetts and New Jersey can elect Republicans like Scott Brown and Chris Christie surely we can do the same in Blue Maryland elect an EJ Pipkin, Larry Hogan, Nancy Jacobs or a countless number of other Republicans in Maryland. To take a page from PM Winston Churchill’s speech about fighting the NAZIs, we too must fight Democrats everywhere in Maryland all the way from the Cumberland Gap to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. From the Mason-Dixon Line to St, Mary’s County, we can’t give up and roll over, Churchill didn’t let the NAZIs over run Great Britain, we can’t let the Democrats over run Maryland.
This is a must read! I just got my copy Thursday I can’t put this book down. What book you ask it is Craig Shirley’s book Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America. For those of my generations that only knew of President Reagan from History Class either in High School or College this book is for you! This book gives you the real facts about President Reagan; pose to the ones pseudo-intellectual in academia whom portrayed President Reagan as a war monger. This book you can separate the Fact and Fiction (fiction is what you were taught in HS History Class) about President. 
