Thoughts on "A Bold Step Back"

I saw a tweet from gregadams about A Bold Step Back. Everyone seems to be throwing things at the wall to see what will stick. It's great!

Here's the expurgated problem statement (it's a bit windy):

The right has lost focus, we are spending too much, we are taxing too much, we are growing the government too much and we are pandering to the special interests rather than to the people. Our representatives have only one goal once they win an election: to win the next one as well.

We have moved from electing statesmen to electing politicians. From having representatives serving us to those ruling us. It gets rather difficult to tell the two sides apart on many issues.

...

The Republican party has such a stigma to it now that it will be very difficult to recover and get back on track.

And here's the even more heavily redacted solution statement with my comments interwoven:

We rebrand the party. we CANNOT start a 3rd party, as it will only further doom us, and splinter the right. Rebranding is the right move...

I agree that a third party is not viable. But rebranding is going to be hard to do. There are a lot of loyal Republicans who think they are being well served by the party at the state and local level. You don't hear from them because that wheel isn't squeaky. So, I fear that a rebranding effort will go down a lot like a 3rd party.

The geographies where the conservative movement is likely to grow are urban and suburban. These are the Republican's squeakiest wheels. This is where the brand is most damaged. And these areas also tend to be socially liberal. Is it possible to forge an explicit alliance with the Libertarians that would have Republicans support Libertarian candidates in urban areas and Libertarians support Republican candidates that stand for statewide or, in some cases, congressional district-wide, elections?

On April 7th, Saint Louis held an election in which no Republican even filed to run for the office of Mayor. There were four names on the ballot and one was a Libertarian, Robb Cunningham. An alliance between Republicans and Libertarians would not have put Cunningham over the top, but it would give urban Republicans a reason to goto the polls. I suspect many who did go that day simply threw their support to the anti-Slay, Maida Coleman (I), who got a respectable 34% of the vote.

...we find people that understand that they are going in to make a very real difference, some very difficult choices, and DO WHAT IS RIGHT. They will also know that there is a very good possibility that they will not get reelected.

But while there, they will fight hard for our agenda, and NOT COMPROMISE at all.. They will continually submit and fight for legislation to roll back the size of government, CONGRESSIONAL PAY voting to bring their pay inline with those that they represent. Serving should be an honor, not a 'get rich quick' scheme. They will dismantle the Congressional benefits gravy train, scaling back their health care to the same system that Postal Workers get.

Sounds good. Here's a suggestion for conservative (Republican/Libertarian) candidates running for office in urban districts in 2010: promise to take a salary equal to the median salary in your district plus travel expenses.

Term limits 2 terms max at any level, and while your time goes toward govt. retirement, no one collects a dollar in retirement for less than 20 years service. Just like the people that you serve.

The abomination called TARP is why I started blogging last fall and term limits were my first topic. Here are my two points: 1) legislators should not be allowed to serve consecutive terms and 2) use state constitutional amendments to limit the terms of a state's congressional delegation. The idea behind #1 is that our congresscritters need to re-acquaint themselves with their constituents more often, get a real (non-govt) job once in awhile, and never raise money or campaign while on our dime. The elegance of #2 is that state legislators would be creating job openings for themselves in their congressional delegation. State assembles have a vested interest in this. Read my first post!

We will remove thousands of laws from the books, we have so many laws that it is virtually impossible to not break them.

I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile. Whoever the next conservative presidential candidate is, I want them to promise not to add a single new law until every existing law has been reviewed and re-written. At the very least, each re-written law should include a measure of effectiveness test (or tests) which, if not met, sunsets the law. A similar approach should be applied to bureaucratic regulations. Simply put, if the law doesn't do what was promised, what the law's sunset test guarantees, then it should go away.

Here's a nice video about some ineffective laws we have:

Massive Campaign reform. No Lobbiest or corporate money. you represent THE PEOPLE, not COMPANIES !!!

I think my term limit proposal goes a long way to addressing this. Some other thoughts... You can only give money to candidates for whom you are able to vote in the upcoming election. That essentially shuts down corporate donations and cross-country meddling. Companies need a voice in government so that regulation may be informed by experience; therefore, I'm not completely on board with the "no lobbiest" rule.

REAL Transparancy... Bills get posted online so that THE PEOPLE can tell you what they want...

Sounds good.

• Stop same day registration and voting voting. Eliminate fraud by requiring ID and fingerprint on ballot.
• Stop paying Taxpayer $$ to fund 'the arts' unless it's in the School syatem
• Stop funding NPR if people want to hear a radio/TV station, they will watch, sell ads like everyone else/
• Stop requiring that you must be in a union to work on a govt. project.

Good luck goring those sacred cows! I'm with ya, but we're tilting at windmills here.

• Let the states decide issues regarding Abortion / Gay Marraige etc, the Federal government aneed not meddle here

I have no ideas on how to do this, but we need a way to throw things to the Laboratory of Democracy—the states. Abortion and gay marriage are two such issues. I don't think we want to force a decision by compelling the states to vote on contentious issues in a set time frame, just take the issue off of the national stage and let the Laboratory do its thing.