I’ve heard through the grape vine that while Ted Nugent still managed to get re-elected to the Board, his rank was 18 out of 25 [UPDATE: Apparently alphabetically, not by vote]. Nugent used to be a top vote getter, because he’s a celebrity candidate (which usually rank near the top). It would seem our effort to encourage members not to vote for him has had some impact. Hopefully he will be made to understand that the voting membership has tired of his antics, and I’d also like to think this will send a loud and clear message to the NRA Board’s Nominating Committee. After Annual Meeting, there should be raw numbers released, which we’ll take a look at.
UPDATE: I’m told from other sources this is not necessarily true. We’ll post the raw numbers when we get them at Annual Meeting.
He, Grover Norquist, and Larry “Wide Stance” Craig were the three notable incumbents whom I did not vote for this year.
Good sign if the NRA’s voting membership are moving away from his antics
Wow. Just what the NRA needs. Purge a pull-no-punches straight talker and replace him with a softy, wet noodle wimp, just like those who run the GOP establishment…..you know, the compromise and play patty-cake types like Carl Rove, Mitt Romney, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, etc. Ted Nugent may not be the most eloquent type, but he isn’t interested in being a softy with our opposition. This whole PAGunBlog needs to STOP listening to Democrat party talking points and stop pandering to be more “moderate”. It will only bring us defeat.
There’s a lot o people out there who can’t tell the difference between being tough opponents and just being an asshole. Nugent crossed that line.
No. There is a difference between a person who is borish but oppositional and someone who is cordial but oppositional.
We don’t need Nugent representing us.
Anybody else this might apply to?
Sorry to inform you, but I am the NRA, as are all the rest of us members. And I can tell you that Mr. Nugent doesn’t speak with the level of respect that I would use if I represented the vast membership of the NRA. I’m glad he respects 2A rights. But he’s an embarrassment in how he carries himself.
This +100.
Ditto. It’s time for the nuge to go.
I am of two minds on the subject of Ted Nugent.
I really think the NRA needs an outspoken, “in your face” type who doesn’t care what people think in order to drive the topic forward into the light where people will see it.
On the other hand. That person really NEEDS to be careful about what they say and how they word things, because the reputation of the whole movement is painted by what they say. Something that Nugent hasn’t been very good at.
Frankly, I’m not sure such a person exists.
I’m a big fan of Ted Nugent even if I cringe sometimes at the things he says. Around my friends, we refer to him as Uncle Ted (as in that crazy uncle that you love anyway even if he’s sometimes an asshole) but even I (a fan) am getting tired of being put in the position of saying “Yes, Ted said that… but that doesn’t mean the whole pro-gun movement are racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever”.
That person does exist. His name is Philip Van Cleave. Uncle Ted and a few others (Hi, OC Texas!) can learn a lot about what it means to be “in your face” without even being an embarrassment to others or apologizing for one’s self or the movement.
Mr. Van Cleave is “in your face”, i.e, he seems to be everywhere articulating his case with vigor but without apologies. But I can’t recall the last time he was cringe worthy on camera or in his prodigious VCDL email updates*.
Contrast this 2008 VCDL open carry picnic with Uncle Ted’s boorish rants or some open carrier’s antics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmZic2VFGyI
*His graceful, non-formatted ASCII text emails are also another thing of beauty that I greatly appreciate in this day age of bloated, graphics laden email blast from other organizations.
Does anyone see the NRA facing a similar problem to what the Republican Party is presently facing? I.e., an identity crisis?
Yes. And I’ve been worrying about that since at least 2010.
Respectfully disagree, because NRA went through their defining moment already: Sandy Hook. NRA had to pick a direction and “squishy middle” was not an option. Anybody here want to suggest they didn’t stand up for us when we needed them most?
Maybe it’s not evident at the local level (yet), but I am friends with and have worked with some of the responsible folks over at the ILA mothership and they are one voice, one mission. They are probably 90% lockstep with what you read here most days when it comes to guns and gun-rights. I think some of the pushback in the community comes from the need for NRA to spend our money carefully – to focus where they can have impact. Sometimes that means not everything is done at the same time.
To be clear, I have seen NRA firmly embrace Gun Culture 2.0 and beyond. Moving an organization takes time, but they are more nimble than most.
I don’t see an identity crisis over there. If anything, they may be more resolute than they have been in more than a generation.
You misunderstand, at least from my point of view, what I mean by identity crisis. Is NRA a single issue gun rights group, or is it a conservative group?
Exactly!
I realize that people who hold public positions, like legislators, etc., and also are NRA directors, have no choice but to be visible on other issues. That can’t be helped. But everyone else should strive to be as “single issue” in public as the NRA alleges to be, and not try to justify being all over the issue map by making convoluted arguments that “you can’t really believe in gun rights without also believing in Issue X.” (That is, if they feel the necessity to provide any justification at all.)
One of my criticisms has been the use by the NRA of people like Jerry Boykin or Franklin Graham as celebrity attractions at the National Conventions. They are people who have no connection at all to guns or gun rights (beyond saying that they support them) but their featured status certainly implies that the NRA identifies with and seeks to woo primarily social conservatives; i.e., that its identity is totally “conservative” more so than “pro-gun.”
The 2011 Annual Meeting that I attended gave me plenty of cause to worry as well. And the problem I saw was that it wasn’t conscious. It’s a single issue gun rights group that is made up of a lot of conservatives. There’s a feedback loop going on that isn’t healthy, long term.
Gee willikers, why does The Nuge have to be so confronTATIONal?
Certainly we can reason with the anti-2A’s. If we just remain calm and reasonable, I’m SURE they’ll understand our point of view and will stop trying to disarm us.
I mean, it’s worked so well for our side for all these years..
The NRA stopped fighting for us when it purged Neil Knox and Harlan Carter and others.
I’ve been a Life Member since the late 1970’s and have pretty much given up on Wayne and his fellow corporate mush mouths who always seem to be befuddled by our Statist opponents.
Why is that? IMHO, Wayne and the boys know if we actually did win the argument and the anti’s left us alone, we wouldn’t need Wayne.
“Gee willikers, why does The Nuge have to be so confronTATIONal? Certainly we can reason with the anti-2A’s”
The antis are not the audience.
I see the NRA pushing for things like Constitutional Carry and suppressor availability. They have a lineup of younger 2.0 types as commentators. They aren’t shy to feature scary black guns in their annual meetings, outdoor shows, media, etc. We may not agree with all of their decisions, especially on where to spend money, but I don’t believe they are having any sort of crisis like the one they experienced in the late 70s.
So I have a tough time trying to understand folks who seem to think we need someone like Nugent to “show the antis we mean business”. Sorry, but the NRA is perfectly capable of being a show-no-mercy 2A powerhouse without some clown who posts anti-semetic and conspiratorial garbage on social media, or who makes implied threats to people when speaking. If anything, it’s that kind of bleeding over of other issues into the realm of 2A advocacy that I think the NRA needs to distance itself from, as noted above.
“that kind of bleeding over of other issues into the realm of 2A advocacy”
I’ll give an example I know of when that “bleed” had a bad influence: I knew of and was involved with a state-level group in another state (i.e., not PA) that refused to support an incumbent legislator, because despite his pristine and active pro-gun record, he also was pro-choice. The leadership of the group said it was because their donor base was largely pro-life, and they’d lose money, by supporting a pro-choice candidate, so they supported a challenger who said he was both pro-life and pro-gun, but had no proven public record.
Either of two ways you analyze that “issue bleed”, it was bad. First, I doubted the group leadership knew the first thing about the correlation between their donors’ pro-gun and pro-life opinions, and despite being nominally a “single issue” group, they were imposing their own “other” agenda, at the expense of gun rights. And of course they were placing the importance of an economic agenda above that of gun rights. That was one kind of “bleed.”
The other possibility was, that possibly they were right, meaning that because of other influences, their donor base was itself putting another agenda in front of gun rights. Sincere gun rights advocates might want to know that before giving their all on an issue their nominal base recently doesn’t rank in the forefront of importance.
Ted Nugent’s jailbait problem:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/ted-nugents-jailbait-problem_b_4840060.html
Is it true that he had sex with Courtney Love when she was 12? Don’t know. Is is plausible? Yes.
We need to get rid of this slimeball.