Paul Helmke says because women don’t like open carry, that means Democrats have a lot to gain by supporting gun control. How did that work out for Al Gore? Or John Kerry? How’d it work out in 1994? I think we know the answer. Interesting that Brady touts the open carry numbers as evidence women support gun control, when the real numbers show that support for gun control among women has been dropping precipitously.
Author: Sebastian
The Hidden Life of Guns
Here I thought that they just basically sat in my safe when I wasn’t using them. The Washington Post tells a different story. It’s actually more balanced than you probably would have seen out of the Post in the past.
The Unwashed Masses
What is the purpose of the silly season? Campaign messaging seemingly geared toward sounds bites and tailored to the lowest common denominator. See Tam’s site for an example of this. Running against Obamacare because it guts Medicare is a common theme amongst Republicans this year. Without making any comment on the Indiana Senate race, where I probably wouldn’t vote for either of those two either, I will explain why this particular tactic isn’t concerning me all that much when it comes to the struggle for smaller government in general.
Spend some time talking to people in the last days of an election, and you start to feel depressed. Most people, even people who are otherwise pretty intelligent and rational individuals, are rationally quite ignorant of politics. When I say ignorant, I mean to the extent they know anything about political issues, it’s not within any ideologically consistent framework. For the ones who are not just blatantly self-interested, they vote because somewhere in their upbringing they’ve been told it’s their civic duty, but no one ever mentioned the civic duty of not being ignorant about what you’re voting for.
The purpose of silly season is to get the unwashed masses out to the polls to vote for the people who support your issues of the day. In order to do that, you have to find messages that motivate people. A lot of seniors are upset about Obamacare. Let me rephrase, a lot of seniors are really upset about Obamacare. Why? Because it’s changing their health care, which they are relatively happy with. Medicare is generally a component of that. They are part of the constituency for repealing Obamacare, which should be the primary goal of liberty loving people right now.
Whatever you may think of Medicare, it is tomorrow’s battle. It should be today’s battle, but the 2008 elections set us back a decade, and now we have more ground to make up than we did before. We’re going to find allies among seniors who are pissed at the Medicare cuts, even if they are voting with us for the wrong reasons. They are ready and willing to vote out bastards who voted for Obamacare. By the time we have the fight over Medicare, their government run health care may have killed many of them off, so I don’t worry too much about it.
When dealing with the unwashed voting masses, you can only really think short term. Freedom will not be won back in one fell swoop. The first rule of politics to to forget that the process has anything to do with principles or philosophy. The only role principles play is helping guide you, the activist, to know which battles need to be fought to get closer to your goal.
Battles change, and coalition partners come and go. What politics really comes down to is a very small number of activists struggling against another very small number of activists, using the vast and ignorant voter rolls as pawns on a chessboard. That may make people of principle very uncomfortable, but that’s what it is. The question is whether you’re an observer, one of the pieces on the board, or someone moving the pieces of the board. For the most part, people who love liberty are observers. What we need to be are the people moving the pieces on the board. That’s the only way we’re winning the game in the end.
Why Liberty Loses, Part II
Got a chance to speak briefly to Mike Fitzpatrick, who’s running against Pelosi’s poodle here in the 8th District. today. His first questions were geared at what kind of resources I could send his way. I wish I could tell him I had six people phone banking for him last night who banged out 600 calls to constituents, but I can’t. I have one dedicated volunteer and myself, and a handful of other people who help out here and there. The message I have to get across is that I’ll do everything I can to help him out. It’ll be more than most issues can muster, but not as much as we really need if he’s ever facing a tough vote on guns.
This is especially true if we compare it to what Fitzpatrick is up against. Murphy is the rising star of the Democratic Party. They are not going to surrender this seat easily. We represent the burning edge of the Democratic Party’s Firewall. Our opponents are dumping a ton of money into this district, and Fitzpatrick is worried about busloads of union people being shipped in from New York City and New Jersey for Murphy. This is in addition to other left wing activists being shipped up from Washington D.C. on Murphy’s behalf. Murphy has been quite adept at rallying ground troops and money, mostly from outside of the 8th district. He’s vulnerable this year, but he’s not going down without a fight. Keep in mind this guy supported Carolyn McCarthy’s assault weapons ban which would have banned the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. Basically any semi-automatic rifle of military pattern, and all semi-automatic shotguns. His talk is about how pro-gun he is, but much it’s about as true as when he says he’s a blue dog. The guy sells himself as a moderate, but his voting record is as left-wing as they come.
People who support liberty can’t draw on this level of support. The left is motivated enough to send their shock troops to the front lines to fight the ragtag local militia we’re mustering here. They are sending people across the country, while liberty has a hard time getting people across the county. This is another reason we lose. The other side just wants it more than we do.
Now Begins the Silly Season
Really, it started a few months ago, but these last few weeks are where it gets intense. Headed to a volunteer fair today for Mike Fitzpatrick. This is essentially where they gather people who want to help, and match them up with things they need done. After that it’s off for a few hours of phone banking for Rob Ciervo. Phone banking isn’t really as bad as one would think. It’s mostly leaving messages on machines. The idea is just to get your candidates name out there so people know who to vote for, and so you can help sway the undecided. On election day, you follow up with the “Did you vote yet?” call, trying to get them to the polls.
I always encourage NRA members to wear an NRA hat, an NRA pin, or something to identify yourself as part of the “gun vote,” mostly so that the local endorsees understand where their bread is getting buttered. I get a lot of people we try to recruit saying “Well, I already volunteer with the GOP.” Around here, if you’re pro-gun, you’re probably a Republican, but that’s not universal. We also have more than a few Republicans who need to improve. It’s great to volunteer directly to parties and campaigns, but that doesn’t help me gain leverage over them for the gun issue. Once the political establishment starts seeing a “gun vote” around, they know there’s energy out there for it. They also know there’s something to lose by voting the wrong way, and something to gain by voting the right way.
Politicians are very self-interested, for the most part. They may tell you it’s all about serving the public, but it’s really all about staying in office. There are true believers out there, but they are rare birds, and that usually only happens when they are gunnies themselves. The key to winning is knowing what motivates this particular species, and baiting them properly.
A Good Problem to Have
When I started this whole Election Volunteer Coordination thing with the NRA, one of my chief concerns was how few endorsed races we had in Bucks County. We were literally down to two state reps in the whole county who carried endorsements, Paul Clymer and Gene DiGirolamo. This election I’m happy to note that we have five endorsed races for state representative, Paul Clymer, Gene DiGirolamo, Frank Farry, Rob Ciervo, and Marguerite Quinn. I should note that four of these are incumbents. I think that’s a pretty good improvement.
There are probably a number of factors that have lead to this, but I’d like to think our efforts to raise the profile of this issue among the County’s political establishment has been a contributing factor. To do that we’ve really just made our presence known, both in the new media space but also by showing up to traditional political events, donating, and volunteering to help out. The big problem with more endorsed candidates is I have to stretch my volunteer resources thinner. Because I don’t want to short change any of our endorsed candidate, this translates into me having to work harder to make up the short fall. I’ll be phone banking both Saturday and Sunday on behalf of some of these endorsed candidates. We’re recruiting volunteers for the final push as we speak.
If you want to help out this election, give your local NRA EVC a call or e-mail. You can find out who they are on NRA’s web site. If your EVC is active, he or she should be thrilled to hear from you. If not, let me know and I can try to find out their status. Most EVCs are chronically short of volunteers to help out with things. Being able to send a few volunteers to an endorsed campaign, even for a few hours in an election cycle, makes a huge impression on the campaign and the candidate. Good volunteers are hard to come by, and given the other things NRA brings to the table, it’s a very powerful incentive to get them and keep them voting the right way. Once word gets out in the political circles that the gun issue brings money and volunteers, you’ll have other campaigns wondering what they can do to get that too. Answer? Vote the right way. At least one of these endorsed candidates above got that message loud and clear, and we’re going to try to help out their campaign this year as much as we can. The more people I have to send, the more incentive they have to improve. This program has the potential to work very well, but is entirely dependent on NRA members being willing to help out. This is the part where I beg you to help out.
It’s Time To Call Her Ma’am Again
This has to be the best attack ad on Barbara Boxer I’ve seen yet:
Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.
Done by David Zucker.
Pretty Sure It’s Unconstitutional
Phoenix, Arizona has ads for gun training pulled. TrainMeAZ.com should hire a lawyer and sue. I’m fairly certain this runs afoul of the First Amendment.
I Guess It’s a Victory to Them
Dennis Henigan seems pleased that Sestak got Pat Toomey to dance around the gun issue a bit. Joe Sestak is all in favor of denying people fundamental constitutional rights based on people’s name being on a secret government list. Doesn’t sound too great when you frame it that way does it? Of course, in Joe Sestak’s mind, you don’t even have a right to own a gun, so why not?
The problem is that people don’t understand the issue. The Bradys are experts at exploiting ignorance to their advantage, and framing the debate in terms that people think they agree. I mean, who wants terrorists getting guns? Who wants people to have weapons that are used for assaulting people? Who wants wife beaters armed?
Toomey had to dance because he’s not going to come out and say he favors guns for terrorists. The moderators were only too happy to frame the issue the Brady way. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is how I framed it. They can only win through deception.
UPDATE: Think about it. What does it say that Henigan is proud that the Brady misrepresentation of the issue is working the way they want it to? What other constitutional rights does Dennis think is OK to deny Americans without any due process whatsoever? Inquiring minds want to know.
A Ray of Hope
Jim Geraghty thinks the fuss about Toomey’s lead evaporating is greatly overblown. I sure hope it is, but we can’t be complacent.