Is Mel Martinez A Good Pick for RNC Chair?
Not only does one not need to be bright to be an ATLA member in good standing, being bright practically disqualifies you on its face. (See here, for an in-State example.)
He is not smart. I'm sorry. His every public act from the moment he announced his candidacy has been not-smart. And putting this moron at the head of the Republican fundraising and talk show circuit apparatus horrifies me.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
and I must also voice my disappointment at the hyperbolic rhetoric here today(/this week).
and I'm not quite so sure why the hero worship over Michael Steele for this post anyway. As Senate candidate in Maryland, absolutely. But as RNC Chairman? Let's slow down a bit here here.
Personally, Id just as soon see Ken Mehlman keep the job and have Howard Dean wetting his pants at the very thought of him, ha!
I want to see Steele run for office again! When does Barbara Mikulski run for reelection?
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
She has no doubt brought home some serious bacon to Maryland, and will be even tougher to take down as an incumbant Dem.
www.fairtax.org
Sick of Government Expansion? Liberty-Minded Republican? Check This Out... Republican Liberty Caucus!!!
www.rlc.org http://www.republicanliberty.org/
and I would not be surprised to see an open seat rather than an incumbent Dem there.
In a year that isn't poisonous for the GOP like this year, I think Steele wins an open seat there.
Steele, prior to his days as a candidate and as Lt. Gov. was the chair of the MD State GOP and the Prince George's County GOP. So he understands the running of a party apparatus. Plus he satisfies an apparent "need" - appealing to minorities (why else would we want to put Martinez in there) - and is a much more effective spokesman for our cause. That's why I'd prefer to see Steele in this role. That's beside the fact that the role would keep Steele in the public eye for a future run (either for Senate against Mikulski or maybe for Governor against O'Malley - PS: Mikulski will be 74 when her term is up - she would be a retirement candidate).
We need a counterweight to Howard Dean on the talk show circuit, and I'm sorry to say that a sitting Senator caanot be the confrontational kind of spokesman that can counter Dean. He implicitly has to watch his tongue even in this capacity so as not to provide his next opponent with campaign fodder. We'd be better off with a "general chair" who does not need to worry about his own office.
Is there a way to vote "no" with an exclamation point? Two exclamation points? "No" with four non-descript symbols in front, follwed by innumerable exclamation points?
Just checking ;-)
In a world full of twists and turns, the ultimate twist...is a straight line.
[...that anybody who can type out "the right wing spin about the "liberal media"" with a straight face may be doing a little spinning of their own.]
[Please understand: you're not being shown the door because you're a Lefty; you're being shown it because you're trying to play dirty tricks. Rather badly, might I add. - Moe Lane]
Martinez is a plaintiffs' lawyer by trade and has opposed tort reform. I wonder what the RNC's business community donors will think about that.
I want to know if Michael Steele really was interested in the chairmanship. If so, this compounds this horrible error.
why do you feel he is a good choice?
I want to know if Martinez is a good fundraiser. That's all the party needs from him. If he can articulate the policy he's given, there should be no problem.
Conservatism:
He has a lifetime ACU rating of 100% --the only such senator to have such a high rating-- and he will help us regain the Hispanic vote that Tancredo & co. has lost us and ruined much of Bush & Rove's hard work regarding the matter. He's great on life, taxes, the GWOT, and a host of other issues near & dear to the party faithful. The only objections I've heard around here come from trial lawyer-phobia (there are SOME good ones, folks) and the "no amnesty / everything is amnesty" one trick ponies.
Steele:
We need Steele to run again for office; Martinez has already been elected and it would be hard for Steele to get elected to national office after being viewed as a partisan, especially in Maryland. Martinez has impressed me with his young stint in the Senate.
Spitballs?!?! / Yo No Soy Marinero, Soy Capitan
Considering that the ACU only rates members of Congress, Martinez has a 100% rating for only a single year (2005). While I'm not scoffing at it, I don't think it's fair to say that he's superior to other conservatives who may only rate in the 95% ange lifetime. The simple fact is that Martinex's rating is based on a single year (not even a single Congress as the 2006 ratings are not out), while virtually every other Senator in the GOP caucus has multiple years of ratings (every other GOP Senate freshman from 2004 - Isakson, Vitter, DeMint, Burr, and Thune - had previously served in the House and had historical ratings there).
With the exception of immigration (which will be a negative on Martinez's 2006 ACU rating), I'm not knocking the Senator's conservative credentials. But being a good conservative doesn't make you the right choice to lead. This is a job that is all about the public face of the party. The compaint is that Martinex is not a good spokesman, not that he's a bad conservative. If you can't express the point solidly, you have no business in the job.
Unless I'm in error, he also DIRECTS those funds to his choice of races, including in the primaries.
Therefore he has massive control over the direction of the party.
Just throwing that out for the "it's just a fundraising job" crowd.
strategy. When you put a "face" in front of one of the national political organizations, you have another guy in charge of the nuts and bolts. Call him a "deputy." Someone who knows how to do it.
Jim Gilmore had Jack Oliver for the GOP. Before that, Chris Dodd had Don Fowler at the DNC.
Look for something like that to come of this.
I was originally very enthused about having Michael Steele as RNC head - but I was really changed by his CSPAN appearance - where he talked about how the party needs to "listen to the voters" and then respond to their desires.
Sounded like a formula for mushy moderation to me. Also, if you think there is any symbolic value from an electoral standpoint, I believe that we have a lot better chance to pick up Hispanic votes than African-American.
about Martinez, so I voted No. I like Steele. Just that simple.
Yes, Democrats: Please, please PLEASE try to impeach the president during wartime.
The main problem I have with Mel (and he represents my state) is that he has a job. The RNC chair is a full time job - how is he going to do both? Unless he's going to resign from the Senate and get replaced by Jeb, I just don't see how this makes any kind of sense. I know he's not up until 2010, but he needs to pay attention to the needs of Florida if he wants to get re-elected.
My thoughts are on my own blog for anyone interested. I want Michael Steele to be rewarded as much as anyone, but he wasn't right for the RNC. He isn't cut throat enough. Martinez big draw back is the dual role of RNC Chair and Senator. Repubs, despite the feelings of many of you neophyte rights, consist of more than hardliners. Hardliners don't like him because he doesn't want to tow their line, instead, he believes in the President's comprehensive immigration policy. And who better to bring the Hispanics back to the party. We barely had 40% before and lost half of those last week. Martinez is the poster boy for the Spanish speaking immigrant who makes good. Perfect for attracting good candidates to represent the growing Hispanic vote. Perfect for reaching out to the Hispanic and other minority communities. So, I voted for Yes.
Sara (Squiggler)
Martinez is a Cuban from Florida, and anti-Castro Cubans are much more pro-Republican than Hispanics from Mexico or South America. But Martinez is a Senator, cannot afford to miss votes while in the minority, and his political outlook is probably colored by Florida politics, which are greatly different than those of Middle America, with different issues.
I agree with other posters here that we need a full-time RNC director (who does nothing but rebuild the party) and a full-time Senator. Martinez might be a better choice for NRSC (anyone would be better than Senator Dole), but even there, I would prefer Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. As a former Democrat, he knows how to connect with swing voters in bluish-purple Minnesota, and he's originally from Brooklyn, and can connect with east-coast urban and suburban voters.
Has the choice of Martinez for RNC been anointed from on high, or do Republican activists or officeholders get to vote on this?
The bad news: Conservatism is hard to sell. The good news is that it works.
All of you in the open borders crowd need to start digging in your pockets for the cost of adding 12-20 million new immigrants literally overnight. To process that number of people we will need more civil service workers. It is estimated that 60% of the illegals are illiterate which means we will need to pay for remedial programs to bring them up to speed. Also we will need to spend more on schools, hospitals and other social services. And lets not forget that most illegals are at the lower end of the economic scale so we will need to fund additional EIC. So start digging in your pockets. Dig deep now.
(and yours is relatively minor compared to much today, so I apologize that this looks like I'm responding primarily to you - I am not)
this issue is NOT a binary switch. there are positions between Amnesty and Pat Buchanan. the refusal to admit such just makes most of those arguing this position (the vast majority I believe in good faith, and with legitimate concerns) look silly, turns off a lot of independents, and annoys a fair share of conservatives as well. not to mention it makes us look stupid, for voting out a Republican House that was the only bar to teh amnesty being decried in favor of a Democrat one that will give us much worse.
But what has happened since Tuesday. Rumsfeld was thrown under the bus the next day. Bush did that after running around the country full of bluster telling the media that Rumsfeld was going to stay until the end of the administration. The House Republicans are set to re-elect the same leadership that led them into a defeat. Bush is getting ready to negotiate with one of the axis of evil members in an effort to hightail out of Iraq. And to top it all off Martinez is selected as the leader of the RNC. A guy that is not only for giving Social Security benefits to illegal aliens who stole other people's identity. But a guy that has had dealings with Abramoff's people and has as much personality as toast. So don't blame the people who didn't vote. Blame the party who didn't give people anything to vote for and keeps doing the same.
We need someone to devote 100% of their efforts to rebuilding the party. The fact that he will have to stand for re-election with the voters of only one state might compromise him also. And finally, I have a feeling that he will do the same thing as Mehlman...get involved in the primaries, where he doesn't belong, on the side of the less conservative candidate. We should have got Newt. Instead we got a Bush crony.
Just Say No To Amnesty: http://www.fairus.org
The electorate spoke loudly about the old guard, 1 week ago. The status quo needs to be ousted. A new face with new ideas, and a person that cannot be tied to the "old guard" in anyway is the proper prescription for '08.
When are we going to become the party of Ronald Reagan, Pete DuPont, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes again? The message of economic opportunity and hope and the results it delivers does more to attract minority voters than this pathetic window dressing.
Empty suite, plaintiff's suite that is.
He is the PERFECT candidate to deliver this message of economic opportunity and he's as staunch an anti-commie as you're going to find outside the John Birch society.
Spitballs?!?! / Yo No Soy Marinero, Soy Capitan
its not that big of a deal...lets aleast give him a chance...and i seriously dont think people are gonna vote dem..that were planning on voting gop just because of him
He will be expected to control the party during the primary election not the president.
I put undecided, mostly because I got excited for Steele being the chair. If Steele's name wasn't mentioned before hand, I probably would have put yes.
I don't know anything about him.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
For reasons I gave in the thread above this thread. His campaign and his early days as senator did not exactly inspire me with confidence.
If he is being chosen as a face for Latino voters, I can think of other Latino Republicans who are more able and have more presence on television.
I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
Mel Martinez is a good public face of the party -- his presence alone is in direct conflict with the liberals' regular argument that the Republican Party is a bunch of white country clubbers (I believe the opposite to be true - that the Dem leadership panders to minorities but doesn't actually allow them to advance within their ranks).
This endless hand-wringing over immigration is simply unnecessary. There IS middle ground between blanket amnesty and the enforcement-only argument that seems to be prevalent in a lot of diaries here.
Mel can help the Republicans become the party of Ronald Reagan again. If he fundraises, articulates the message, and focuses on the main argument that conservatism works, he'll do us a lot of good.
An aside- the negative garbage being thrown around about Ken Mehlman turns my stomach. Without his leadership in several swing states in 04 (Florida's I-5 corridor especially) we'd be sitting here talking about fighting against President Kerry's 50% top marginal tax rate and the Wussification of America's Military.
"I just disproved my own argument. Where's my degree from Paul Maguire University??" -- Bill Simmons
what happened the last time we bought the "middle ground" argument. We bought it last time, and the moderates who wanted to expand the party in the big tent sold us out. No enforcement last time means enforcement FIRST this time or you don't get my support. You only get to start talking about middle grounds when you start recognizing the reality of your last middle ground failure. Unless of course you really are in favor of "open" borders and figure the middle ground ruse is as good as it gets for snookering us rubes.
To paraphrase an old idiom, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on Simpson-Mazzoli."
Every day I feel more strongly that, nationally, the party is leaving me. I haven't moved at all, but it just seems to get farther away all the time. It's not so bad at the state level here in Florida and there are some great, truly Conservative, county and local party apparatus. But when I look at the national landscape and see the intellectual desert awaiting my conservative-minded compatriots in 2008, I don't know what I want to do first, gag until I choke or simply begin an unceasing, inconsolable wail.
I feel like I'm stuck inside an Edvard Munch painting.
This Martinez move is just proving my suspicions about who the GOP leaders really care about...and it ain't my family, friends. Nor, likely, is it yours. Anyone who'd rest their case on one year of ACU scores probably couldn't understand the fundamental difference between the American and French Revolutions. And Sen. Martinez would be right there with them, unable to discern the difference.
There is nothing "conservative" about the pro-mass-immigration movement. And the GOP just chose its poster boy as leader?
"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog
The Republican Party is only making very serious mistakes by upsetting a majority of the "U.S. conservative voters base" when the party decides to put in "establishment Republicans" into its leadership positions in the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, and in the Republican National Committee Chair! The Republican Party truly needs to fully reform itself as soon as it possibly can, and it can't do this by maintaining the political status quo!
I have already sent an e-mail via link at Michelle Malkins site to let the GOP know that I will not donate directly to them if Mel Martinez is picked over Michael Steele. I really appreciate the race that Steele ran and I believe for the socially conservative amongst us that he was great on stem cells and abortion. He should be rewarded for being the most exciting candidate for the base. I do not appreciate Mr Martinez's position on illegal immigration and I don't believe there is a middle ground until the border is secure. The underbelly of illegals just coming into this country was proven yet again this morning in Montgomery County, Md with a prostitution ring being broken up. The drugs, the coyotes, etc etc, this is not just about someone getting a job. Once you have done something illegal it is not a stretch to do it again.
Peace through superior fire power:)
Michael Steele was the best the GOP had running in the disaster of 2K6. I hope the party keeps him and has plans to use his talents. He's too good to release back to the private sector.
2006 is done, 2008 is another day and another fight
Ok, first of all I am a black conservative from Nebraska, so I might be alittle bias. However, I was hoping Steele would have gotten the job. He was a damn good canidate and I am sorry he lost. We needed a new face out there in the public to get people hired up for conservative ideals. I think he would have been that person. Nothing against Martinez but hello doesnt he already have a job in the Senate. How is he going to do a good job as chairman when he is in the Senate. I just think we missed a good chance to get a good communicator to go up against crazy Dean.
Thanks
Steve
Should have just appointed a democrat and got it over with. This guy is a puppet . His staff is rude, and just as aggravating, if thats possible!! The G.O.P. is a joke. I'd like to see someone HONEST running the party that has some GUTS.
While I vote no, the comments in other threads that the guy is not smart are ridiculous. He is an experienced attorney. He is quite bright. A bit too slick for me on the stump. Not a great one-on-one presence. Not a person I have felt comfortable with, but I've only met him twice.
Still, he is the only immigrant in the Senate and he will have credibility on immigration policy. This is likely a short-term appointment anyway, so what difference does it make. Let's hope he succeeds. I do.