There has been a lot going on in the sports world as of late, with the Final Four, Tiger winning in Augusta and the start of the baseball season. With the Champions League and World Cup qualifying going on right now, I was wondering if any of our readers are soccer fans. I myself am a fanatic. My favorite club teams are Ajax, Man U, Rangers and DC United. In the world Cup I of course go for USA, but I also am a fan of Ireland. Anyone else?

I am against BOTH nuclear options, Senate filibusters or splitting up the CRNC for petty political reasons. I will post about the Senate filibusters sometime later but let me briefly talk about the stupidity of recent talk of breaking off from the CRNC.

I got into this game of blogging re: the CRNC election cause I think Paul Gourley largely epitomizes all the sleazy, underhanded, terrible things that CR politics has come to mean. This is not to say that there aren’t low life careerists on the other side either, but the Gourley effort just is the very essence of this.

All that being said if Gourley wins (heaven forbid), I would urge everyone to stay calm and stay in the CRNC. We’ve survived decades of the same brand of people running the CRs we can survive two more. By leaving you will only hurt the conservative movement more, and seriously undermine our efforts to change the way things work. People need to stay involved, because if all the good folks leave then the only people left around are the sleazies. Not all Gourley supporters are sleazies either, there are good people on both sides and bad people on both sides. We need to after this race push for true reform of the CRNC on the issues I mentioned before. Though in the end this race comes down to the fact that Paul Gourley made himself a farce of a Chairman by signing those morally repugnant letters, and no amount of wishing away of the Gourley campaign can change the fact that he knew about them, everyone in the office did, and that he allowed it to happen with his name attached. For me atleast, that’s game-set-match.

So before the Gourley campaign announces that they have “won,” I figure it is imperative for the CR blogosphere to hear my opinion. First, I would like to say that from my own background in political fundraising, I am sympathetic to those who try to reform a system designed to defraud people. The ugly truth is that where there is money there’s corruption.

Political fundraising is one of the most thankless tasks in the world. It is necessary, but it does not have to be a “necessary evil.” You can ask people for a lot of money. You can ask them a lot of the time. But you can never ever lie, like saying, oh I don’t know, that you will give President Bush a lapel pin to wear if they pray over it and then give you $1000, or that the letter you’re receiving is from the White House.

So, what the entire election boils down to is this:

If Paul Gourley knowingly endorsed those fraudulent letters that bear his signature, he should withdraw his candidacy.

Peace, I’m out.

A lot of the debate during this race has revolved around personality, but not a lot of talk on either sides has been about issues. So here is my crash course on what the CRNC Chairman next should do:

1. Fundraising - A total overhaul is needed obviously but it needs to be fundamental also. There needs to be a switch to more of the high dollar long term big fish type of donations, where we can build solid relationships with donors. This has a much lower overhead than direct mail programs. Direct mail is obviously needed but each piece needs to be straight to the point about it being from the CRs and what we will use the money for. A good Direct Mail firm can write copy that talks about how bad things are on campus, which is the truth, without lying. Also the whole “block grant” system needs a total overhaul with an emphasis on long term stability of state feds.

2. Grassroots - The CRNC needs to be less about getting the Chairman on TV and setting himself up for a future political career and more about the establishment of solid college grassroots. HoplinCo for all there failings has done a decent job at this but much more needs to be done. We need to work to train State Chairs & Chapter Chairs on how to run grassroots organizations so that they can then focus on training their members. A trained CR isn’t just a benefit for the time they are in college but will be an asset to the movement post-graduation too. Leadership Institute style intensive training as while as focus on internt campaigning and netroots could really make the CRs an incredibly effective organization.

3. Chapters - The heart of the College Republicans lie in the chapters. The CRNC needs to be a tool for empowering chapters to be better by training them on how to handle media, get good earned press, develop talking points, recruit, etc. Too many chapters have only a transient field rep who doesn’t have the time to build relationships with chapters or worse the only thing they ever see from the CRNC is the “Chapter Box” in the begining of the year. We need to work to also focus chapters on campus activism and really working to change the generation of students to a more conservative, Republican direction.

4. State Federations - The Davidson proposal for FULL TIME Regional officers is a good one that has been used succesfully by other grassroots organizations, but our long term goal should be to turn each State Fed into a large enough operation to have an executive director to handle its operations also. This is obviously a very long term goal, but by getting State Feds incorporated in their states, filed under the proper tax codes, and developing their fundraising programs it could be achieved in the long run. Just think of the tremendous benefits that could be reaped by expanding our operation to a more professional level where paid EDs for State Feds could help build chapters, train members, and work as campaign liasions to match CRs with where they are needed, as well as raise money to make it all possible.

5. The National Organization’s Mission - For too long the CRNC has been viewed more as the Nat’l Assn of State Chairman and not as a true organization of College Republicans. Reform is needed in the delegation selection process and in other areas to make the CRNC more responsive to the average College Republican. The Davidson campaigns revamping of the site and buildiong of an online community to allow for the exchange of good ideas among chapters and chapter officers would be fantastic. But more than anything it is a change in outlook, for too long careerists and political sell outs have dominated the leadership of the CRs. People whose only concern is moving up in the political food chain and not about the movement itself, which is the plague that has so crippled the CRs that we’ve come to this national chair election.

Well those are just five points I think could be really helpful no matter who is chair next, but make no mistake the biggest problem facing the CRs are the souless careerists. In the end, if they stay in power as they have been for decades then the CRNC is doomed, and this election no matter who wins will likely not change that. Davidson is a good guy and represents more hope than the clearly status-quo old school Gourley, but there are still some of the hucksters on both sides. We’ll see who is the real man when tickets come out, if both have sold out as many ticket spots as possible to careerists to win their votes then we’ll know its business as usual at the CRNC.

Its noon and no sign yet of the supposed Gourley victory press release? hmmm… overplaying of ones cards I suppose.

The New York Times just keeps ‘em coming. This article is perhaps more priceless than the last, detailing that not only do Catholics sin but that many of them are ignorant of the reasons for Church doctrine. This is the perfect example of a puerile understanding of dogma:

But some younger Catholics say they can no longer live their lives in keeping with doctrine. Adam Williams, 17, goes to Mass at Mount Carmel, the Catholic high school he attends in Baltimore, but rarely goes to church otherwise. The church’s prohibitions on “almost everything a kid can do,” Adam said, has made him ever more reluctant to identify himself as Catholic.

“At school, they taught us that there are so many people in Africa with AIDS,” Adam said, as he took a break from working after school last week at Vaccaro’s, a local pastry shop. “But the church won’t let them use condoms. I think that’s stupid.”

This gem from the NY Times is priceless. One of the examples of trickery that Mr. Kerry cited was that “leaflets [we]re handed out saying Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday.”

My little sister did happen to forward me an email that said just that. If anyone was so stupid to be tricked by that, I don’t think they should have been voting in the first place.