I haven’t posted in over a week now because I have made a long distance move.  I have left Pennsylvania and am now settled into my new place in South Carolina, a nice red state, where I have relocated with my company and will be working just over the state line in downtown Charlotte.  The weather is beautiful down here and I am loving it so far.  No more PA and not looking back!

I am reworking the header images so I just put up a temporary one for now, just fyi. It looks like the switch to WP 2.0.6 is going well so far. Now I just need to finish adjusting the theme.

We will be upgrading STG to WordPress 2.0.6 this weekend from this old 1.5.2 distro we are using. So please stand by as we’ll likely have some slight glitches. Also, we will be launching two new project sites on Monday so stay tuned.

So told Horace Greeley to some youth, and in a way I’m taking his advice. I’ll be graduating this spring after 3.5 years at the College, and after a brief sojourn to the last frontier I will start working. As a result I will be retiring from this blog. I’d close with a certain Reagan quote we all know, but that would be pompous. Peace be with you.

I’ve decided its time for us to put a more distinct differentiation between politics and religion on the blog. I would love to write more theology posts, but that is not really the purpose of this blog. Thus I have create Areopagus Blog, which will cover “Theology, Apologetics, and Christian Thought.”

I encourage SaveTheGOP readers to head over there for more religion oriented stuff, also any STG writer interested in joining Areopagus please email me at markdharris@gmail.com.

So lets keep our posts here now focused on more of the political realm.

As a heads up, I am going to be upgrading SaveTheGOP to Word Press 2.0 sometime in the next week, so if it goes down temporarily you know what happened.

Save The GOP is a finalist in the “Best of the Top 6751-8750″ Blogs category. Show your support for our work and go vote here for us!

Thanks to Aakash for the nomination!

I felt that need to write this post with the increasing hostility that has flared up on some of the comment threads about candidates we support, people we choose to flame, etc. I want to point a few things out.

1. We’re not monolithic - Saying that our whole blog is wrong because what one of our bloggers wrote really makes zero sense. We add bloggers all the time, in fact, CRNC blogger alum Joe Biles, should be coming on any day now (::there was much rejoicing::), and there are few issues we all agree on, besides that the GOP needs to stand on its principles not political expediency.
2. Blogs are opinionated - We don’t claim to be objective nor totally authoritative. Rather we’re a bunch of folks who are involved in politics in one shape or another who want to share our oppinions and have them discussed. Flaming us as being schills for one candidate or another is stupid. If we were schills we wouldn’t allow comments. We want to hear your opinion.
3. Comments are for dissent not flaming (besides Alex where flaming is ok) - You don’t like an opinion one of us expresses, well then tell us in the comments thread. Build a logical case, show facts, polls, fundraising numbers, news stories, quotes, whatever and beat us in argumentation, but don’t try to build this grand conspiracy about Save The GOP working to undermine this person or that person or that we’re all tools of the DC establishment, etc. That neither helps your case, as anyone who knows us would know that’s ridiculous, but it also just stops true debate from occuring.

If I may one more time refer you to our “About” page, there you can read the vision and purpose of the blog.

Look, on this Kilgore issue. I will stand with the best of them and say that Kilgore is the best example of the over consulted, wish wash candidate. I stand by that statement 101% and I am not the only one at all who has said such. Most of the conservative DC folks I know pretty much say the same thing. We all hope he wins, but we wish he had stood on principle instead of running around avoiding talking about it. I honestl yat this point after seeing the ads, reading the websites, etc have no idea what Kilgore actually believes in. Sorry if this makes me a bad Republican, but I just see no core principles. I hope he wins because I know Kaine is real bad and I want to believe Kilgore has some great principles that his consultants have just burried deep.

So go ahead and trash us for not being party-cheerleaders for Kilgore. I hope he wins and will be rooting and praying as such, but that should not effect my criticism of his campaign. He should have won this race going away but instead he’s going to be a fight to the bitter end. Moreover, our job is really not to do all the job criticising Kaine. There are plenty of good Virginia blogs more qualified to do that us, but our niche, our goal is to really call Republicans out when they do bone headed things. If you don’t like it, ok, but please don’t expect differently.

It is this blogs policy, it will be this blogs policy, and I would leave if it were otherwise, to spend most of our effort trying to clean up our own house. Want to read about how bad Democrats are? Great, check out the billion other blogs dedicated to that, our primary goal is to shine light on the unpleasantries of the GOP, because we want the GOP to be better, stronger, and more than anything pass real legislation to make our country better through conservative principles.

This blog is just part of the network, we serve one purpose of cleaning the house while others serve the purpose of attacking the left, others elucidating good policy, others making fun of the left, etc. All these parts of the body work together to make the centre-right blogosphere work and work well. So if you want to flame me for being critical of Kilgore go ahead…

The site was hacked over the weekend, so I took this opportunity to upgrade us to WordPress 1.5.2. As you can see we’re using the default WP 1.5.2 look at the moment, but we will work on customizing it as we go along. Thanks for all your support.
-The mgmt

Many of you have been asking where Save the GOP is likely to go from here. We do not just want to be a blog, rather we would to really be a place for ACTIVISTS, who do something. As such, Save the GOP will be entering its second stage over the next few months.

We’re currently looking at what platform to move to which will give us more power than the normal blogging features of WordPress. Ironically one of the strongest contenders is CivicSpace, which is based on the old Dean for America technology. Dean may have lost the campaign but his people knew what they were doing when it came to technology.

Anyways, this is going to be a big project and would love help from folks who are familiar with PHP/MySql/Apache development. (We’re an opensource shop here, none of that Microsoft junk). Also if you do graphic design or CSS/xHTML stuff also drop me a line, because we are looking to do a total graphic redesign along with rolling out the new system.

My goal is for a preliminary launch sometime around September 1. Email me at mark@savethegop.com if you want to get involved.

With Al Gore inventing the internet and all I thought they would realize that we can see which sites they came from, but alas….

Tanbark check this out. I’m posing as Chuck Colson on http://www.savethegop.com/archiv…6/26/moving-on/

There’s little wide eyed wonders over there whining about Davidson’s loss to Gourley. I’m tryin to toughen ‘em up by giving them some Repub election highlights and spelling out why they need guys like Gourley if they’re gonna win.
Chuck Colson | Email | Homepage | 06.28.05 - 10:55 am | #

At the CR Convention I got to meet a lot of our readers and want to say thanks for making Save The GOP a success. Yesterday we had 1,500 unique visitors, a single day record for us, and nearly three times our average. We also passed 150,000 hits for the blog which is a fantastic achievement. Use this thread to post props to your favorite Save The GOP writer or tell us what we can do better.

-Save The GOP Contributors
Mark Harris
Alexander
The Ever Present, Gary Livacari
Michael Shutze
John McCormack
Nathan Humphrey
Andrew

Clinton/Gore Strategist Donna Brazille, blogger Mark Harris, and blogger Gary Livacari. What more could you ask for?

Ms. Brazille asked me what I’d be doing post-graduation, I told her politics and she said, “See you on the battlefield”

Come compete in the Save The GOP Fantasy Baseball league!!!
All good conservatives are welcome.

Join up by clicking http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1
League ID: 315993
Password: pattoomey

This CRNC election has seen a lot of people claim them mantle of truth… TruthCaucus, CR Vets for Truth, etc. Some have asked what place SaveTheGOP serves in this fray. We are not a blog dedicated solely to the CR issue, rather we started to help restore the GOPs conscience on conservative issues, and this is just part of that attempt.

We do not claim to be objective like CRVetsForTruth does or others, b/c we think that when given the choice between Paul Gourley and Michael Davidson it would be an ethical mistake on our part to say they are equally qualified. Paul Gourley’s signature on those letters in the end rendered him incapable of serving as a succesful CRNC Chairman and I’m sure more people realize our point of view when they read our posts.

What I hope though is that we are fair, and I think with our condemnation of the removal of Cassin in Michigan that has come out. We are not in this to cover, spin, etc rather to provide our readers with facts into the case. We don’t say we’re “fair and balanced” every 5 minutes, because we hope from reading our stuff you realize we’re thoughtful and fair folks without us shoving it down your throat. In the end we’re out to help the conservative cause, and that’s why we support Davidson and are not about to apologize for it, but we will show you both sides of the coin.

This is a web project designed to become a constant source of information for conservatives across the country. We are just preparing to get off the ground so look for more information as it becomes available. If you would like to write for us please contact Mark Harris.