"comments are posted under the protection of anonymity (which can be used as a shield by cowards unwilling or unable to defend their arguments"

"Jesse from Cranston" comes to mind...

I'm glad they finally got the site up. Short and to the point, and painfully accurate. Good for the Cranston GOP!

In regard to Randy, I'm not sure what to make of his comments. From what I can discern, he seems to be agreeing with the content of the site, but possibly taking issue with the "coarseness" of the name for it? Could someone explain the overall point better, because I was not able to clearly ascertain it from the article.

PS While it's always good to get positive ink, I'm not sure that you would want Randy "on your side." He's probably a nice enough guy (I suspect I must have met him somewhere along the way politically, but for the life of me, I can't even visualize him), but he's also completely irrelevant as a political force or entity in the GOP.

Being far too political, Will, you miss the point. Laugh if you will, but I'm simply on Rhode Island's side. Citizens' side. Only incidentally on the GOP's side.

I've very much enjoyed your company on that handful of times that we've conversed, and I certainly consider us to be on the same side. But I have to say that there's something misplaced and counterproductive in your eagerness to label a potential ally as "irrelevant."

A news flash for RIGOP insiders: We aren't going to steamroll our way to a transformation of our state. If you can't find ways to persuade those who are at least moderately inclined to agree with you, then you will prove to be irrelevant.

Funny thing about conservative morals (which is to say, from my point of view, Christian morals): you get to be both confident and big. None of us is sufficiently important for the price of others' absolution to be an unbidden overture in our direction. Even God seeks ways in which to guide the wayward toward repentance.

Hell's got a place for the righteous who nonetheless lose sight of the intrinsic value of each individual. A lesson can be derived from that assertion even for those who insist on stripping it of religious imagery.

Of course, I'm not an "insider" (I like to think of it as more like being an "outsider" who interacts with the "insiders" on a regular basis). Transformative change first of all requires people who are commmitted to seeking positive change. People who may benefit from the "way things are" (the status quo) tend to stand in the way of bringing that about. Simply having someone on your side isn't always enough -- you also need them not to weigh you down. Politics is a lot like finance, you have assets and you have liabilities. You can only be one or the other.

I was actually trying not to come off as "too political," as I really don't know Randy from a hill of beans. As far as I know, I've never met him -- and if I may have along the way, I was certainly not left with any lasting impression. That's neither good nor bad -- it simply is.

In order to be relevant, you have to make yourself relevant -- that applies to Randy, just as much as anyone else. The small point which I was trying to make -- and which I'm still making -- is that I'm not sure what Randy specifically has done since he lost his city council seat in 2002 to be considered "relevant" to the GOP or anywhere else. Of course, as a registered Republican voter in Cranston, he's relevant in so much as someone running for public office who may want his single vote is concerned. To my knowledge, I've never seen him attend or speak at a state GOP meeting, and I'm not even sure if he's involved with the Cranston GOP at any level. Are you perhaps suggest that we try to do something more to entice him back into the fold?

He wasn't really the point. The larger point (which I'm still awaiting clarification on) was not about Randy as an individual, it was to try to discern what his overall point was in writing the article. What was it? I think I got the "power of blogs" idea down okay, but was there more to it?

It appears to me, Will, that his point was that he changed his opinion about the nappylies website after communicating with Justin.

As to the website itself, Randy writes:

"However, after speaking with Dave Exter, chairman of the Cranston Republican City Committee, I realized the site is not written for someone like me – a political aficionado who pays close attention to the local politics. It is written for the busy taxpayers of the city whom Exter is trying to reach.

Because of the local GOP’s minority status in local politics, Exter sees it as a watchdog charged with “keeping the taxpayers informed.” Exter told me, “We are always looking for ideas out there to keep the taxpayers informed.” This drive and the need to show Napolitano’s “consistent pattern of saying one thing and doing another” were the catalysts behind nappylies.com."

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The website does a very good job of this by conveying important information succinctly.

As to the substance of the website, the long list of flip-flops by the Mayor is remarkable, even by the standards of the political arena.

What I'm trying to convey, I guess, comes down to the suggestion that, in a political context, there's a space between "relevant" and "irrelevant." Especially in a state as small as Rhode Island, everybody is relevant to some extent (even if only in their effect on other people).

There are two options when somebody "stands in the way" (whether in active opposition or passive resistance): Get him to turn around and march, or knock him out of the way. Which approach to take requires an assessment of cost/benefit as well as of effort. My belief is that it takes a whole lot of disparity in effort to make "knock him out of the way" the better option.