Seeding the Grass Roots
Rob Long’s piece on the summer’s town hall meetings (subscription required) is characteristically humorous, but he’s clearly missing something in the American air: It’s strictly a summer affair — when there are soccer games to get to and the weather gets chilly, most of the firebrands will be too busy and distracted to head on…
I’ll be the first to acknowledge the prominence of self interest in the development and ascendance of local taxpayer groups. Members take up political arms, as it were, for a variety of reasons, and often those reasons are decidedly materialistic in nature. Therewith comes the sliver of truth to Phil’s cartoonish characterization of the simmering…
Rhode Island roads are designed for people who already know where they’re going. That’s why I barely made it to Johnston in time to set up for the community dinner hosted b y Senators Reed and Whitehouse. And what do I find when I arrive: Andrew sneaking up on Pat Crowley! We’re a violent mob…
An understandably frustrated Karin commented to a recent post: Does it really matter who yells and screams. They have no intention of changing the way they vote. The yelling is out of pure frustration that we have zero control over these guys. One needn’t read Sunday’s Providence Journal article about our delegation’s backing off the…
The video from this morning’s RIGOP fundraiser with RNC Executive Director Ken McKay is available in the extended entry. My apologies to RIGOP Chairman Gio Cicione; I was trying to learn on the job, as it were, and figure out how to improve the picture because of the bright backlighting of the windows and missed…
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Two picnics, two to town halls, and now a breakfast fundraiser for the RIGOP. So far, this location has been the most difficult to find, a consideration that the party should perhaps take into account in the future; I imagine a significant proportion of its potential base consists…
Conservatives in this state must share a certain apprehension as they drive to ideologically tinted events — hoping that somebody shows up, but not the wrong people, and maybe it’ll be an indication of our powerlessness, but what if we have to prove ourselves in front of a one-time crowd… Well, tea parties aside, the…
Per our usual practice of reinvesting just about every dollar that we take in, for Anchor Rising, we’re expanding our capabilities to include video, and the collection of short speeches presented at the Rhode Island Republican Assembly’s Victory over Statism Barbecue presented a fantastic first run. Videos (with quotes and commentary as I’m inspired) for…
What a place is Rhode Island. As a matter of general impression, I wouldn’t have characterized Rhode Island much differently than my native Northern New Jersey. High-density suburban. Some areas that tilt a little more rural; some that escalate to the density of cities. I recently took a moment to fiddle with Google Earth and…
As a follow-up on the subject of organized labor stoking civil violence, it turns out that one of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) members who crossed into physical violence in St. Louis wasn’t just a overexcited layman: Elston K. McCowan is a former organizer – now the Public Service Director of SEIU Local 2000…