What's going on around town?

Oct 17
Candidate Training by American Majority in the Lower Level Conference Room in the Hayden Office Building, 212 SW 8th Street, Topeka, KS. Contact Person is Elizabeth Patton 785-233-3800 or email at KS@americanmajority.org
Republican Women's Club Luncheon from 11:30am-1pm at the Riverfront Community Center in Leavenworth, KS
Oct 20
Hope for America Coalition meeting from 7-9pm at the Antioch Branch of the Johnson County Library.
Oct 23
New Media Training Class from 1-3pm at the Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, KS.
George Alafoginis, RNC director of Online Stategies will present the class. No Charge for training. Contact Person is Lisa Burgess, 785-234-3456 lburgess@ksgop.org
Oct 27
Kansans for Life Monthly Meeting from 7-9pm at the Church of Christ on 10th Avenue in Leavenworth, KS.
Oct 31
Halloween
Nov 1
Daylight Savings Time Begins
Town Hall Meeting at Lansing Community Center from 7-9pm.
Nov 3
Johnson County Young Republicans monthly meeting at Barley's Brewhaus in Shawnee from 7-8:30pm. For information, call Cara Freie at 816-233-6684.
Nov 4
Zeneith Booster's Club Meeting from 6:30-9am at Creekside Bar & Grill, 9916 Holmes road, KCMO.
Nov 6
Candidate Training by American Majority from 9am - 5pm at the Radison Hotel, Kansas City Airport, 11828 NW Plaza Circle, KCMO. Contact Person is Elizabeth Patton at 785-233-3800 or email at KS@americanmajority.org. |
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A Reflection on the Year Past and the Year Ahead
One year ago, I took over as Chairman of the Leavenworth County Central Committee for the Party. It was a very hectic introduction but a thrilling experience with the 2008 General Election just weeks away. Once the election was over, it was time to really get to work.
We began with developing and writing the Precinct Committee Member Handbook for our Precinct Committee Members. Believe it or not, there were no established documents or instructions within either party - nationwide, for this elected position. We established monthly Town Hall meetings to educate our members and voters on key issues affecting our liberties, freedoms and our daily lives. We commenced a program of monthly newsletters to serve as a forum for disseminating key information and to publish articles of general interest. The party web site was established and went active in January of 2009, to serve as a one stop information source for all things political. ( www.LvnCountyGOP.com) Our precinct book and our web site will be used as a model for all other counties in KS.
We slid through the April Primary elections and it was on to a summer filled with tea parties, rallies, and protests. A really important aspect of the summer was the candidate training programs for elected officials and individuals interested in pursuing elected office or working on campaigns. American Majority (Topeka) conducted the training programs and we had approximately 50 people from Leavenworth County attend one or more of the training programs.
Now we look ahead to the upcoming year with even more enthusiasm. As we all learned from the last General Election - Elections Have Consequences.
We are one year, just 12 months out from our next General Election. A lot of things will happen very fast in the next few months. Now is the time to start looking at who is running for elected office and deciding what your level of participation will be. There will be something for everyone to do who is willing to help out. We can sit idly by and blame a candidate's loss on any number of reasons; or, we can get involved, get active, and help our candidates celebrate their and our victories this election season.
Most candidates for the 2010 election have already stated publicly their intentions to run. In just four months, candidates will start filing for office and begin soliciting people to work on their campaigns. In 10 months we will have a Primary Election and two months later the General Election. This would not sound that busy in and of itself, but when you add our day to day lives, work, meetings, social activities, school activities; our schedules begin to fill up really fast.
For many years, I took the approach with political activities that I did not care about local events, choosing instead to focus on national events. I was comfortable with it as I had no personal involvement, in reality it was a cop-out. If we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in, we become a sad lot.
I challenge everyone to find a candidate, find a cause; make it yours and make it personal, and recruit others to help you out. Once you stand up for something you will be amazed at how many others are willing to stand with you. This is our Country, our State, and our Party. We have a year to make a real difference and ensure that the America we are building is the America we want to leave to our descendants.
John Bradford
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GOP Lawmakers Lose in RNC Turf Wars
by: James Bopp, Jr.
I was recently asked a question regarding the purpose of the Republican National Committee. Many have taken the position that it was merely a fund raiser organization, intended to raise enough money to support whatever candidates threw their names into the contest. The RNC is comprised of members elected at the state level (by elected district and state level representatives from within the party). It is not a top-down organization. The party platform begins to be formulated at the county level, all the way though Congressional Districts and States, until the platform is debated and finalized at the National level. Without a national party platform, the need for a political party would be useless. Our current RNC Chairman, Michael Steele is committed to upholding the party platform in principle. This article printed in POLITICO is a good explanation of what the position should be, as understood by all elected officials and candidates seeking elected office. This same understanding of the role of the political party should be reflected from the national level all the way down to state and local counties as well. John Bradford
POLITICO
GOP lawmakers lose in RNC turf war By: James Bopp Jr. October 13, 200905:16 AM EST
The latest Washington turf war seems to be between some in the GOP congressional leadership and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. As reported in POLITICO on Oct. 5, some Republicans in Congress, led by Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, took Steele to task for straying beyond politics to policy by announcing his "health care bill of rights." Alexander declared, "We are elected to set the policy." But, in my view, the national committee's job is to create the environment in which Republicans can be elected to set policy.
This is the tail wagging the dog. The Republican Party was founded to advance a set of principles - most famously, ending slavery. Electing politicians to public office is a means to that end. Alexander, it seems, would reverse this: Let's just elect public officials and see what public policies they come up with. Furthermore, there is no artificial separation between policy and politics. Good policy is good politics.
Unfortunately, we have just come off two electoral defeats where the Republican Party followed Alexander's prescription - just let the politicians decide policy - and abandoned the Republican Party's conservative fiscal and free-market principles. As a result, many Americans became disillusioned with the Republicans, and now America is paying the price with President Barack Obama's march toward socialism.
On the health care issue, Steele stepped up to the plate when many in Washington were still cowed by Obama's electoral victory and when many outside Washington were crying out for Republican leadership. His courageous and determined leadership has helped galvanize opposition to Obamacare, which threatens the very foundation of our free-market-based economy. If government-run health care is defeated, as seems increasingly likely, Steele will be entitled to much of the credit.
I certainly agree with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who said that Republicans "need to coordinate as much as possible" their message. But that is quite different from saying that the RNC has no role in formulating public policy. And Steele says that before it was released he ran his "health care bill of rights" by the Republican congressional leadership.
And what about the Republican Party platform? The 2008 version has 55 pages of Republican principles and policy proposals, including six pages advocating conservative reforms of the health care system. The RNC frequently updates its policy positions through the adoption of resolutions applying the Republican Party's conservative principles to current public policy debates.
And what is the platform for? To provide a blueprint for how Republicans will govern if America entrusts us with that responsibility. In that event, Republican public officials will be judged by their faithfulness to the conservative principles and policies promised by the Republican Party in its platform, and we expect them to pass that test.
James Bopp Jr. is a lawyer in Terre Haute, Ind. He is vice chairman of the Republican National Committee and has served three times on the RNC national platform committee. © 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC |
Another Failed Presidency by: Geoffrey P. Hunt
August 31, 2009
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are inspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
(This article was printed in American Thinker September 2, 2009)
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AFP Defending the American Dream Summit draws thousands to Washington
by: Bob Weeks
October 8, 2009 Last Friday and Saturday over two thousand defenders of free markets and capitalism traveled to the Washington area to meet at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation's Defending the American Dream Summit. It was an action-packed two days, so I'll report on just a few personal highlights.
One of the speakers in the general session was Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal. He said that global warming is the "greatest hoax of the last century." The cap-and-trade bill, besides not having an effect on global temperatures, should really be named the "China and India Full Employment Act." Jobs will flee the United States for these countries, as they will not agree to reduce their carbon emissions.
Our national debt is another grave concern. "What happens if the Chinese, Asians, and the Arabs stop buying our debt?" After Moore's talk I asked if he agreed with the assessment of some economists that we're coming out of the recession. He said that the national debt, the threat of higher taxes, the threat of cap-and-trade, plus the threat of government takeover of our health care system is crippling the jobs market. The real sickness in our economy, he said, is that small businesses have no incentive to grow. "We spent $3 trillion, but we have done nothing to help small businesses. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They create 3 out of every 5 new jobs. So how are you going to get a jobs recovery if you don't have small businesses that are healthy, vibrant, and growing?"
I asked about the tone of the national debate, how the left uses ridicule instead of facing issues squarely. Moore said that we need to maintain the high ground. We have some big advantages over the left, including that we're right. We have empirical evidence and the Constitution on our side. The left doesn't want to debate the issues. They don't want to post bills three days before they're voted on because they don't want people to know what's in the bills, he said.
He added that health care, cap-and-trade, and the budget are important issues we need to watch out for in the next eight weeks.
The Wall Street Journal's John Fund reminded us that most of the provisions of the current health care bill don't take effect for four years. So why, he asked, must we pass it in the next four weeks? I asked him if we've seen the worst of the revelations we're likely to see about ACORN. He replied no, there's more - and worse - to come.
After the closing reception, I spoke with AFP Foundation President Tim Phillips. He said that 2,100 people attended the summit. What's the message the rest of the country should get from this summit? "It's the determination and commitment of free markets and conservative folks to stay though this thing, to not lose interest, to not grow weary. We're in it for the long haul. Today's a good example of it. We don't want to lose. This is not just gamesmanship - these are real issues."
I reminded him that opponents of capitalism and free markets point to the events of the last year as failure of these things. He said "Only in Washington would you have liberals like Barney Frank and other politicians run the housing market into the ground with federal regulation and then call it a free market failure. It's obviously wrong."
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Leavenworth's Mayor Issue By: Steve Fitzgerald
The people of Leavenworth recently replaced their mayor. Shay Baker refused to resign and, after a very painful string of comments by residents - some in her defense but most against her, she was removed by a near unanimous vote of the city commission (only Shay refused to vote for her own removal). Some residents admitted that Shay has done a credible job as a mayor and as a councilwoman. The issue was her lack of sensitivity to the fact that the mayor's position is not hers to use as she sees fit.
Shay saw things differently. She believed that she could use the title of mayor to petition a federal judge to be lenient in sentencing her friend for trafficking in illicit drugs. She believed it was the right thing to do.
Citizen outrage clearly came from the view that Shay's actions were in contradiction to the trend that the City was finally working its way up from a bad reputation. Many gave Shay credit for helping to improve the image and the functioning of the City and were frustrated by what they saw as a betrayal. Several described the uncomfortable situation of living near a drug house and their fears for their children and their belief that Shay did not understand this reality.
Tragically, Shay really does not understand. She does not recognize that she did not have the right to use the title given to her by the City to try and get a reduced sentence for her friend. It was a novice political error in judgment and she compounded it by refusing to admit her error - which made it fatal. Everyone understands mistakes; what they will not tolerate is refusal to face a mistake and correct it - or at the very least recognize that others see a mistake and then try and make amends.
I served with Shay on the school board. She was thoughtful and outspoken. We often disagreed but I liked her straightforwardness and her willingness to explain her position. She is still thoughtful and outspoken and more than willing to explain her position. However, she has not yet learned how to admit an error or how to separate herself from her public position. Those failings could spell the end of her public career.
The City of Leavenworth has made great strides in recent years and Shay has been a part of that progress. While there is no excuse for Shay Baker's refusal to admit her mistake there should be no forgetting that she has also worked enthusiastically for the City. We need more young people to take leadership positions. We need their energy and idealism - and their willingness to learn.
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Leavenworth County Republican Party Leadership
First District
James C. Tellefson.................913-651-3853
Second District & Board Chair
Clyde Graeber......................913-682-4514
Third District
John C. Flower.....................913-634-0061
State Representatives
Kansas House of Representatives, 39th District
Kansas House of Representatives, 42nd District
National Representatives
US House of Representatives
US Senate
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