Stop Whining and Get to Work
Last Saturday night the Maryland Republican Party held their annual Red, White and Blue Dinner. There was a fabulous turnout of close to 500 people.
The fact that political genius Karl Rove was the guest speaker certainly had a lot to do with the crowd, but there also seemed to be a sense of excitement in the air that perhaps things were trending toward Republican Party viewpoints in the State of Maryland. The recent election results in Wisconsin were certainly fresh in everyone’s mind.
Karl Rove’s message to the assembled party faithful was really very simple: Stop whining and complaining about the current electoral demographics in Maryland and get up on your feet and do something about it.
He related that when he began in politics in Texas that state was overwhelmingly Democratic. In Maryland we elect a handful of statewide offices every four years (governor/lieutenant governor, attorney general, and comptroller). He told us, essentially “That’s nothing!”
Mr. Rove said that in Texas they elect 28 statewide offices, and when he started in politics all 28 were held by Democrats.
Over time, the Republicans went to work and eventually all 28 statewide offices had shifted into the hands of the Republican Party. That is quite a success story.
There are those in Maryland who say a Republican should not even bother to try to run for governor or any other statewide office because it is “a waste of time.”
That is a horribly defeatist attitude that I will never embrace. I speak only for myself, but I believe that I owe it to my children, and to the state I love, to do everything I can to see to it that the disastrous track that we are on gets reversed. If we keep going the way we are going in Maryland, and spending money we don’t have and then sending bill after bill to the taxpayers, there will be no future for our children and grandchildren here. They will have to move, as many are already doing today.
It is very easy to sit back and say “why bother.” But that accomplishes nothing. I hope that, if I do take the plunge and run for governor in 2014, there will be others who realize that the economic issues faced in our state are so serious that it is worth an effort to try to turn things around.
If I do run, I will do everything I can to take that message to every county in the state and drive the point home that there is an alternative.
It’s one thing to have your money taken from you, as the Democrats in this state do year after year. It is quite another to tell the thief “Go ahead! I don’t mind.”
I will never submit to our one-party Democrat monopoly government in Annapolis treating us like walking ATM machines without making my views heard. You have my word.
Here is also some food for thought on the progress that Republicans have made in the State of Maryland.
· Republicans control 15 of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions.
· There are 158 locally elected Republicans compared to 157 Democrats.
· 17 of Maryland’s jurisdictions consistently vote Republican in statewide elections.
· The GOP is now the majority party in 11 of the state’s 24’s jurisdictions. Four of these counties flipped in just the past two years.
These facts were included on a handout distributed by the Maryland GOP at the Red White and Blue dinner.
As you can see, let’s not whine as we have made progress and we have more work to do.
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