What constitutes ‘Republicanism’?

As you are probably aware, the Brevard County Republican Executive Committee is under the new leadership of Chairman Jason Steele.

There has been a flurry of activity since he took over, and the local party has seen many improvements since the beginning of the new year: a new web site, a meetup group on meetup.com and a well attended black tie optional Lincoln Day Dinner just to name a few.

Local Republicans are eager to have their voices heard, and the new technology is making that possible. A news tidbit on the need for the Republican Party to shake off its big government ways sent to the meetup group by Republican committeeman Steve Townsend generated 36 emails over the course of two days. I think this goes to show there are a lot of Republicans that are still disgruntled by the liberal leaders, and elected officials, of the Republican Party. 

What we need is a local party platform. 

When I met with Jason Steele in December prior to the BREC Chairman election, he informed me that this is the direction we’d be going if he won.

When you hear Republicans who are supportive of the welfare state say they are “conservative” these labels diminish in value and can even be associated with big government.  We need to be discussing the issues in specific:  Keynesian economic policies vs. the free market Austrian school economic policies, Constitutional government as opposed to democratic government, sound money vs. fiat inflationary monetary policy, a noninterventionist foreign policy vs. an interventionist foreign policy, etc.

With a platform, we can finally have something that’s concrete for us to choose to follow and get behind, or subsequently choose other endeavors. The Republican party is on the rocks, and we can’t just keep saying we have to be a “big-tent” and accept everybody.  Because “everybody” includes those who have a complete disregard for liberty.  “Everybody” includes socialists who simply checkoff the “Republican” box on a voter registration form because it might be easier to win an election in the county as a registered Republican.  We shouldn’t be a big tent that includes “everybody”, but a tent that includes small government, conservative, liberty minded, Constitutionalist Republicans. 

I agree with Harry, Michelle, Steve Bussey, Steve Townsend, Tim, Sean, Jim, etc. and all of the other Republicans who are disgruntled with the RINO/liberal element of this party.  When developing this platform to represent us I believe we should be erring on the side of less government intervention into our lives and into the market.

I e-mailed the Chairman last night I am so eager to see us stand for something specific I will personally volunteer to chair a platform committee and help write this platform. We will come to an agreement on a platform for the whole executive committee to agree and vote on. This would be a similar effort to the local Constitution that’s being re-written by the party lawyer, however instead written by We The People.

I would wager it would be very difficult to find any other committeeman or committeewoman that is more conservative than I when it comes to issues (if there are, email me so I know how to make the government even smaller while still preserving individual liberty and freedom) and these are the types we need to be writing a party platform.

The Republicans of Brevard County deserve better than what they have gotten over the past few years at the national, state, and even local level with both the party officials and its elected leaders.  At the very least, they deserve to have a local party platform so they actually know what “electing Republicans” means.