http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2008/02/23/opinion/doc47c0ca9ee0ae4129335208.txtAn open letter to Republicans in Ellis County: Allow me to start with a quote. It summarizes a presumption I share with a former President.
“They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” – Ronald Wilson Reagan as quoted by Michel Quinn Sullivan in the Empower Texas Newsletter
I will, as usual, be voting in the Republican primary. If anyone cares, I plan to vote for Congressman Ron Paul for President. And, yes, quick-on-the-draw radio pundits, I voted for President Bush twice and will most probably vote for the Republican nominee for president this November, even if he is the dreaded “M” word. I encourage my fellow Republicans not to waste your vote.
If you are a Republican, please do not vote in the Democrat primary in order to attempt to influence their choice of Presidential nominee. The Democratic primary is obviously for Democrats. Do you really want to explain to your fellow Republicans why your voter registration card will be stamped “Democrat Primary?” As a sometime election judge, I would like to also remind you that the identifying stamp – branding you as a member of the party of Hillary Clinton, Ted (Life Guard) Kennedy and Michael (the Tank) Dukakis – will be in brightly colored ink. But go ahead if you must; your neighbors’ heckling will breed character. Hanging “Chads” and Florida aside, engage in a little fair play here.
Let the Democrat Party’s members vote their conscience in “their” primary. American lefties have not had the opportunity to have such a good time since FDR’s administration referred to Stalin as “Uncle Joe.” Don’t spoil their party, yet. While I hear Republicans saying they wish to vote in the other party’s primary to disrupt the candidacy of one or another part of the “Hilbama” hydra, the Democratic primary is truly none of “our” business. Yes, Texas does have an “open” primary system, and it follows that if you are really in accord with the views of, say, Barak Hussein Obama, you may certainly cross over to the Democrat primary and vote for the junior senator from Illinois. I submit it is only ethical to do that if you really believe in the candidacy of Barak Hussein Obama, or Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I really don’t think the democratic institutions in our Republic are best served by goofing with each other’s primaries. We party partisans should strive to keep this process structurally, if not rhetorically, clean as long as possible – maybe until Labor Day, anyway, or until our national parties engage their legal staffs in the aftermath of the general election.
On another matter, between us Republicans: At the state and local level, our grassroots are a trifle on edge. Frankly, some of us are a little demoralized. On the state level, we have endured a globe-trotting governor who claims to be of our party. However, he often acts like he is still the state primary chairman for the “elect Al Gore campaign,” which he was in 1988, when he was a Democrat, by name.
From welfare state-inspired attempts to mandate FDA-approved but largely untried vaccines for venereal disease for our 11-year-old daughters to seemingly Mussolini-inspired corporate fascist land grabs (the Trans-Texas Corridor), Governor Perry has been a real inspiration for the Republican Party, an inspiration to fall apart. No ghost-written books on the virtues and trials of the Boy Scouts will resurrect his reputation with most heartland conservatives. It will merely remind us that even such fine organizations as the Boy Scouts cannot always prepare someone’s character for the temptations of the Governor’s Mansion.
On the local grassroots level, we have been shown that our efforts have little if any effect in our own Republican primary in countywide races (District Judge, County Judge, District Attorney or Sheriff), as opposed to district races (JP, Constable or Commissioner). Since at least 1998, our local Republican congressman, Joe Barton, has managed to select the winner – through funding and experienced campaign help – in most, if not all, countywide primary races where there has been a challenger to an incumbent.
The message to the grassroots is clear in countywide races. Work against the incumbent in a countywide race in the Republican primary and waste your time, effort and money. Your candidate will be crushed through the resources Congressman Barton can bring to bear, not to mention the imbalance in attention focused by some in our media upon the challengers – while the foibles of the incumbents are often ignored and, ironically, as easily uncovered. The incumbent protection pack that feeds on challengers in the Republican primary must be defanged.
In hopes of breaking a few teeth, as well as for other reasons, I am going to support a challenger in the Republican primary. I will be voting for Rodney Ramsey in the District Attorney’s race. Call me hard-headed. Since I have run in the Republican primary twice myself (once successfully), people have called me worse.
No one has done more to build our local party than Congressman Joe Barton. He deserves a large amount of credit for that, but it is time for the local Republican Party to stop crawling and start walking.
The party that once championed term limits needs to impose them at the ballot box in a countywide race, for once. Ironically, I think that would be a fitting legacy for those of us who put blood, sweat and treasure into building the Republican Party in this county and that would include perhaps, above all, Joe Barton.
Paul D. Perry is a contributing Sunday columnist for the Daily Light. He is a local businessman and mediator and a former Ellis County justice of the peace.