Picking “Young Guns”

I wish I could cue the Bon Jovi theme song from the movie “Young Guns 2” as background music but it’s not on my computer so you’ll have to allow it to play in your head as you read.

I got a tip from the National Republican Congressional Committee late yesterday afternoon that Andy Harris was one of thirteen Congressional hopefuls “on the radar” in the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program. As the website notes:

Under the leadership of Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX), the NRCC adopted the Young Guns program as the candidate recruitment and training program for House Republicans and it is designed to assist Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives build a foundation for victory.

As part of this program, Republican candidates throughout the United States will work hard for victory next November and we will post updates on their races, their achievements and their status as a Young Gun.  

The Young Guns is not just a political program, but an ongoing movement to go on offense and strengthen the GOP welcoming your participation and support of strong Republican candidates nationwide.

I’m all for going on offense against liberals – Lord knows we need to do more of it. But I may have one objection and I’m hoping the NRCC follows through on something brought up in this article in The Hill by Aaron Blake:

Sessions said the program aims to help whichever candidates qualify for it, and he even suggested that multiple candidates from the same primary could get involved.
 
He said he would rather not have primaries, especially late ones in the weeks before the general election. But he said the committee would “avoid the temptation of using our resources in primaries” and preferred to instead send a signal with its endorsements to local donors and activists. (Emphasis mine.)

Personally, I prefer contested primaries because there should be more choices among party activists. In 2008 there were choices galore throughout the Republican spectrum and most of the votes were for solid conservatism.

Those who claim that Harris’s victory over Wayne Gilchrest in the Republican primary sealed the seat for Democrats may want to consider that the factor tipping the scale in Kratovil’s favor may have been the sour grapes of Gilchrest’s endorsement of the Democrat – a Democrat who ran as an “independent” conservative Democrat to boot. Certainly the anti-Republican mood of the electorate and the minority turnout buoyed by Barack Obama’s presence on the ballot didn’t hurt Frank either. Yet Kratovil only got a plurality of the vote, barely enough to win.

While 2010 may be a different story, my advice to the NRCC is to support the winner after the primary and not get involved with an endorsement beforehand. Andy Harris was (and is) a great candidate for Congress and this time is placing his political future on the line as he abandons state office for the Congressional run. But there’s always someone else who could do an even better job in Congress and the NRCC may be best keeping its powder dry until the moment is right to train all the guns on the Democrat.

If so, we can assure Frank Kratovil goes down in an electoral blaze of glory come 2010.

There’s one other news item to announce. You may have noticed that I deleted the Draft Charles Lollar site from the Governor’s race. Instead he’s now going to run against Steny Hoyer in the Fifth Congressional District.

Lollar learned last week that he technically ran afoul of the Maryland requirement that a person be a citizen of Maryland for five years as he didn’t change his voting registration from Georgia to Maryland (regarded as proof of state citizenship) until early 2006. Maryland’s loss could be Congress’ gain and the NRCC would be wise to scout out his qualifications.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

One thought on “Picking “Young Guns””

  1. Wow. You’re dumb as a hard crab. You need to see a losing thing for what it is. The Republican Party can do a lot better on the Shore than some truly independent (often voting alone and with a decidedly insane slant on commone sense issues) nutjob. I’d rather see a reasonable person in the job, whether he leans a little left or a little right of the center of our party. But please, not Harris. Please.

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