Day: January 2, 2012

Something I forgot about

You can blame me for reopening old wounds in this part of the world, but in doing a little bit of research for the next article in my Maryland Model series I came across a 2008 post I did in the days before that year’s primary election, which was held in February. It seems that 2012 candidates Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich indeed had something in common, but this is what I remarked in my post from February 7, 2008:

I also caught the usual (then-Rep. Wayne) Gilchrest biweekly interview with Bill Reddish on the AM Salisbury radio program this morning. Wayne cited one of the more unusual endorsements he’s gotten this morning, claiming that he had the endorsement of Ron Paul. That may be big news to Joe Arminio, who announced back in December he was running on the Ron Paul “ticket.”

If you read down through the comments (or here) I mention that Gingrich also endorsed Gilchrest, and he held a fundraiser for Wayne as well.

Of course, after the 2008 primary election was over and Joe Arminio was blown away in his Congressional bid, he questioned why he did so much worse than Ron Paul in the First District. Obviously I have no idea why Arminio would believe he was “endorsed” by Ron Paul, but it’s interesting that both these 2012 contenders have their support for a very moderate Republican – who went on to endorse the Democrat in the race and revealed later he’d voted for a Democrat two years earlier, in 2006 – as a commonality.

And Andy Harris supports Gingrich now. I’m not sure quite what that says about Andy Harris, but it is what it is.

The Maryland Model (part one)

Over the holidays I did a little bit of light reading, and while I was doing so it occurred to me that the General Assembly session is sneaking up on us rather quickly. In 2011 that session set the scene for what turned out to be one of our side’s rare successes in Maryland, the petition drive to bring the in-state tuition law for illegal aliens to referendum later this year. It appears that will be on the ballot since CASA de Maryland and other pro-illegal groups are dropping the challenge to the petition signatures and narrowing their focus to whether the referendum itself is legal while simultaneously fundraising to sustain the law at the ballot box.

That fundraising: $10 million. What that means: carpet-bombing the media with images of poor, purportedly law-abiding and successful immigrant families being denied a chance at the American Dream due to racist TEA Partiers who hate all those who look different than they do. Don’t believe me? Just watch.

And this nicely leads me into my main points of this post, which will be the first of a multipart series on what I’m calling the Maryland Model. You see, part of my reading over the holidays was this RedState article on what is called the Colorado Model, which led me to read the original post on this strategy from the Weekly Standard back in 2008. Read those articles (I’ll wait for you) then take a look at how the CASA de Maryland folks are fighting the will of the people here in the Free State.

While they have seven pieces to the puzzle in the RedState article, I’ve consolidated these to what I can call the 4 M’s: money, message, media, and mobilization.

Continue reading “The Maryland Model (part one)”