How close is close enough?

Updated below with a response from Kevin Waterman, who replied on behalf of his mother.

It was President Warren Harding who remarked when asked about the scandal surrounding his tenure, “I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!” At times I wonder how much sleep Diana Waterman is getting, knowing that her supporters are the ones who seem to be laying the land mines on her path to coronation as elected Maryland Republican Party chair.

Just a few days after Louis Pope fumbled around with his side of the RNC Rules Committee story, another supporter of Diana’s – the venerable two-time gubernatorial candidate Ellen Sauerbrey – perhaps took a little liberty of her own with her insight on Diana’s work with the state’s Campaign for Liberty effort. Jackie Wellfonder took this and ran with this unforced error yesterday, but there was one important part of the story Jackie did not get to.

In my possession I have a letter from Diana dated March 8 and addressed to me as a Central Committee member. (Actually, the “Central Committee Member” is crossed out and replaced with Michael, a old personalization trick. But I digress.)

In the fifth paragraph of the latter Diana writes:

I am also forming an advisory committee composed of individuals from every corner of the State, many of varied groups within our Party like Campaign for Liberty and the Tea Party groups, and hard-working activists. If we aren’t talking to each other, we can’t work together to realize our goals of getting Republicans elected.

In her campaign appeal, Sauerbrey added:

I share the concern that our party has failed to fully embrace groups like the Tea Party and Campaign for Liberty,  that are a source of highly motivated, dedicated, and often young volunteers.  Diana has committed to me her intent to establish an Advisory Committee that will welcome  and involve the vital  energy and ideas of these groups.

So here we are a month later, and Ted Patterson of Campaign for Liberty wrote in his remarks yesterday that:

In an email, it was stated that Waterman is forming a Republican Party advisory committee that will include grassroots organizations such as ours. It is implied that Diana Waterman is welcoming the grassroots and Tea Party groups into the Maryland Republican Party.

No outreach to our groups has been reported to me, and I have received no messages to this effect.

If Ms. Waterman would like to set a future goal of engaging the grassroots that is admirable, but to date no such engagement has occurred.

Okay, I understand that running for Chair – or any other statewide party position, for that matter – is pretty hard work and there are a lot of details involved. But that “interim” tag didn’t stop Waterman from placing Louis Pope on the RNC Rules Committee; moreover, it’s worth pointing out that Diana will be on the Executive Committee regardless of what happens – either as Chair or as First Vice-Chair under Collins Bailey or Greg Kline.

Despite the fact Diana’s continued involvement is all but assured, I’d be willing to bet that this outreach has not yet occurred to any of the many conservative groups out there, whether it be Campaign for Liberty, Conservative Victory PAC, Constitutional Conservatives for Maryland. the Maryland Conservative Action Network, various Society of Patriots groups, or any others. (However, I will note that Waterman was in attendance for at least part of the day at Turning the Tides in January, so one could construe that as a little bit of outreach prior to her ascension to Chair.)

My first instinct in writing this piece was to suggest the MDGOP put its money where its mouth is and make a few seats on its Executive Committee available to various groups which apply and can prove sufficient membership and means to show they will be in it for the long haul. (This is in the wake of a proposed bylaws change to give College Republicans and Young Republicans voting status on the Executive Committee.) But I thought better of it because of coordination questions which may come up when the groups spend money on behalf of Republican candidates. So an informal gathering is probably best, along with a sensitive ear to the ground. For example, I haven’t heard in this Chair campaign about overtures we are making to Second Amendment groups – a body of interest to whom insurgent Republicans like Dan Bongino suggested we promote our message heavily.

I think it would have served Diana well to give examples of this outreach rather than just imply it’s going to occur at some unspecified future date in a manner to be named later. The term we tend to give to that is “lip service.” If Maryland Republicans want to motivate their base to victory in 2014, bearing in mind that in gubernatorial years turnout tends to be lower so this effort would be magnified, then we might want to see more outreach done on the state level as opposed to local county efforts.

Update: On behalf of his mother, who is attending the RNC meeting in California, Kevin Waterman “took the liberty” of sharing the following:

Just read your recent blog post about the Campaign for Liberty email.

Just so you know, I’ve actually been working with my mother to connect her to and set up meetings and conversations with organizations and individuals who would be good fits for the proposed advisory committee. Just to cover a few who she’s already reached out to and spoken with there’s been Patrick McGrady as well as Dave Nalle and Dave Kahn (the leaders of the Republican Liberty Caucus at the National and Maryland levels respectively).

She has also reached out to Ted Patterson to clarify and try to rectify the situation. As she noted to him, she had talked to Patrick, who has a lengthy history with C4L and been a leader in it in Harford County, and didn’t mean to imply she’d spoken with all the C4L groups or the national or statewide leader. She also used the opportunity to officially reach out on working together. Ted has responded to that, appreciating the response and the recognition of the group by the state party and that they very much like the idea of working together, they just would have preferred that the statewide leadership have been spoken to before the organization’s name was used in anything.

Just to wanted to clarify that there is work being done on this and it’s not just lip service, real outreach is being done.

Fair enough. Obviously Kevin is well-attuned to state liberty-minded groups given his work with the Gary Johnson campaign (when Johnson was seeking the GOP Presidential nomination.)

3 thoughts on “How close is close enough?”

  1. Just keep bashing the Republican party into the ground… This effort to gain rating points as a blogger is shameful as an Elected representative of the Republican Central Committee. Can’t you find any constructive effort to put forward?

    Shameful!

  2. I say to the Maryland GOP leaders, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem, so LEAD or move out of the way. We do not live in a time where party hacks get their due for time put in. We are fighting for the future of our state, country and for a return to prosperity. We need a message that wakes up the sleeping masses of conservative and moderate Americans and stops this abomination. The Republican Party must be the new party of inclusion as it was long ago and embrace Libertarian values that give people the liberty to enjoy freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution. The democrat coalition (we all know it is composed of many splinter groups) moves this country towards socialism and intolerant humanism by destroying our society from the inside out like a virus consuming it’s host and I believe this is their plan so they can burn it down then rebuild in their ‘enlightened’ image. We need new ideas to engage the disenfranchised and provide hope for a better tomorrow, we see these ideas coming out of the Tea Party and hundreds of grass root groups that have had enough of our government over stepping its power at all levels.

  3. Obviously you’ve placed your blind support of Diana Waterman out in front of your common sense. I will stack my conservative credentials and effort I’ve put forth to inform this state’s readers about the idiocy which goes on in Annapolis against anyone’s. If I believed I was not doing right by my Wicomico County constituency I wouldn’t sleep at night.

    I don’t gain “rating points” by saying what I do. And if you bothered to read the post closely you will note that my criticism is rather constructive in that I suggested Diana give examples of her outreach rather than just saying she’s going to do it. I also properly noted she had attended Turning the Tides, which is a gathering of the pro-liberty wing of the GOP, even though it was on a day when the initial Pathfinders meeting was set. She should have mentioned that as an example.

    Now if you want to raise your voice and use profanity in our quad-county meeting as you did that’s entirely your business. I will continue to write my website as I see fit.

Comments are closed.