Should we stay or should we go?
One of the great rock bands of all time asked a similar question several decades ago.
Sometimes, it can be tough to choose a path forward when you’ve been part of something for so long. Not many of us enjoy change. We get comfortable — even when our alleged cohorts are screwing us over at every turn. Leaving altogether, we sometimes find ourselves standing outside looking in the windows as the debauchery rages on. What’s the best way to go, when you are consistently being beaten down and cheated and mocked and dismissed and lied to by your alleged comrades and cohorts?
There’s one relatively recent example in North Carolina politics – The North Carolina Congressional Club. From 1973 to the early 90s, the Club provided an outlet for disenchanted, frustrated North 
Carolina conservatives to go. Just like today, liberal types were slamming doors within the state party structure.
Tom Ellis and Carter Wrenn got the ball rolling on The Club. It was initially set up to retire the campaign debt of newly-elected US senator Jesse Helms. Its focus grew to influencing the NCGOP and even running its own candidates — like John East – for US Senate. You had a bunch of registered Republicans working parallel to — and outside of — the state party apparatus to do the job the state party was supposed to be doing.
It’s long been said that history repeats itself. Liberal Rockefeller Republicans attempted to quash the rebellious Goldwater-inspired conservatives of the 60s. GOP liberals came after Reagan and his team in 1976 and 1980. They even ran congressman John Anderson as an independent in the 1980 race.
It’s amazing to me how much meaner and more hardcore liberal Republicans are to their conservative brethren than they are to folks in the other party.
It’s hard to argue that the conservatism championed by Helms and Reagan did not lead the GOP to 
its much more prosperous standing it has today. But, somehow, the GOPe boo-birds who attempted to thwart Helms and Reagan every step of the way are still in positions of influence.
Saying no to big government can be hard sometimes. Big government brings with it a lot of cash from people trying to buy influence with the keepers of the bureaucratic keys. All that cash being waved in your face can sometimes be hard to ignore.
During the recent NCGOP chairman travesty, hints appeared that some of the party’s larger donors are getting frustrated with its political-prostitution-over-principle posture. Some of these folks were 
actually talking about getting some meaningful reform done in the halls of government. If you can manage to divert even some of their contributions from the NCGOP’s pay-to-play money-laundering apparatus, a new parallel Club-like organization could become a real credible and competitive possibility. A parallel organization could likely draw a windfall of smaller contributions, too.
A new parallel organization could promote itself as a place to go for people who want to perform public service without having to become two-bit pay-to-play whores. Campaign on limited government, govern like you campaigned, and “The new Club” will take care of you. If the NCGOP is clearing the primary field for some vanilla, no-principle yes-man or -woman, the new group could find and fund a credible conservative candidate to crash the primary.
There’s the old saying about doing the definition of insanity being the performance of the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Every year, conservatives complain about NCGOP HQ and the for-sale crowd on Jones Street. Every year, conservatives get by-passed for the illicit cash and stomped on at the state convention. The liberals have their own power base. Why not establish a new one for actual conservatives?
I’ll never forget the efforts of William F. Buckley and National Review in the 1988 US Senate race in Connecticut. At that time, The Nutmeg State was being represented by a fat blow-hard RINO named Lowell Weicker. Weicker positioned himself in the Senate to the left of Ted Kennedy, and regularly mocked President Reagan. Yet, the RNC and the GOP caucus kept funding him and his campaign. Buckley and his magazine organized BuckPAC — a committee designed to finally deal with the windbag Weicker. Some were arguing it was better to have a Republican in office than a Democrat. Buckley asked what was so good about having a Republican in office whose voting record was not much different than the average Democrat. With the help of conservative money and votes, Weicker went down and the man we now know as senator Joseph Lieberman departed for his first term in Washington. (In DC, Lieberman actually voted more conservatively than Weicker.)
Rs can do just as much damage as Ds. We’re seeing that in DC and Raleigh every day. Operating philosophies and principles matter. Conservatism — championing smaller government — brings political success AND economic prosperity.
Our Founding Fathers did not address the concepts of political parties when they got the ball rolling with this grand American Experiment. When parties arose, they were meant to be organizational entities — bringing together likeminded folks to pursue common goals. That has been perverted to our current situation — two power and money hungry fascist entities that are all about control and not much about actual public service.
Setting up a parallel Club-like operation is not killing off the NCGOP. It’s starving the cancer currently eating away at that organization. It’s giving a fighting chance to people who realize THIS is not what they signed up for. You’re not fighting from the outside. You’re planning, retooling, arming up, and then going to war INSIDE.
Think about it.
Sign me up.
Having been involved in Republican and conservative politics myself in that era, you make a great point, Brant. In the series of GOP county, district, and state conventions of 1973, the “Old Guard” around Holshouser purged most of the conservatives out of the party. As state chairman of the College Republicans in 1974-75, I was one of three members of the Helms wing of the party on the NCGOP Central Committee, along with the Congressional District chairman of the fifth and ninth districts, who had survived the Holshouser purge only due to their close ties to Congressmen Mizell and Martin.
The Congressional Club was indeed the key to building back conservative controll of the party apparatus. After the 1974 election debacle under the Old Guard, a compromise state GOP chairman was agreed to and elected in 1975, Bob Shaw of Guilford County, later a state senator (and ultimately beaten in a primary by Phil Berger) and conservatives were allowed back in to the party at all levels. In 1977, with Holshouser out of office as governor, the Congressional Club recruited Jack Lee, former mayor of Fayetteville to run for state GOP chairman and got him elected, Lee served two terms, followed by Congressional Club recruited Dave Flaherty. Even during the Shaw chairmanship conservatives had come roaring back. At the 1976 presidential year convention, for example, Holshouser as sitting governor was denied a national delegate seat to the national convention by vote of our state convention.
Who could build something like the Congressional Club today? Acting together, if they would, I suspect Senator Ted Budd and Congressman Dan Bishop could.
Is that not what happened (good or bad) with groups like Club for Growth (action?)
Seems to me it is the same thing
Ummm – the Brunswick Republican Club. The conservatives in Beaufort Co. And some conservative County GOPs have to operate as a parallel club because they don’t get support from the NCGOP.
YEP.
This is the way to go, imo. We can’t leave the R party because there are too many Republicans that just vote R no matter what.
Run the Republican Club the way it should be run – select Precinct Chairs & assistants, reach out to conservatives in every precinct to get them involved and engaged, invite conservative speakers to their meetings, locate and support conservative candidates & fundraise for them, also conduct fundraising to send out postcards to Republicans in the smaller super red counties to entice them to get involved, etc. Need to know who left the Republican Party in your County to become UNA or LIB so you can reach out to them to pull them back in? Contact Us – wtpevents.org (If you know Excel, we can show you how to do this for yourself if you don’t already know).
Then when it comes time for another County Convention, get a slate of conservative county GOP candidates & all the conservatives in your Republican Club show up to take back the County GOP from the establishment.
Dah Dah DAH, Dah Dah Dah DAH Yeah, that’s the question of the day. Over in the eastern part of the state a lot of conservative Republicans are choosing to go. From what I’m seeing so far, this just might turn out worse than the aftermath of the Hasan Harnett ouster debacle. I think the RINOs see this as a successful mission outcome.
Carol, I agree with you and Brant pertaining to our best options. I think most if not all of our counties are faced with this internal party hostility toward conservatives. Beaufort County is one of the better examples. It might even be the best example.
I do not think running from these thugs is a very good option. When the thugs banish us, except for begging for money and votes of course, we need to operate independently of them. When we defeat them in the party, we need to treat them like they have treated us – except with more class, which should not be very hard because many of these people have about as much class as they have scruples.
I figured out I am a Republican when I was ten years old and Barry Goldwater was running for President. Too bad he lost. I knew that when the time came, if what he was saying was what the Republican Party believed, that was where I needed to be. I am still a Republican, and I still believe the true Republican Party is where I belong. Just like we need to stop the contamination and weakening of our whole country by the influx of illegal aliens, we need to clean out the corruption of pretend Republicans in our Party’s leadership, not run off somewhere else and let the ship be carried off course by their hot air. Yes, we need to get disillusioned Republicans who have left to come back and help us right the ship. Nothing ever gets reformed from the outside. Part of how to do this is to close our primaries to people who are not registered Republican, but I also like this idea of an alternative group of Republicans helping conservatives get elected in spite of what the Party elite want. We need more good conservative people to take the challenge of running, too. I ran twice against the previous incumbent. The first time, in 2008, I only had $4,500 in my campaign fund, but I took 42% of the vote in the primary. The second time, in 2010, with $5,000, I took 40%. So I wasn’t going to run again. Then the incumbent announced in August of 2011 that he was leaving office at the end of September to go be a lobbyist. I put in for the appointment to replace him and got it, against all odds. The person I beat out for the appointment, along with Thom Tillis and the Party elite, was very upset that I got the appointment. That person ran against me in the 2012 primary. He is a wealthy attorney, who had plenty of money and the backing of the Party elite, but I beat him by 2% with only $8,300. In the first four elections I won, I was out-funded 8-1 each time. In my fifth and last election, I was out-funded over 10-1. They couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get rid of me. It was because the average citizens knew I was one of them and that I was looking out for them, and that I was true to my word. The point of me sharing all of this is to say to good people who think they couldn’t win an election, don’t count yourself out without a try. You may be just the person we need to get rid of the corrupt person or the Casper Milquetoast do nothing who misrepresents you, and from this article, I believe there would be people out there to help you, just like they helped me. Be a real Republican. Be a warrior for what is right and true. There are people out there just waiting for you to fight for them. Pray about it and if you can’t do anything else, make the false Republicans have to spend more money and effort trying to stop you. Maybe in the process you will find out that you can do better than you expect and that once you are known as that person, you may even win next time. I was just a small church Pastor and a forklift operator in a factory before I went to Raleigh. If I could do it, don’t be so sure you can’t.
Chris Millis tried this just before he left office and it fizzled out to nothing. Not sure of all the details behind that but I believe it was a good idea.