To the MDGOP—you can’t win with squish!

Update November 4th:  Sauerbrey says party needs to be rebuilt from ground up, here.  And, more on ‘where Ehrlich went wrong’ here.

I wasn’t planning to get into this today, but Red Maryland made me do it!  Well, at least this post at Red Maryland got my tired blood boiling when I should be taking a nap.

It’s titled, “Sometimes a great notion,”  by Mark Newgent.  Yuk! (the post, not Mr. Newgent).  Presumably the “great notion” was that former incumbant Bob Ehrlich could beat incumbant Martin O’Malley in the race for Maryland governor.  Yesterday, while sign waving at the polls for a local candidate, I was asked again by a western Maryland Republican, whatever made them think that nominating Bob Ehrlich (who had already been defeated by Martin O’Malley) was a winning proposition and would fire up the base let alone the Democrats and Independents needed to win in Maryland?   I could only wonder too, where was the logic?

Newgent begins his “great notion” post with this (emphasis mine):

We can’t be faulted for dreaming, can we? [Yes you can!---ed] When Bob Ehrlich tossed his hat in the ring we thought in this election season, in this climate, we had a real chance to end Democratic one-party rule in Annapolis. [dreaming indeed!]

[....]

Even if Ehrlich ran a perfect campaign (he didn’t) I’m not sure the math would have broken his way. The political reality of Maryland’s electorate just could not be overcome for a Republican to win a state-wide election.

Ho hum, same old, same old—can’t overcome the math.   Other states overcame the math!   *Update:  See Gateway Pundit here on the 23 state legislative chambers the Republicans gained majority control of yesterday.

Newgent goes on:

In many respects, conservatives and Republicans in this state will always be “we happy few, we merry band of brothers.”  [merry, my foot!]

Who are the Republicans that aren’t conservative?  Ehrlich himself?

And then this pablum!

We stand for timeless principles, which put us at nearly insurmountable odds against the entrenched special interests of the Democratic monopoly.

You sound like a campaign commercial.  What the heck are your timeless principles?  Can you list them for our edification? It seems to me that someone, sometime ago, tried in vain to get the MDGOP to codify their timeless principles and the ruling class Republicans shut it down.  It was before my time, but didn’t you guys at Red Maryland help to silence those calling for a set of principles?  Correct me if I’m wrong!

Here we agree Mr. Newgent:

The question now is, where does the Maryland Republican Party go from here? Does it continue doing the same things and expecting different results? Or will new leadership emerge and realize that we can no longer hope for the “perfect storm” to win a statewide race. It’s time to realize that we need to fundamentally change the electoral math. We need to get down to the hard work of creating more Republicans, and more voters disposed to conservative ideas.

Polls show that the majority of Americans consider themselves conservative already.  Marylanders are no exception, but the MDGOP never sought them out!  Ehrlich shut them out himself when he dissed Sarah Palin and her endorsement of Brian Murphy.  Then after winning the primary, Ehrlich never apologized to the Tea Party.*

New leadership better emerge and real soon, or there will be a movement for a conservative party or a real formalized Tea Party party in Maryland.  

Then Newgent says it will take four years or more!

Changing the electoral math is certainly no easy task, and will take more than four years, but will the next MDGOP chair have the long view to see that is the direction we need to go?

It shouldn’t take four years, if the MDGOP can’t get it together long before 2012, some new party will!   There is a MDGOP convention in December and this writer will be there to see, and report on, the installation of new leadership that will set firm “conservative” principles and start selling those “timeless” principles before the year is out because who in their right mind is going to organize and fight for the ill-defined and squishy middle!

Near the end, Newgent tells us this:

….it’s not a good sign for the party that people think of us here at Red Maryland as the unofficial communications arm of the MDGOP.

Your embrace of Bob Ehrlich, and that “dream” you talk about in your post, told readers that that is exactly what you are—the communications arm of the MDGOP.  Now, as the “unofficial communications arm” tell the MDGOP that defending the political middle, defending ruling class Republicans, is not the way to “change the electoral math.”

* Check out the numbers here at the Maryland Board of Elections, what they clearly tell us is that a large number of the Murphy primary voters were good soldiers, some must have held their noses and voted for Bob Ehrlich.  I was fully expecting the Ehrlich team at the MDGOP to blame Murphy for a loss, but the numbers simply don’t bear that out.