Letter to NRCC Chairman:NOT ONE RED CENT!

As previously announced here, Not One Red Cent will boycott the House Republican campaign committee until the Waxman-Markey Eight are repudiated. I've just posted my message to NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions:

It has become increasingly obvious of late that some Republicans have been in Washington too long. None of the eight GOP House members who voted for Waxman-Markey will be re-elected. They will either retire from the House, be defeated in next year's Republican primaries, or suffer well-deserved defeat on November 2, 2001. Therefore, every penny that the NRCC spends to support the re-election of the Waxman-Markey Eight is wasted money that could be used more effectively to support Republican challengers.
The NRCC must announce a policy of non-support for the Waxman-Markey Eight, or else NRCC fund-raising letters will go directly into the garbage cans of every previous grassroots GOP donor who is tired of seeing his contributions wasted to support nominal "Republicans" that repeatedly betray party principles. . . .

Please read the whole thing, and hit the tip jar to help support the Not One Red Cent blog. Of course, pixels are cheap, but determined persistence ought to be worth something.

UPDATE: Welcome Ed Driscoll readers. For the benefit of the uninitiated, perhaps I should explain the theory of organizational dynamics that informs my attitude toward Republican "leadership."

I am an ex-Democrat, so I have extensive experience in getting screwed over and backstabbed by clueless losers. And I've been a conservative journalist in Washington since 1997 so . . . ditto.

As I've said eleventy-zillion times, if you volunteer to be a doormat, don't complain about the footprints on your back. If you desire to retain your self-respect and dignity, you must retain sufficent independence to be willing to say, "That's it. No more. I quit. You've f***ed me over once too often."

This is not merely a principle of political life, but is of universal application in human affairs. For example, if you allow your spouse to abuse and betray you without fear of repercussions, you are as responsible for the consequences as the person who abuses and betrays you. My wife has my respect and loyalty, which she reciprocates insofar as I am deserving of her respect and loyalty. Which is to say, she trusts me about as far as she can throw me. Mrs. Other McCain's beauty is exceeded only by her wisdom.

After Friday night's Smittypalooza, several of us went out for hamburgers at a tavern near Dupont Circle. Our table was next to a group of three young people, two guys and a girl. Overhearing some remark one of them made -- he was from Alabama -- I struck up a jocular conversation. This conversation eventually disclosed that the three were "just friends," and that in fact the Alabamian among them was an intern of the supervision of the lady who (as someone else at our table subsequently remarked) as nearly as amused by my jokes as I was.

Sensing that my intentions might be misinterpreted, I found an opportunity to mention Mrs. Other McCain, to praise her virtues, and to add that we have six children. And if the point needed further emphasis I found an appropriate occasion to repeat one of my favorite sayings: "She's got a kitchen drawer full of knives, and I've got to sleep sometime."

There is truth in humor, and the same principle applies to any situation where your self-chosen loyalty is involved. I've been a University of Alabama Crimson Tide fan since I was a gamete swimming in a desperate effort to become a zygote. I can hardly conceive being anything but a 'Bama fan. Yet if the folks in Tuscaloosa should ever betray that loyalty, they would find me an implacable foe.

My loyalty to the Democratic Party was similarly hereditary. My parents would have been horrified if, in 1959, they had imagined one of their offspring might eventually vote Republican. Yet the Democrats, knowing this, took shameless advantage of that loyalty. These repeated betrayals were for years excused by me in the same way that a battered wife excuses her husband's brutality. Hell's bells, I voted for Mondale!

Then came the day that my Democratic congressman, George "Buddy" Darden, voted for the fateful legislative travesty that I recall as "The Great Gun Grab of 1994." On that day, the Democratic Party forever forfeited any further claim to my loyalty. On the first Tuesday in November of that year, I cast my first vote ever for a Republican congressional candidate -- some obscure Marietta lawyer named Barr -- thus joining the majority consensus that it was time that Mr. Darden returned to the private sector.

F*** you, Buddy Darden. And f*** you, Democrats. What part of "From My Cold Dead Hands" is so hard to understand?

Once burned, twice shy, and I could never be as blindly loyal to the Republicans as I once was to the Democrats. That kind of loyalty is for chumps. Being a partisan chump is an invitation to political rape. (Ask gay Democrats how that feels. Or ask some of the Christian conservatives who made the mistake of trusting Ralph Reed. If I ever own an outhouse, I'll name it in Reed's honor.)

Politicians will respect their constituents only if they fear their constituents. George "Buddy" Darden once thought he could screw me over without consequence, and learned otherwise in short order. Ralph Reed holds no elective office, nor will he ever. Mene mene tekel upharsin.

When the perfidious Catiline conspired to subvert the Roman republic, Cicero exposed the traitor:

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? . . . Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? . . .
O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. Consul videt; hic tamen vivit.

Hic tamen vivit. But not for long, eh? The Waxman-Markey Eight have signed the death warrants of their political careers, and friends of the republic must be vigilant to expose anyone who aids this act of treachery.