'I Ain't Got Time to Bleed'

Action-movie fans will remember that line spoken by Jesse Ventura's character in Predator, and it characterizes my attitude right now regarding the political situation in general and Doug Hoffman's NY-23 special election campaign specifically.

My friend Eric Dondero of Libertarian Republican has pointed out that, in 2006, my friend Erick Erickson of Red State (like many other conservatives) refused to support Libertarian candidate Bob Smither in Texas.

Like the NY-23 race, that 2006 Texas congressional election was a unique situation -- long story, no time to explain now -- and many people misunderstood it. My good buddy Stephen Gordon was on the Libertarian Party national HQ staff at the time, and he was in that Houston suburban district up to his eyeballs.

Gordo made it clear to me that the GOP's idea of running a hand-picked write-in candidate (lonnngg story) was a guaranteed loser, a harebrained scheme that would surely fail. If conservatives wanted to stop a Democrat from winning that seat, their only viable option was to support the LP candidate, Smither, who was a solid citizen, not any kind of radical wacko, and much preferable to the Democrat Nick Lampson.

However, unless you knew the specific on-the-ground details (which Gordo spent hours explaining to me in phone calls from Texas), any conservative Republican might reasonably think that Tom DeLay and the local GOP bosses knew what they were doing.

But they didn't, and Lampson stomped the crap out of DeLay's handpicked successor (who had a hard-to-spell hyphenated last name, a big reason why the idea of her as a write-in candidate was so ROTFLMAO ridiculous). The Democratic pick-up could have been avoided, if any influential conservative at the national level would have listened to Gordo. Three years ago, I was even less inlfuential than I am now, and no other conservatives of greater influence were listening to Gordo and so . . "For want of a nail," as they say.

Erick Erickson was not alone in making the mistake he made. So I have no problem with Erickson for not having backed Smither. A mistake is not necessarily a sin, and Erickson's willingness now to back the Conservative Party candidate Hoffman in NY-23 might indicate that he's learned from the mistake he and others made three years ago.

Whether there might be future occasions when similar calculations of principled pragmatism lead Erickson to back an LP candidate, who knows? We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Whatever happens in the future, or whatever happened in the past, it is absolutely vital in this time of crisis that all friends of liberty focus laser-like on doing now the things that must be done now. I can't fix what went wrong in 2006 and, if there is still any bad blood between my friends Dondero and Erickson, I don't have time to negotiate an armistice.

Right now there is a battle being waged in upstate New York that may, to some important extent, determine the future of this nation. Meanwhile, in Washington, a tooth-and-nail struggle rages over the ObamaCare abomination. There is too much important work to be done now for anyone who is a genuine friend of liberty to be engaged in intramural score-settling.

There are now 17 days until Nov. 3. Let us lay aside everything incidental and focus all our efforts on doing what must be done now, or our common cause is surely doomed.

Like that squad of commandos in the jungle, faced with a deadly and relentless foe, we are in a fight for survival. And I ain't got time to bleed.

UPDATE: Rhymes With Right, a Texas GOP activist, puts a more detailed account of the 2006 Sekula-Gibbs fiasco in the comments. He makes mention of a meeting where the GOP "leadership" declared that it would be "out of order" to make a floor motion in favor of LP candidate Bob Smither who was already on the ballot. My man Gordo was on the phone telling me all about this, live from the scene, when that dirty little deal went down.

This is how the "Establishment Insider" crowd operates, see? Just like the House GOP "leadership" forced Jeb Hensarling to walk the plank for Scozzafava, the GOP "leadership" in Texas forced the local parties to walk-the-plank for Sekula-Gibbs. And this is just what Cornyn and the NRSC want to do by shoving Crist down the throats of Florida Republicans.

This kind of crass manipulation of the GOP mechanism by the insiders is absolutely deadly, in terms of destroying grassroots enthusiasm, and that's what Not One Red Cent is about: Fighting back against this kind of corrupt, crooked, backroom "kingmaker" crap.

As for the inside-libertarian-baseball criticisms from my friends Mr. Knapp and Mr. Dondero, it is beyond the scope of my influence to convince Erick Erickson or anyone else of what course of action they should take. Nobody in the GOP has ever solicited my advice, and on those rare occasion I've played armchair strategist by volunteering my advice, they always ignore me and do the opposite.

So none of this is my fault. If you're looking for a scapegoat, Blame Erik Telford. (I always do.)