The best symbol of the grassroots worker I can think of is the Republican Assembly… [NFRA’s] thousands of dedicated men and women are the ones who turn all those modernistic campaign devices into real votes.
“[NFRA] provides the nucleus of the Republican candidate’s volunteer work brigade. I know from personal experience. It’s hard to imagine my campaigns being anywhere near as successful as they were without the dedication of Republican Assembly members.
“I urge you to join today.
Like my precious friends Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston, I am proud to be a member of the Republican Assemblies. There was a time when we in Hollywood fought Communism and believed in America. Now the liberals seem to run everything and want to destroy all that we fought for. But the NFRA isn’t afraid of that fight, and it grows stronger every day, and I am honored to be involved with people who truly understand what America is all about.
We are engaged in a social, political and cultural war, in our country and even in our own party. The Republican Assemblies are some of the most effective forces in that war, and I applaud your work.
The Republican Assemblies are unafraid, to stand up for principle or to stand up to the establishment.
The NFRA fights tirelessly to elect a strong, grassroots Republican Party leadership. The more they succeed, the more we’ll see real change in America.
Now is the time for Patriots to mobilize. The NFRA is a great vehicle for taking back our country.
If you picked up a Coke bottle and saw a rat’s head in the bottom, you’d never think about Coke the same way again. Republicans who vote for tax increases and bigger government destroy the Republican brand name in exactly the same way. It is the job of the Republican Assemblies to defend the brand Reagan built, and stop the people who are ruining it.
As a famous Californian once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” That’s why, now more than ever, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies is looked upon as one of the preeminent guardians of Ronald Reagan’s legacy, providing a powerful, unwavering voice for conservative principles amid the pandemonium of modern politics. Their advocacy is vital to our party’s future.
When conservatives took back America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, from the liberal leadership which had hijacked it, we used the same strategies and tactics that make the NFRA so potent a force today. Those strategies worked flawlessly then, and they’ll work as conservatives assert themselves in the Republican Party today.
In a political world of rapid changing institutions, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies stands as an anchor of principles on which conservative political leaders can depend. I am proud to be a member of the California Republican Assembly and to stand with Republican Assemblies all across America as they take back our party for true conservatives and stand for the values we hold dear.
The Republican Assemblies are truly a force for renewal within the Republican Party.
The Republican Assemblies are the conscience of the Republican Party.
Unlike too many other Republicans today, [the Republican Assemblies] stand strongly for the moral foundation of our Republic, which is that we are created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by our leaders, with our rights.
I am honored to stand with the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, one of the strongest voices for conservative values and a revitalized Republican Party in America.
If you want to see Reagan conservatives running the Republican Party, then the NFRA is where you need to be.
The NFRA can play a major role in the remaking of our Party. It can certainly be the organizational power behind the Tea Parties, working with those groups to give organizational effect to their outrage and passion.
The Republican Assemblies were the Tea Party movement before there was a Tea Party.
While many so-called Republican leaders would surrender the Culture War and sell out our sovereignty, the NFRA is a bastion of hope standing against them, and standing for a Constitutionalist America.
The NFRA endorsed me early, and it made a huge difference in the outcome of my race. Why? Because the Republican Assemblies are the real grassroots, the true conservatives, the soul of the Republican Party. And if you want more Marco Rubios, more Nikki Haleys and more Sharron Angles, getting involved in the Republican Assemblies is the way to make it happen.
The Republican Assemblies work tirelessly for conservative candidates and legislation.
The NFRA has never been more important than it is right now. We no longer have the luxury to nominate Republicans who, once elected, undermine the principles of individual freedom and limited government that define our party. Republican Assemblies across the country have kept the conservative movement alive and the future of our party and of our country ultimately depends on their success.
I’ve been a Republican all my life, was a precinct committeewoman for 16 years, president of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women for five years, attended every Republican National Convention starting in 1952, and served on the Platform Committee in 1984. I’m proud to be a charter member of the NFRA because I know it is doing the absolutely necessary work of restoring the Republican Party to its proper position of leadership for authentic conservative principles.
The NFRA is the flagship of constitutionalist conservatism within the Republican Party. It is intent on making sure the federal government has limited powers and the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. If we, the people, are to arrest the Obama march to collectivism, social democracy and an imperial presidency, we must swell the ranks of the NFRA and maintain its status as a principled defender of liberty.
When I was a high school student, Phyllis Schlafly’s book, A Choice, Not an Echo, was an important influence on my political direction. Today I support the NFRA for that same reason. The Republican Party must be more than just a cheaper, slower echo of the Democrats: it must be a distinct choice, for conservative values and for a future of freedom. If you long for that choice, then you should join the NFRA.
We need more people like you [the Republican Assemblies] who truly believe in the Constitution, in liberty and in standing up to an establishment that believes in neither.
The loyal patriots of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies…stand for the enduring principles that have made our Nation great. I thank the NFRA for standing at the ready to defend freedom and liberty no matter what the cost. Real hope is alive in the NFRA.With Little to Say, Obama Eats Grits in the Rust Belt
“A step in the right direction.” That’s what Barack Obama said in Poland, Ohio, about Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report, which showed only 80,000 net new jobs and unemployment remaining at 8.2 percent.
The thought will occur to many, not all of them Obama detractors, that this was at best a ecbaby step. It’s not enough to keep up with population growth, much less to restore the low unemployment rates of most of the 1990s and 2000s.
Another thought will occur to professional amateur political strategists: Why did the president’s campaign schedule a two-day bus tour of northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania to coincide with the day the unemployment numbers were announced?
Sure, Ohio and Pennsylvania are important states politically. They have 18 and 20 electoral votes, and Obama carried them in 2008 with 51 and 54 percent of the votes.
And current polling shows Obama with only 46 percent in Ohio and 47 percent in Pennsylvania when paired against Mitt Romney.
Obama’s bus tour was aimed at the historically Democratic Rust Belt territory. Since the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers and United Rubber Workers organized the steel, auto and rubber factories on Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown and Toledo, this has been prime Democratic territory.
Even in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was winning a 59 to 40 percent landslide, this Rust Belt — 19 counties of northern and eastern Ohio and 14 counties of western Pennsylvania — voted 52 to 47 percent for Walter Mondale. It was 12 points more Democratic than the national average.
If these 33 counties had been a single state, they would have cast 19 electoral votes for Mondale, more than doubling the 13 he won from his native Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
In the 1980s, the Rust Belt was still smarting from factory closings and heavy job losses in the recession of the late 1970s. Most of those lost union-wage jobs never came back, and angry laid-off factory workers and their families were unpersuaded by the Reagan campaign’s claim that it was “morning in America.”
In the years since, the economy of the Rust Belt has changed. The biggest employers in Cleveland and Pittsburgh these days are not steel mills but hospital complexes.
There has been considerable outmigration of young people, and from 1980 to 2010, the population of these 33 counties declined by 7 percent, while the national population increased by 36 percent. If they were a single state, they would have 14 electoral votes, down from 19 three decades ago.
The aging electorate of the Rust Belt remains Democratic, and these counties voted 56 to 42 percent for Barack Obama. But that means that they were only 3 percent more Democratic than the national average.
The polling data suggests that Obama is not running as strong in the Rust Belt counties this year. The bus tour was undoubtedly aimed at pushing his numbers up.
But he seems to have been left with little to say. No wonder he resorted to making jokes about his family and adding, “People’ve been commenting: I need to gain some weight.”
As if to compensate, he ate some grits — a staple once you get an hour or so south of Washington, but not so much up north.
But what else could he talk about? Certainly not the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules shutting down coal-fired electric plants. Nor his decision blocking the Keystone oil pipeline.
He could hail the development of fracking in the region’s Marcellus shale natural gas formation in the region, except for the fact that regulators in his administration seem intent on shutting it down.
He could repeat his calls for “investment” in education, but even if you don’t regard that as a political payoff to the teacher unions, the dividends are going to be a long time coming in.
And calls for investment in infrastructure may lead people to recall his chuckling admission that there are no shovel-ready projects, thanks to regulatory and legal roadblocks.
The uncomfortable fact is that Obama doesn’t have a convincing economic story to tell. The recovery summer promised for 2010 and for 2011 and again for 2012 has yet to arrive.
Obama needs majorities in the Rust Belt counties to carry Ohio and Pennsylvania again. But last week’s bus tour shows he’s having difficulty in this historically Democratic territory.
Editor's Note: We have reprinted the full text of Michael Barone's "With Little to Say, Obama Eats Grits in the Rust Belt" from Human Events. We encourage you to visit the original.
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