The roots of the GOP’s defeat in 2006 and 2008 started in 1994.<\/p>\n
We sent a class of Congresspeople to Washington.<\/p>\n
They arrived in Washington – and then they went Washington<\/em>.<\/p>\n They turned into creatures of the Beltway.<\/p>\n They did it because we allowed them to. \u00a0We allowed them to become creatures of expedience; we let them believe it was more important to be liked by the New York Times and to get into the WaPo’s soirees than it was to stick to the principles that had gotten them elected.<\/p>\n We elected them – and then we trusted them<\/em>.<\/p>\n We can not make that mistake again.<\/strong><\/p>\n We,the people, must keep breathing down their necks. \u00a0We must be the voices they hear at night; “don’t mistake this mandate for a blank check. \u00a0You owe us<\/em>.“<\/em><\/p>\n And we need to keep it up. \u00a0We must not stop. \u00a0We must keep <\/em>showing the energy we showed this past 18 months, we started rallying in our millions, oblivious to our idiot “elite’s” ridicule. \u00a0We put them in office; we must not be afraid to take them back out.<\/p>\n Like the Spartans, we must tell our newly-minted conservative legislators, in Saint Paul and in DC, “come back with your shields, or on them”. \u00a0Death or glory. \u00a0Politics is about compromise – but make the Dems pay<\/em>.<\/p>\n That’s why we gave you the mandate.<\/p>\n If you squander this <\/em>mandate you’ll have me and a few million more like me to answer to.<\/p>\n Here’s your mandate. \u00a0Don’t screw it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The roots of the GOP’s defeat in 2006 and 2008 started in 1994. We sent a class of Congresspeople to Washington. They arrived in Washington – and then they went Washington. They turned into creatures of the Beltway. They did it because we allowed them to. \u00a0We allowed them to become creatures of expedience; we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-conservatism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14937"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14939,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14937\/revisions\/14939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}