Push and Pull

Over the weekend, I gave a seminar in Dallas that went very well. I have a sense of humor and occasionally use a local politician as the target of a snarky comment, which I did. People laughed and agreed. A woman came up to me in the intermission and said to me, "You just told us that we need grace with each other to ensure that we feel welcome. Wasn't that joke kind of hypocritical?"

It's a fair comment, and I invited her to talk with me after the seminar if she wanted to pursue it.

The politician, relatively new to the Republican label, isn't always that Republican in views or behavior. I don't get the impression that he sees this as something to address. In fact, whatever label he sticks to himself, it's up to the people to determine.

Nobody owns their brand. Others do. Brand management happens in the hands of the customer, regardless of the PR attempted to sway people otherwise. Look at Bud Light.

Which is why people laughed at my little aside. Humor has an element of truth to it to provoke that "A-ha!" moment of surprised giggle. The people, having experienced the politician's policies, had come to their own conclusions and knowing that, I played off their conclusions. But hers is a good question. What's the difference between push and pull in politics?

I say in my book, to attract those to your side, be attractive. But not everyone believes as you do. They won't agree. They might find your opinions repulsive and objectionable. Democrats and Republicans aren't in alignment on issues and the deeper you're in that fight for election, the other is the enemy. That too is difficult for some.

"Can't we just get along? Why so polarizing?"

If you believe, as I do, that policies impact culture which changes lives and incomes, then the fight is aggressive. As my friend, Christin, asks: "Is it EVER acceptable to give a child pornography?" And yet, public and school libraries do. Because of it, innocence is taken from the child, and sexual themes are introduced far before the child matured for such ideas.

That's just one example. Politics are not idle, harmless beliefs. Too much spending leads to taxation that removes the widow from the home she owns. Mandates, regulations, laws, fees, licensing... all of it changes our world.

I like to say that there is no "polite" in politics. There just isn't. It's insults and elbows if you're much involved and those in power didn't come to be nice.

Historically, challenging royalty resulted in diverse and very painful punishment. Today, a YouTuber can, um, decorate Nancy Pelosi's driveway and live to tell the tale. But if you try to remove the powerful from power? Then it gets serious and the gloves come off and the innocent get jailed to protect those in power - and lives are changed forever.

Opinions and beliefs, like magnets, can either greatly attract or shove away. It's why some choose not to engage.

We will all come to a conclusion about those in power, and we will all determine what we want to do about those in power and the policies they force upon us. To get through that drama, a little humor helps - even if it's at the expense of the powerful. Thankfully, we can get away with that without losing our heads.

Fight, fight, fight.

What is Conservatism?

Newly added to my seminar is a series of slides helping candidates define their land of milk honey better. It's the aspect of campaigns, I've discovered, that troubles new candidates more than the rest of the preparation for the campaign.

I break it down into principles first, then the choice of policy destinations, and finally tactics.

Principle: No one should lose the home they own to the government.
Destination: Work to eliminate property taxes.
Tactics: Spending reductions across the board, give any surplus back to the people, etc.

You'll know a candidate first by whether they have a land of milk and honey, then by whether they've created an attractive destination, then by whether they have policies they work to implement that can get us to the land of milk and honey, and finally by how aggressively they act to pursue it and lead us there.

Most of the establishment incumbents only have a land of milk and honey as dictated to them by donors or leadership - which is to say they don't have one.

Fewer yet craft such policies. Fewer still try to implement such policies, no matter how much cry for it that they hear from their constituents in their district.

Far and away, "conservative principles" are fodder for marketing material and not for serious pursuit of policy. This is why the GOP looks to soon lose the midterms.

I did a search on the web for conservative principles and found a pretty good list. Here it is:

• Individual Freedom
• Limited Government
• The Rule of Law
• Peace through Strength
• Fiscal Responsibility
• Free Markets
• Human Dignity

What policy destinations can come from that? Perhaps this:

• Return our God-given Rights to us
• Lots of repeal
• Return to equality for all in our legal system (where those elected and the rich don't get favored treatment)
• Champion self-defense
• Stop and cut spending
• Cut subsidies / regulation
• Promote individuals and not groups

You might get pretty excited.

And now imagine that they actually acted aggressively to achieve those for us.

We'd be pretty happy with that elected official. Right?

If only we saw those principles from those in power, who acted with authority to lead us to such a visionary land of milk and honey. In Austin, in DC. If only we had such leadership.

It might surprise you who wrote that list of principles. Go ahead. Click the link and find out.

Then you'll understand why things like this are mostly marketing and not serious pursuit of policy.

When those in power fail to act and fail to lead, we have to replace them. Our families require that we respond to the urgency of these times when those we elect don't.

Together - Better

College is a simple idea: you sign up, shell out a ton of money, buy and read the assigned books, and then take tests proving that you understand the assigned books.

I dropped out of college third semester in. But I read a lot. The image you see here is just the snapshot of some of the books I've purchased from Amazon over the years.

Very smart people wrote those books, and I devoured them. Sometimes in a conversation, what I learned from a book will bubble up and weave itself into the discussion. I'm thankful for that. I want to remember and easily recall smart things.

Today, I remembered what something from a book entitled Leading Teams. The author speaks of how an airline works its flight crews. We've all seen it - the pilot might or might not know the co-pilot. The same for the navigator, if one is necessary. And the flight attendants. They learned that flight crews who routinely worked as a unit had less mishaps than mixing their people around.

The more we hang around someone, they more we know their habits, mannerisms, humor, shortcomings, and strengths. That knowledge is essential when surprises occur. We all behave normally when life happens as expected... it's when the unexpected happens that we learn how well we truly work together.

If you apply that to politics, then it becomes easier to comprehend why the establishment operates with efficiency toward its objectives and our newly elected officials take some time to find their lane.

Members of a team enhance each other. It's why married couples are often opposites: each provides what the other lacks. Longevity breeds familiarity which breeds comfortability.

We need the players who play the long game with us. When we find them, we survive both the expected and the unexpected and we grow stronger together - better over time.

Who's on your political team? The more each comes with a servant's heart, the more we can achieve.

The knowledge in all of those books from those wicked smart authors are part of my political team, whether they know it or not. And for that, I'm very thankful.

Fighting

Back in early 2015, before President Trump got in the presidential primary, Scott Walker was surging in the polls because he fought back against the unions. He gave a speech at CPAC where he touted how he fought back against the unions successfully a few times in Wisconsin and won. It pushed him to the front.

Of course, President Trump - the better fighter - won the nomination later, but it was standing up against the left that won the moment for Walker. No one expected that.

Look at the conservatives you admire across history. They were fighters. They fought liberal policies and those who pushed for them.

But also look at McCain. A military man, he loved to label himself the "maverick" who fought. He never pulled punches, no matter whom his target was. Regretfully, he often fought other Republicans and is perhaps most famous for being the Republican who saved Obamacare - maybe because of a personal vendetta against President Trump, maybe because he didn't like that Republicans didn't want to repeal but wanted instead to replace it. Whatever his reason, Obamacare lingers today, and with the initial cloture vote by a few Republicans to allow the Democrats to fund it and then McCain's betrayal a few years later, we all suffer from it today.

McCain is despised by many in the Republican Party today because rather than fighting the left, he fought the right.

There are many who don't like the in-fighting that occurs inside the Republican Party. You know some of these people.

Here in Texas, we have Republicans who join the Democrats and vote like Democrats when voting on Democrat bills. My question is this: if you vote like a Democrat on Democrat bills, what's the difference between you and a Democrat?

That's the pivot on this: does a politician fight against the policy that hurts your family or does the politician just fight against those they don't like?

I don't agree with any part of the Democrat agenda. I can't get behind any policy - Republican or Democrat - that will hurt my family. It is my responsibility before God to honor God and defend my family. God shows no partiality toward anyone - for all have sinned - and if He is no respecter of persons, why should I be? I give deference to no one when it comes to defending my family against those who might hurt my family. Sometimes, a bad policy can do more damage than the threat of a gun or a knife.

It's not my job to champion a politician. It is the politician's job to listen to and represent the people. It is my job to ensure that we have the best representative we can have to do that. That might mean replacing a Republican incumbent.

The politician who needs replacing will make great hay showing that they are fighting against their opponent, but if they're fighting a person more than they fight bad policy, then theirs is the wrong fight. It's completely fair to call that out. In fact, I am obligated to call that out.

Walker, who had little national name recognition, fought the left. Doing so vaulted him early to the top of the list of people jockeying to become the nominee for president in 2016. But later in the year, he crumbled against the juggernaut known as Trump, and he didn't distinguish himself in the debates. His quiet, accountant-style demeanor didn't convey the passion felt by a Republican Party that had endured eight years of Obama. You can call yourself a fighter, but to effectively fight, you need to do two things well:

1. Align yourself with the agenda of the voters and fight against bad policy
2. Voice it with passion like the voters would voice it

Walker, as the Slate article I linked to asks, "Why would anyone choose the guy who can't win a fight or make a mark?"

Politics is not a gentlemanly debate. It's elbows and insults. And only fighters should apply.

Organizing to Win

Last night, I went to a campaign's internal meeting to help them get organized for the coming fight to beat a bad incumbent in the Texas Republican primary next March.

A dozen people attended - all devoted patriots, all of them ready to do what it takes to help win this battle.

My role was to help them understand the game plan. We discussed strategy, roles, marketing, and how to go up against the opposition. It was a good discussion. The people were energized, and you could tell that they were going to do what it took.

If you've read my book or attended my seminar, then you have an idea of what they heard me say last night and you have a sense of what they are committed to do.

The candidate, who has run before, told me that this feels light years different than the first run. Having organization and strategy, enthusiastic supporters, solid messaging... all of this adds up. And the best part: this is only the beginning.

Last year, friends of mine, Dennis and Shari, devoted themselves to do what it takes. They organized early, got the messaging down, and built momentum to have their chosen candidates dominate the local, municipal races. Winning is addictive. Dennis told me the next day that it felt surreal to win by over twenty points in each race. He knew his local government was in good hands. He and Shari were already gunning for the next series of races to make every seat in their county solidly conservative and dedicated to listening to and serving the people.

Only eight of America's fifty largest cities have a Republican for mayor. People lament all of the time that local elections have such a low turnout. That's wonderful, I say. It gives our side a lower bar to win. If only three peolpe vote, we only need two votes to win. If three thousand people vote, we need 1,501 to win. Which one sounds easier?

We can win every race. Every race. We don't because we fail to organize early. We fail to have strong, attractive messaging. That can change, but people have to perceive that you're listening to and serving them.

Rasmussen reports that Democrats lead on the generic ballot going into the mid-terms.

Democrats lead on the generic ballot question mainly because of a slight advantage in partisan intensity. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Democratic voters would vote for their party’s congressional candidate, compared to 85% of GOP voters who would vote for the Republican if the midterm election were held today.

So why would the midterms lean Democrat? Because 41% give Congress a poor rating. From the article:

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently said: "Republicans in Congress are not delivering on the mandate given to them by the American people." Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters agree with that statement, including 33% who Strongly Agree.

Winning the election is not enough. We must have candidates who will deliver on what the people need and expect. If we don't have that, then we must work to replace them with those who will.

The more we organize early and develop our strong messaging based on facts, the more likely we are to win. There's no excuse to not win every race. The Democrats are wrong on pretty much everything.

We either organize early or we lose everything. Thankfully, I spent my evening with one campaign doing that.

Covetousness

Many Republican politicians profess to be Christian. And maybe they are - that's for God to determine.

But I know that many covet what isn't theirs. They spend your money to enhance their political future. They ignore that it's wrong to take from one person to help another person. They choose not to understand that no one is compassionate who spends the money of others to appear charitable.

Every child in America is born into a robust six-figure debt, but that doesn't give 99% of legislators any pause whatsoever as they continue to increase federal debt. Or the state budget. Or a county's reckless splurge. Or a city's hunger to grow government and appease vendors and friends.

These politicians covet. They want what isn't theirs. They feel no responsibility to protect the future of children. They measure their success not by returning to the people the money taken from the people through decreased spending (resulting in less future taxation), but by how happy their donors and backers and colleagues are.

Our nation's debt exceeds our GDP by over 20%. Tax cuts will accelerate our GDP, but without substantial spending reductions in the future, we spend increasingly exorbitant amounts on meaningless interest payment against our great debts. How does that serve the people?

And our nation's credit rating was just downgraded. Because of debt. How is that responsible?

Jennica (X's DataRepublican), a very smart data expert on the web who has uncovered so much for DOGE and highlighting bad actors in USAID, said this of the "big beautiful bill"

The most "responsible" plan anyone can come up with still adds trillions to our debt, just at a slightly slower rate. That's the hard truth. Even with the most disruptive leader in modern history, this is where we landed.

We are out of money.
We are out of time.
And still, we act like it's not a problem.

I'm not saying this to sound hopeless. But we have to face the truth: this is happening because of a culture of corruption.

In a fragile system - and let's be honest, our economy and government are pretty fragile right now - it doesn't take much for a Soros-type to act swiftly to damage what we have. Look how the Wuhan virus upended so many things in this life. No one is better for it except those who knew how to get rich from it.

There's a reason the founders regarded government as evil. Until we have politicians who act to truly limit government, the courts will disrupt our president, legislatures and councils nationwide will run up our debt, and freedom will be diminished and our children enslaved by a runaway government and its overwhelming debt.

All because the few we elect covet what isn't theirs.

The righteous return what's stolen. They don't keep it and they certainly don't crave more of it. We need to elect those who crave to act righteously for the people in the nation God granted us, or all our liberty will be lost.

Standards

A guy named Hugh showed me a long time ago that it's my responsibility to set the expectations of others in regard to my performance.

About a decade later, a guy named Ryan introduced me to the Scotty Principle. It's named after the Star Trek character. The conversation would go something like, "Scotty - how long until the engines can achieve warp drive."

"I dinno, Captin. It might be 48 hours for the shape my lady's in."

Kirk would then urgently bark into the com: "We don't have 48 hours!"

And then miraculously Scotty had it fixed in five minutes.

It's about setting expectations.

I have a slide in my seminar where I say that a Republican playbook requires Republican players, and if you're not choosing the members of your team, they might not be the players you need. Too often in politics, we see our players run to the wrong end zone. We see the label "REPUBLICAN" and imagine that they will do Republican things. That's the expectation.

What we end up getting usually is a few Republican things. "See? I'm conservative!" they tell us in their marketing. Mailers arrive, ads are cut, social media boasts of their few, modest Republican achievements.

But think of a two-parent household. Imagine the wife is away on a trip and the husband is home alone. When the kids need to be fed, do their homework, have clean clothes for tomorrow, and teeth brushed and put to bed, and the husband orders pizza and but doesn't ensure the rest is accomplished and fails to put away the dishes or tidy up, should the wife be excited when she returns home?

When measuring our representatives, it's not about whether they did something; it's about whether they did everything that needs to be done or could be done.

"Babe, I was just exhausted. The best I could do was order pizza." You know that won't fly.

We live in a time when low standards aren't enough. The times demand high standards. We can't afford to give a pass to bad incumbents who order pizza and expect praise when there is far more that needs to be done.

As I work with candidates readying for the 2026 primary, it's important to set the expectations of the voters, not just for the challenger, but for the incumbent. It's important to reset the bar. The bad incumbent wants to set the bar low, step over it with a few accomplishments, and then coast to easy victory to accomplish very little in the cycle.

The needs of our country, our state, and our family demand much more. The wise challenger addresses this.

How it could have been: the husband not only makes a good dinner, helps the kids with their homework, pushes them to clean up so that the house isn't a mess, and gets them ready for bed on time, he has dinner in the microwave set to reheat for his wife when she comes home. He aims to surpass her expectations because she deserves that. Because he cares about her and loves her.

We hire our representatives to act as we would. Very few speak as we would speak, act as we would act, or feel the urgency that we do. The truth is that they are not representative of anything. They move to protect their low-bar colleagues quicker than they move to protect our families.

We either have standards, or we don't. The standard is not a few Republican things. The times demand far more... or we won't have a Republic at all.

Attraction

I don't believe much in paid advertising.

For example, I always know who charges far too much for their product by how many times I see their commercials on TV. Which is insurance and pharmaceuticals. Way overpriced.

Sorry Flo.

I believe that anyone who develops a product learns more about how attractive and exciting their product is by how much word of mouth it gets. So, the challenge I give myself is to see how little I can spend on something to push it into the world.

(Marketing champ of all time, by the way, is Jesus. The fact that Christianity grew from one man and twelve disciples by word of mouth despite endless persecution across the centuries is remarkable. But he's the Lord, so perhaps he has an advantage...)

I haven't paid out any money to promote my book, for example. My risk of a few hundred hours writing the book and $8,535 buying 1,000 self-published copies last fall has paid off - I'm in the black. I just booked my first seminar out of state - in Tennessee.

Or take Grassroots Priorities. GAWTP has spent no money on advertising, but the website is becoming a fixture in Texas politics. We're not quite halfway through May, but we already have over 1 million page views for the month. During this session alone, over 37,500 unique visitors.

When you listen to people and give them what they want - to empower them and improve their lives - they will come to you for what you offer.

Any time you create something and offer it to people, a conversation begins. You try to find the best way to articulate what it is and how it can help and then you begin to hear whether it resonates with people or not.

If it doesn't, you have two choices: you either modify the product or the pitch, or you can push it harder into the market with money.

Sometimes, the money is smart because if you don't have an organic way to reach people initially, then the money can lift you to get to people. It's an investment and a boost. But if you keep having to plow money into advertising, that might be worth looking into. Something is amiss.

Can a product get major market share without any advertising? Yes, of course. Ever seen a Tesla ad on TV, for example? No, you haven't. Why? The product and its word of mouth are that good.

Guerilla marketing is hard. But it's street-level and forces you to really listen to those who might want what you offer. If you do it right, you get the maximum return on investment. There is no advertising better than word of mouth.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about how to apply that to politics and elections.

We lament the money in politics. How much is spent selling us on bad incumbents peddling bad policy? That would be an example of working too hard to sell a bad product. It's so artificial.

As Grassroots Priorities shows, people want the facts. They don't want a spin or an interpretation of the facts. People want to be empowered with knowledge and a means to share that with others. If you do that right, then people will come to it organically.

And the more you practice that discipline, the better you will get at doing it. It's about listening and creating something of real value that improves lives. People are smart enough to know whether their life is better for what you offer, and if what you offer does that, you don't need money to push it on people. It's attractive all on its own.

Winning People

I had an epiphany today in regard to persuasion. Persuasion has a bit to do with logic and far more to do with community. That never occurred to me before, but now that I see it this way, it connects quite a few dots.

If I have a belief about something, and it means a great deal to those I know, then wandering away from that belief can potentially threaten my relationships. Look at Elon Musk, former beloved child of the environmental left. Where they once adored him, now because he's aligned reducing government waste and with President Trump, they've abandoned him completely, declared him Hitler, and draw swastikas on his cars.

He still has the same environmental beliefs he did. He still believes in electric vehicles and the strength of solar power. That hasn't changed. But because he has a belief contrary to theirs, they've ostracized him.

His inner strength of character enables him to stand alone. But many people are afraid to stand alone. Solitary confinement is not for everyone.

Why do we fail to persuade people to change their minds? I believe that it has far more to do leaving their network - their community - than it does a failure of logic. I believe that most people fear being cast out.

You hear this in Hollywood with the closet conservative, who whispers to a few selected people that they don't agree with the radical left, but they would lose jobs and friends and status if they voiced their disagreement.

We hear this from business owners who are afraid to endorse the better candidate. Instead, they shrug and get the selfie with the bad incumbent because it's better for their business.

Today, thinking quite a bit about this today, I added about ten slides to the seminar.

Persuasion isn't about convincing people that they are wrong.

Persuasion is about convincing people that they will have a community if they get thrust out from the one they've called home for so very long.

If you're older than fifty, that can be quite scary. Loneliness is rough.

I believe I know a way through this. I'm excited to show these new slides at my next seminar. I'm very interested to hear the reaction. I certainly plan to write about it in the next book, Prepare Lead Win.

Pursuit of Happiness

You have the right to determine how you live within your means and capability, and not have that robbed from you by others. Let's call that "the pursuit of happiness," one of our natural rights as reasoned by Locke. Life, liberty, and... property.

We spend a great deal of time determining where we should live. We want good neighbors. When we choose where we live and the neighbors who will, in some way, share life with us, we anticipate a harmonious existence. "Safe and secure in our home and person" should certainly be the default.

We get the culture we allow. We want a shared culture that respects life, liberty, and property.

It was once the case that government and law enforcement were implemented to enable us to protect our families. Over time, that has bent to favor the rights not of the law-abiding, but of the "alleged" lawbreaker.

We watch in horror as a father loses his son at a high school sports event and the one who stabbed him raises hundreds of thousands of dollars and is free on bond, showing no respect to the victim or the victim's family.

Do you want to live there? In Frisco, Texas? If you did, would you feel safe? The judge who reduced the bond has now been doxxed. Does she feel safe?

HOA's sprung up after World War II, first started as a means of affordable community development by a fella named Bill Levitt. This gave birth to planned communities. Community - it comes from the Latin "communis," meaning common or shared. It implies mutual respect and shared values and principles.

Shared culture matters. If you come here from another country and refuse to share a culture of respect for life, liberty, and property, then you don't belong here.

The lawless don't care one whit about respect for life, liberty, or property. For all of the talk of "due process," we need to talk about due respect. I care more about due respect for the law-abiding than I care about due process for lawbreakers. The only process due for those illegals who violate the rights of American citizens is to duly process their exit from this country.

When politicians accept endorsements or donations from those who facilitate breaking the law, we need to call them out without mercy.

The colonias and the sharia communities cropping up in Texas are because of politicians who have allowed it to happen and did so at the expense of the law-abiding. That's criminal.

Those who don't share our American values of respect for life, liberty, and property don't belong here. Those who don't share the desire to be a productive member of society don't belong in civil society, and shouldn't be carried by the rest. Those who want to ignore the Constitution and grow government rather than limit government do harm to the people and must not climb into positions of authority or power.

There is no pursuit of happiness when you don't feel safe in your own home or community. As the Declaration says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Should

In my own personal life, I know that I seldom - if ever - have the right to tell anyone what to do. If I want someone to do something, it's my job to invite and entice them to do the thing I want them to do. Nobody is my employee.

The municipal elections just happened in Texas and many people are disappointed. It's not surprising that they're disappointed - many of the wrong people won their election. I hear people lament the low voter turnout, but I disagree with that. I love low voter turnout because it gives the right candidate a lower hurdle to win the election.

If three people show up to vote, you only need two of them. You see what I mean?

If we all know about 150 people by first name (friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, church family, etc), then it's not hard to believe that we can personally ask and invite up to 10 or 20 to join us in voting for our candidate of choice.

In a low turnout election, a dozen people who commit to ask and invite those they know to join them can swing the election. For municipal elections and school board elections, few people know who represents them, much less want to drive a dozen others whom they know to vote for a candidate.

I hear that Republicans are "complacent" or have "apathy." I won't argue that, but as I ask at every seminar I give, which party is it that is more likely to bring a busload of voters to the polls on election day? The unanimous, consistent answer to that question is Democrats. And that's the crux of the problem. The Democrats are far more likely to organize. The focus of my work is to change that and to push early organization.

That doesn't succeed by pointing fingers and insisting that people should, oughta, must organize. I work to do that by showing how easy and how fruitful it can be in getting the results we want. If we take an hour to list those we know and then identify among them those who crave smaller government like we do, we arrive quickly at a list of those we can reach at election time who can swing elections.

"Oh, but I don't know that many people," I hear sometimes. That may be, but if you get one more person to vote who wouldn't have voted otherwise, then you double your vote - and we've all had the experience of learning after an election that someone we assumed would vote didn't actually vote. Therefore, getting in the habit of asking those we know if they've voted needs to become acceptable and even applauded. This ensures that they do vote and we promote and protect the culture our families need.

Before we say, "Republicans are complacent" or "Republicans have too much apathy," I would ask: how many did you personally reach before the election was over to ensure that they voted?

"Well, but they oughta vote," some might respond.

To which I would say, "Even God Himself doesn't make me do anything. We get the government we allow. Why not invite people into the behavior we'd like them to do to get the results we want?"

Have we created the list of those we know? Have we identified our broken glass crew? Did we talk to them during the election to ensure they voted?

List creation takes, at most, an hour. You do that one time. Invitation takes maybe another hour at election time. Is that worth our time to protect our families?

Now, it is the responsibility of the candidate to attract people to vote for them. This is why I push candidates to create their Land of Milk and Honey like I do. It will make people excited to vote for you. You attract and invite votes. It makes it easier for people to share the benefits of voting for you when inviting others to vote for you. Regrettably, most candidates haven't really enunciated their Land of Milk and Honey. That too is a habit we need to develop.

So, pause if you hear the word "should" come out of your mouth. Focus on giving people ample reason to get out the vote and focus on inviting those you know to actually get out and vote. If we do this and organize early to drive turnout, then perhaps we will never lose an election that we need to win. While there are many out there who want leftist candidates to win, there are actually more of us who don't want leftist policies enacted that will hurt our families.

Liberty takes work. We can work to organize that majority. We will win if we do.

Assimilation

On a micro scale, assimilation is as simple as adopting the culture of a group you're in. School children do this all of the time. A kid moves to a new school, and if a group is into a certain thing, say pickleball, the new kid might learn about it begin doing it to fit in.

When we meet people, it's normal for us to find common ground with them. Sports, kids, health... we look for some facet of shared experience to converse and connect. When one or both want to develop a relationship, some level of assimilation happens. This happens all of the time in marriage. A spouse will pick up a hobby or interest and the other will take time to learn about it and take interest in it. Perhaps even join. It might be golf or a bridge club, a political group, hiking or running. Or pickleball. It's how they remain connected.

The more facets where connection takes place, you can argue the stronger the relationship. You could even say the greater the assimilation.

When people come to America, whether legally or not, they have a choice. They can join with Americans who love their country and the "American way," or they can defiantly stick to the language of their country of origin, hoist its flag for all to see, and even protest against America if they choose.

We choose to assimilate when we believe that it will lead us to a measure of success that we want. If you come here and you don't speak English, then you choose to learn English because you will find more success if you do. You can integrate with more of America. Language is the first hurdle in assimilation.

But assimilation may not be the goal. When a person enters a group of people and disrupts its normal culture, it could be to fracture and weaken the group. It could be to take over the group. The members of the local pickleball group become confused when a person insists on reading slam poetry instead.

In Texas, a few decades back, Democrats began to stick their finger in the wind and saw that the country was moving in a more conservative direction. To assimilate, they began calling themselves Republican, and for some, that's where the assimilation stopped. This is part of why Texas has strange form of Republicanism. It's not centered on conservative values, but on the acquisition of power. Like learning English, they can speak the language to help them succeed, but in their hearts, they still speak the language of their country of origin.

Fighting hard for the culture of a secure border, election integrity, and protecting the innocence of children is foreign to them. We see that the Democrats embrace none of these values, and so when Republicans move incredibly slow on these important cultural issues, it's just because it's not native to them. They became functional in the language enough to get by, but have no interest in becoming a champion of Republican culture. In their actions, they still hoist the flag of their native land.

Some might call assimilation a purity test. But wouldn't Texas be better if no matter who our president was, the border was secure, elections were unambiguously free and fair, and the innocence of children was protected without fight?

Time to promote assimilation, for the betterment of everyone. We get the culture we allow. We need to recognize that some haven't really assimilated. If not, they sure shouldn't represent those who expect champions of conservative culture.

Protecting Our Families

I'm in the midst of updating daily what happens in our Texas capitol. I see the thousands of bills that are filed during this session and how our legislators vote on the bills that make it to the floor for a vote. I see the trends. I can, by volume, compare the legislators to each other. I can isolate our Republican legislative priority bills and see the action/inaction on those bills.

At the end of session, working with Grassroots America and with their approval, I'll release that information to Texas. Texans deserve to know whether their legislators perform - or don't perform - to the expectations that Republicans have. In Republican districts, it is, after all, Republicans who elected those legislators.

I've come to see that a person who is elected has a choice. They can either side with their colleagues and defend them, or they can side with their constituents and protect them.

We all see that we live in turbulent times, but only the threatened act. We the People feel threatened. Congress has freely spent $36T+ that remains unpaid and breaks down to $112K per person in the US. We're handing bankruptcy to our children and grandchildren.

Our Texas government has a budget that is over $80B larger than it was just four years ago, and yet our Lieutenant Governor works to assure us that this is a conservative budget. Going from $250B to $330B conserves nothing but bigger government.

Our municipalities seek bond after bond and act behind closed doors too often against the will of the people. They refuse to get our school and public libraries to remove vulgar books from the reach of children.

Only the threatened act. The freight train is coming at us. But those in office don't feel threatened by anything in our economy or culture. They refuse to act with urgency. They only seek to make bad actions look better to a public that is short on attention due to just trying to make a living.

The elected are out of touch with the concerns of those they represent.

Objectively, America is worse than it was twenty years ago. Worse than it was forty years ago. The majority of those elected care little about anything but protecting the seat they won at election against either no one or against a single person. In a race of two, your odds are good of winning, and once won, remaining the winner increases with time.

Being inside the government protects the elected. During COVID, it wasn't the government worker who lost their job. It was everyone else who was threatened with losing their job, and too many did. What's worse, our government caused COVID to happen by funding the research and then wrecked the lives of millions by removing the inexpensive treatment of ivermectin from access, causing countless to die.

That's the government we're supposed to trust.

Thomas Paine said well that government is evil. But few in our government believe that to be true. Why? Because on the inside, they're protected. Random judges work to prevent our president from actually reducing government, and lawmakers do little to stop it. Because government protects itself, and not our families.

It's our job to see clearly those in office who move with no urgency to protect our families. It's our job to protect our families, and sadly, we must protect our families from a government that invites itself into every aspect our lives, inflating our cost of living with every regulation and new program. Good intentions bankrupt our children.

No one is charitable when they're spending other people's money.

Me, I can't wait to tell truth. I aim to provide transparency in every way I can, and tell the story.

I wish those elected were heroes who fight alongside us to protect our families. Regrettably, they're not. They're generally attacking our families by pilfering our hard-earned dollars and pushing more and greater government onto us.

So, you are forced to choose between protecting your family or protecting those in government. The government itself has made that a hard line and pushed you to decision.

Choose well.

Summer Writing

Yesterday, I spent some of my time at the summit outlining the next book, Prepare Lead Win. I admit, my brain gets very excited about writing. It's a somewhat effortless activity for me. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't write every day. I love words and the power of words.

The book will be longer, maybe 250 pages this next time out. It will be broken into three parts: Prepare, which will cover what I teach in the 4-hour seminar. The seminar has a simple premise: it's not in the operation of the campaign that we lose, but in the preparation for the campaign. Toward that end, the seminar covers grassroots preparation, candidate preparation, campaign preparation, and preparation for how to go up against the opposition.

The second part, Lead, will cover the conduct and operation of the campaign.

The third part, Win, will cover after the campaign. We become who we hang around. Don't hang out with the swamp. Stay with those who brung you - your constituents. It will cover what you can do to ensure you don't lose your way - because as everyone who has been elected and is honest will tell you, seduction happens almost immediately after your first victory.

It covers more territory, more concepts and practices, and I hope it becomes more of an all-around primer.

I outlined the first five or six chapters yesterday while listening to the speakers. One speaker said that if you start with the wrong premise, you will get the wrong result. I agree completely. So, I endeavor to put forward inarguable premises to bring about inevitable and ongoing victory.

As the session pushes on and I capture the Texas Legislature Online data daily into Grassroots Priorities, I learn from people what matters to them and how to best present it to them.

The goal is to win. The goal is to shrink government. That only happens if we elect the right candidates to office who will truly represent us. Those who vote for more and bigger government are not right for the job and must be replaced.

Do It with Numbers

It doesn't matter what your political ambition is. It could be winning an election. It could be defeating a bond. It might be TEXIT. It could be vacating the chair. Whatever your ambition in politics might be, you need numbers.

I appreciate those who highlight an issue. They draw attention to something we might not have otherwise noticed, and it's certainly true that Brian Harrison has drawn plenty of attention to the failings of this session of the legislature.

Some argue that he does it to draw attention to himself. Perhaps he does - I don't know. I haven't asked him or talked to him about it.

There's an episode of Penn & Teller's Fool Us where they discuss "misdirection." You can take a few minutes and watch it if you like.

Harrison is the gorilla with the cymbals. While the House is trying to do whatever the Speaker wants it to do and you are going about your life doing what you do, Harrison dances about to draw attention to the fact that the House is not doing what Republicans asked.

Is he doing it the right way? It depends.

If his mission is to draw attention to the lack of urgency the House seems to have, then he's doing a fine job of that.

If his mission is to vacate the chair, then he didn't come close to attracting the numbers he needed to succeed.

When the leadership doesn't share the agenda of the people, a representative has two choices: 1) cause chaos and highlight it all, or 2) work with everyone as much as possible to achieve what good might come.

It's hard for a single representative to do both. Those are two different roles. While a person could do both with ample humor applied, Harrison has evidently chosen door number 1.

I said that whatever you do in politics requires numbers. Sometimes, those numbers are outside the circle you're in. Harrison's numbers are in the disgusted grassroots and in our independent media, such as Chris Salcedo. In the legislature, he doesn't seem to have many partners.

Whatever we do, we must try to be as attractive as we can be. There is no "polite" in politics. It's a place of sharp elbows and insults, which is why humor is important. You can get further along insulting and elbowing people if you do it with humor.

But whatever your aim, you'll need numbers.

The Hero is the Orchestra, Not the Soloist

We lost Wisconsin, it seems.

For all of the effort that went into it, in a state that voted for President Trump 49.60% to 48.74%, Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel appears to have lost by 9 points.

How does that happen? It happens because Republicans don't organize, don't get involved, and don't stay involved or organized. It tends to be the case that once they think they have their champion elected (in this case, President Trump), he's got it. It's time to relax and let him save the day.

We wait for a white knight to show up. The definition: "a hero who comes to the rescue; a beleaguered champion who fights heroically for a cause, as in politics."

There isn't a single hero. There is no white knight. It's a myth.

For every political cause, only one thing will win: numbers. That's not one person. That's 51% of the people. That requires organization. It's why the Democrats succeed when they should never succeed.

We hear all of the time that nobody likes the Democrats:

So how do they win? Because they organize and stay organized.

Are you tired of politics? Of course. Who isn't? But in any war, the side that loses is the side that gives up and you love your family too much to give up.

Here in Texas, the leader of the Senate wants to give Hollywood half a billion of your money and grow the budget. It's not what you want. And the leader of the House wants to pass bills that no one has read and have hearings behind closed doors where the public has no input.

We get the government we allow. The hero is the orchestra, not the soloist. The hero we're looking for is We the People, not a single person.

It's time to organize and stay organized. Or we will lose everything.

Pick a Side

We're in a war. One side wants peace and prosperity. The other favors a stressed-out lawlessness.

The Democrat Party is the party of violence. Maxine Waters, Jasmine Crockett, and others urge their people toward violence against those with different political views.

You could argue that this kind of behavior won't be rewarded. Threats from a minority never gain anything, but remember that after 9/11, Muslims almost became a protected class and now are planning huge cities in Texas over two decades later.

We get the culture we allow.

Many people imagine this fight isn't theirs. It might not have started that way, but it becomes everyone's fight. Your insurance rates go up every year. Inflation rises as government grows. Here in Texas, the budget will be bigger than ever at a time when it's obvious that bigger government is not popular - but that doesn't stop lawmakers who won't hear us.

In Wisconsin, the fate of the nation rests on the outcome of the supreme court race because of the threat of redistricting that could move the Republican-led US House into Democrat hands. What happens if the party of violence gets more power? Nothing good. And so Scott Presler, Elon, Musk, and millions nationwide work to keep our Republican House of Representatives.

It all comes down to organization. Will we join together to save the country? Do we love our families enough to fight for their freedom in the days and years ahead?

I'll be in Denton County later today and Harlingen this weekend giving my seminar on how to win. I'm heartened by the response as I do these. People want to do what's effective.

It's time to pick a side. It's time to get involved.

Busy Busy

It's been a minute since I posted. I've given two trainings in the last week (Beaumont and Llano). I'm updating Grassroots Priorities daily and the session is starting to move quickly. I'm trying to keep up with my client work.

I've got some things on my mind, so I'll just talk randomly...

I read of people who want to create qualifications for certain positions, such as ensuring that only native born Americans can serve on the bench as a judge or can be elected to Congress. That sounds like a smart qualification, but it guarantees nothing. Bernie Sanders is native born. John Roberts is native born. In my opinion, it's a lazy requirement to keep from the real work: electing the right people.

We get the government we allow. If you want people appointed to positions who will do the right thing, then you have to elect people with the right judgment to appoint the right people. Greg Abbott makes some pretty horrible appointments. Joe Biden made some terrible appointments. Giving them a more narrow constraint for appointment will not solve their bad judgment, which is the root of the problem.

The same goes for those elected. You don't solve Ilhan Omar with nativity requirements - we can get a Jasmine Crockett or AOC.

Elections are work. Scott Presler warned of the Pennsylvania result of not working to keep a seat and now Democrats keep majority control of the state House by a single seat... and this other result too.

I'm also watching friends of mine down at the capitol here in Texas fight to get good legislation passed and to kill bad legislation.

A phrase I miss is "the spirit of the law." That was used by savvy judges who wouldn't allow the tiniest of loopholes in the wording of the law as an excuse for criminal activity. Now we have to get the exact right wording or the law can be the opposite of what we need.

But that gets back to appointing and electing people who use good judgment to adhere to the spirit of the law. That's on us. We get the government we allow.

So either get involved or get run over.

Predictability

The fastest way to get someone to stop moving is to make them uncertain about their next step.

We like a predictable environment. Generally speaking, women don't like a man who lacks predictable income. Men don't like women whose mood and attitude change by the moment. Children don't function well in chaotic homes. Markets don't like the unknown.

When we elect someone to office, the more concrete and heartfelt their principles, the more we can predict how they will vote. You don't have to babysit a politician who will surely act a certain way. (You may not like how they will act, but you don't feel the need to waste your time trying to get them to change what absolutely won't change.)

The Left is unafraid to use violence in every aspect of life to insert uncertainty into the Right's momentum. Our respect for life, liberty, and property prevent us from doing that. It would never occur to us to firebomb a car or doxx private individuals who object to our politics.

The Left doesn't have the executive branch or the legislative branch, but boy can it leverage the judicial branch. And it is. To put uncertainty into the steps of our President and his agenda for which we voted.

Sun Tzu said, "Know the enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles you will never be in peril." They will threaten everything and stop at nothing. If those on our side don't acknowledge that, then we will indeed be in peril. And we are.

Congress has a few tools they might use. They threaten impeachment, but that will fail because the Senate requires two-thirds to convict. No Democrat will vote for conviction of their judges. They could use Article III of the constitution to limit the jurisdiction of the inferior and supreme courts. Gov. Ron DeSantis talked about this earlier today.

President Trump could ignore the courts - and to a degree is. But where is the Republican Party? Outside of DeSantis, where are the governors in acting to stop this chaos in their own states?

Uncertainty is sand in the gears of the future. It sows doubt into our hopes and dreams.

This is a time for those in Congress to assert a sure-footed strength to secure our freedom. Inaction tells us all we need to know about their political future.

Dividing the Herd

Those who work hard to divide the grassroots bore me because it's lazy. It's not hard to foment division.

You see predators do this in nature. They find a herd, push hard up the middle in a surprise sprint, divide those previously peacefully assembled, go after the closest prey, and then pounce.

You know what's hard? Crafting solutions to hard problems and gathering others to join you in working toward a solution.

But these jackals never do that. They have no solution. They just criticize and point fingers all of the time. That's why I find it uninteresting. It does nothing, and when our greatest problem in fighting the Left is organization, this nonsense just fosters disorganization.

I could make the argument that this might just be the goal, but I'll skip the psychology. What is inarguable is that it brings about division among people who might otherwise get along just fine.

Pick a topic: the Christ is King thing, school choice, elimination of property taxes... I'll highlight each one.

Christ is King: it's said that only the anti-Semitic say this. The truth is that one day all knees will bow to Jesus, so those who like to create division use this phrase to troll others. Some are truly anti-Semitic and some want to label everyone as anti-Semitic.

Jesus is Lord. Get over it. Those who see racism or bigotry everywhere are boring in the inability to have a rational discussion.

I have very good friends who are Jewish. They have their beliefs and I have mine. We don't let it come between us.

This divides by using the wedge of either inciting argument with the statement or labeling assumed motives. Both are lazy and generally done to drive clicks and views.

School choice: The problem with school choice as Texas pursues it is that it addresses the wrong problem. The problem isn't how education is funded; the problem is the lack of consistent student proficiency. You don't tackle proficiency with money. You tackle proficiency with curriculum and discipline.

Giving a small percentage of students the freedom to pick a different school could solve the problem if the school has a better curriculum and enforces discipline and if the student has parents who support both. But this only addresses the issue for a small percentage of students while spending more money.

This is what I call tactical division. We agree on the destination (better education) but we disagree on the tactics (how to get there).

Elimination of property taxes: Not everyone agrees on the principle objective. Many in the legislature don't want to eliminate property taxes... they just want to reduce them, or pretend to reduce them.

The solution here is simple: stop spending money. But too many Republicans love spending money. This is cultural division. We don't agree yet on the principle, so it's hard to arrive at the right tactics to get there.

When I see people driving up the middle to gain attention for themselves, it's energy wasted because it solves nothing. But for too many of these people, it was never about solving anything. They enjoy the brief limelight of the drama they create.

We need fewer problem-pointers and far more problem-solvers. Let's work the solution by first finding the right principle (the destination), the best tactics to achieve the objective (how to get there), and bring as many as we can with us while we do (stop labeling people with broad indiscriminate brushes).

Let's climb higher out of the fray. Let's do the right things right.