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.

Mastering the One-Inch Punch

Bruce Lee was famous for many things, and one of them was the one-inch punch. With proper training, he said, a one-inch punch could be just as devastating as a full-wind up punch. Lee said this about it:

"It's about delivering maximum force in a minimal distance."

The MythBusters tested this notion and came away believing that it was plausible.

What does this have to do with you?

A great flaw in some of our smartest people in the grassroots is that they over-talk their points. They say too much and lose their audience.

As a result, they are too often all wind up and no impact.

You might remember the scene in Indiana Jones where the swordsman puts on an impressive display as he approaches Indy, who smirks and then pulls out a gun and shoots his antagonist.

Brief is best. Brevity is the soul of wit. Short and sweet. Less is more.

I teach this in the book and in my seminars with the Inarguable approach. It shows how to address any issue in three sentences and twenty seconds.

For me, this started with my friend, Kay, who told me that she loved my writing, but people hate to read. Therefore, bullets not paragraphs. That was around 2005. Since I heard that, I've worked hard to scrunch the complicated and long-winded into a sentence or two. Marketing-wise, I've spent two decades trying to master the one-inch punch.

Nicole and I were watching Next Level Chef this morning. A guy who cooks for the wealthy on yachts lost to a young guy who grew up scrappy. Why? Yacht guy was accustomed to cooking with a lot of time and full pantries. Scrappy guy had to master refashioning leftovers. Yacht guy didn't know how to abbreviate and edit. His desire to do everything overwhelmed the need to successfully prepare a dish in twenty minutes. That was a new experience for yacht guy, but for scrappy guy it was every day life.

Nobody but the doctoral committee wants the dissertation. No one quotes paragraphs; but a powerful sentence can be on repeat for decades and even centuries.

We all have windshield time. Practice your one-inch punch. In a campaign, it might just save your life. Like Bruce Lee said: "It's about delivering maximum force in a minimal distance."

Saving Lives

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with a pastor in the Rio Grande Valley. He's interested in having a Goal is to Win seminar down there and he discussed his time in politics. He mentioned how critical it is for Christians to be engaged and how elections could be easily won if believers went to the polls.

Yes. Many people see that truth and know it's possible. I love his courage and leadership.

Then we talked about the seminar. I mentioned that I speak of the power of our mouth - if only we use it. I told him that I've seen many people in politics strengthen their relationship with Christ through their political ties.

The Great Commission is that we go out and make disciples of all nations. That means leaving the house and using our mouth. It means actually talking to people. Our introduction into the lives of others can affect them and influence them. Politics is repetitive - you'll see people multiple times. It's very common among the conservative grassroots to have spiritual conversations. We open meetings with prayer. Politics is a Godly business.

Paul never cared what it took to open up conversations and find entry for discussions of the Lord. He traveled all over the place. He said what God put into his mouth to speak. Sometimes it is surprising what comes of our interactions with others. It can change us. It can change them. I often tell candidates that God will use the campaign to change them, to be open to how God uses it for His purposes.

I got into politics because I wanted my children to inherit an America better than what I myself received. Through the last twenty years, it's been difficult to see how that's possible, but if you can see it, it's obvious that President Trump got into his second term through God's intervention and protection. We live in a time of mercy. It's our opportunity to turn to God and speak what He puts into our mouth.

We can reach so many. Politics can be the entry. Not only can we save America, but we can save lives and bring many into a fuller walk with the Lord.

It all starts with getting out among people and just using that big, beautiful mouth on our face. Talk is cheap - so we should do a lot of it. It doesn't cost a dime.

Local Revolutionary Truth

Tell the truth. It can be revolutionary.

Think of the times in history that publishing the written word led to profound change in the world. Luther's 95 theses. The Gutenberg bible. The American and French revolutions. Pravda's profound role in the Russian revolution. The recent role of X in changing our political landscape.

All of these show the tremendous lift that can happen with an alternative news source. Despite the historical success shown by these and many other examples, conservatives seldom establish a means for telling the truth beyond social media.

Is it hard to begin an alternative news source? Not at all. It's a website, and WordPress got its start as exactly that: content-oriented websites.

In the early 2000's, blogs emerged as a disruptive challenge to mainstream media. Articles like this were common:

Many of the righty and non-partisan bloggers have been hammering away at mainstream news coverage (as opposed to commentators, which irk the left) for being excessively anti-war, anti-Bush and pro-Kerry. They have also shown the mainstream news media to simply be lazy and sloppy. Some of the revelations have been quite disturbing. Newspapers, for example, could often persist in doing poor work because as monopolists they had no competition.

Facebook simplified and unified what blogs were doing by making it available for anyone to post words or pictures in a real time stream in a single website. It gave everyone the ability to like, share, and comment and be notified of interaction by others. Independent blogs were pretty much replaced by Facebook. This continued for better than a decade until the government discovered that they could shut down disruptive voices by pushing Facebook and Twitter to censor.

So the people scattered. Many left social media. But everyone still uses the web and can still get to a website if they know of it.

As local news is dying, it leaves a vacuum that can be filled by us. People want the truth.

This Rubik's Cube is something I twist on every day. How do we help inform people? The establishment of a local conservative news outlet has always led to a wave of good people getting into office.

As I say in my seminars, in any county, if the truth is spoken to those we know, as that truth gets passed around and shared, we are only two or at most three conversations from informing everyone in the county.

So how to facilitate the sharing of local revolutionary truth... that's the puzzle to be solved.

It's All in the Delivery

Last night, I'm driving home from dinner with Nicole and listening to Steve Martin speak about comedy. He gives the example of how the line from Groucho Marx "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" would be very different when delivered by various comedians. He offers up the Chris Rock version, as an example.

We often say that comedy is in the delivery, which is a combination of timing, word selection, tone, and context. Funny is funnier when you get all the parts right.

We all know people who can't tell a joke. They're generally lousy at stories as well. They overtell a story, undertell a story, tell a story without giving you an idea first of what the subject is or who the characters are, jump around to different stories while they tell it... as opposed to capturing their audience, they leave the audience confused or looking for an exit.

In politics, some people have a knack for capturing an audience. I can't stand Gavin Newsom's policies, but he's pretty charismatic. Bill Clinton was known to be very likeable in person. A lot of people are charming but bereft of any solid principles. Comics, while funny, are sometimes very despicable people. Celebrities visited Epstein's Island.

II Corinthians tells us that "Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light."

The point of this is that if you hold the right principles but fail to hold an audience, you might lose to the person with horrible principles who knows how to draw an audience to them.

And sometimes this is why our grassroots candidates fail. The bad incumbent in office is good at getting elected, but horrible at stewarding government.

The premise of the seminars I give is that we fail in the preparation for the campaign, not in the operation of the campaign. Therefore, I focus on preparation. One aspect of that is candidate preparation.

As I was driving, I thought about mastering delivery, and how that factors into winning an election. Timing is everything, we hear, but it's only one part of delivery. How we convey something to would-be voters and sell them on the ideas we present matters.

Perhaps in getting ready to run for office, a candidate might practice their story-telling and joke-telling skills. There's a good article about "How to Tell a Good Story." In a section of the article labeled "Start with a message," there is this:

Every storytelling exercise should begin by asking: Who is my audience and what is the message I want to share with them? Each decision about your story should flow from those questions. Sachs says that leaders should ask, "What is the core moral that I'm trying to implant in my team?" and "How can I boil that down to a compelling single statement?" First settle on your ultimate message; then you can figure out the best way to illustrate it.

We can always improve our ability to tell a story, communicate a message, deliver a funny line, or push an idea. How we invite people into our orbit and keep them there is a practiced skill. Every successful comic has a bad night. They constantly work their craft. One comic says this about missing the mark: "[Remind] yourself there are going to be bad gigs. I think analyzing why the gig was bad is important. Was it an off night for you? Was the crowd awful? Another thing I learned is that sometimes an audience is not very vocal or effusive, so you think you're not doing well but everyone is having a great time."

Remember that almost every comic has a routine that is only delivered after it is well-rehearsed. So too with any candidate. You need to practice your message so that it is consistent and compelling and as brief as possible. "Brevity is the soul of wit." So too with the memorable soundbite. Succinct is always more attractive and can invite people to want more rather than less.

Changing the Representative

Sometimes, the representative you have needs to be replaced. Like a burned out light bulb now grown dim and flickering, you need to install a new one.

To do that, you don't just point at the defective light bulb. You go find a new one, a better one.

So here's my joke of the day: how many constituents does it take to replace a light bulb?

Fifty-one percent.

A lot of people are excited right now about censure. Censure is good for bringing attention to the fact that there isn't much light coming from that bulb any more. A lot of darkness there... so it's good for a headline or two.

But defective bulbs don't replace themselves, and defective politicians don't either. You have to find the replacement. That's the real challenge.

To replace a light bulb, you have to buy a new light bulb. The light bulb doesn't pay for itself; you have to pay for it. The store clerk would look at you funny if you walked up and set the new bulb on the counter but didn't produce your wallet.

"You have to pay for that if you want it," the clerk might say.

Likewise with your fancy replacement politician - you have to pay for that if you want to install someone new.

Jasmine Crockett is in the news these days for all of the wrong reasons. Representing Texas, the woman must be replaced. If you don't know about Sholdon Daniels, here's your chance. He's the guy running against her.

I gave $50 to his campaign.

He's not in my district, and I don't care. That chick has got to go and she embarrasses the Great Lone Star State every time she opens her mouth. I've met Sholdon - he was at one of my seminars. Good guy, and he's getting traction.

Next up: Al Green, the caveman rep down in Houston who protested President Trump during the SOTU. He's censured now. That's nice, but as Rep. Tim Burchett said:

A censure does nothing. https://t.co/I6iZemhJmz

— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) March 6, 2025

"Oh, but it's not my district. Why should I do that?"

Every Democrat replaced in the US House gives us a greater majority to achieve the MAGA agenda. If you help replace an idiot Democrat with a Trump ally, your donation is insurance money that we will all make America great again in the second half of his second term.

One of my banks is Old Glory Bank. It's where Nicole and I have our 350 Plan money.

I regularly put $100 a month in for me to give to some great candidate later. You know I recommend $25 a month, but you give what you can.

Censure is a step on the road, but it's not the destination. Good candidates are more likely to step forward if they know that an army of patriots have their back. Shrinking government is a good investment for the savings it will bring, so it's worth our money.

Let's be ready to pay for the replacement of the dim bulbs in our House. More light, please.

Defining County Republican Leadership

A leader is never a leader because of their title; a leader is someone people choose to follow.

As I travel the state of Texas, I've been thinking about the role of Republican county chair because it's often the case the people talk to me about their county chair. Some want their chair to fundraise to help candidates. Some want their chair to lead on Republican issues.

I did some digging around. The Texas Republican County Chair Association seemed like a place to start, but it contains a lot of pointers to a guy named David Luther and his personal website. Nothing on the site says anything about being a county chair, but you can get a swell decorative pin if you join something called the 500 Club. Or you can read their extensive by-laws. Nothing about being a county chair... more like a vanity project.

The Secretary of State website has a bit to say. The county chair is mainly an administrative position, with these duties:

• Supervises conduct of primary (172.111)
• Approves primary contracts/joint primary agreements (31.092)
• Determines consolidation of precincts in primary election (42.009)
• Appoints poll watchers in elections with partisan candidates (33.003)
• Nominates to fill vacancies under certain circumstances (202.006)
• Adopts voting system in primary election (123.001)
• Conducts ballot drawing for primary election, if requested to by primary committee (172.082)
• Sets time and place for precinct conventions (174.022)
• Serves on County Election Commission (31.032)
• Serves on County Election Board (51.002)
• Provides list of judges for appointment by commissioners court (32.002)
• Provides list of potential election day clerks for general election for state and county officers (32.034)
• Provides list of early voting workers (85.009)
• Appoints judges for primary election (32.006)
• Appoints poll watchers for elections with party nominee on ballot (Not primary) (33.003)
• Filing authority for candidate applications (172.021)
• Serves as chair of primary committee, if established (172.081)
• Submit names of candidates in SOS candidate filing system (172.029)
• Conducts ballot drawing (172.082)
• Prepares ballots in primary election (52.002)
• Designates polling locations in primary (43.003)
• Procures and allocate supplies in primary, with approval of county exec. committee (51.003)
• Provides list of names for early voting workers in a primary election (85.009)
• Appoints signature verification committee in primary (87.027)
• Certifies names for general election ballot (172.117)

Of course, the chair should hold and run regular CEC meetings, so some familiarity with parliamentary procedure is important. The chair is often the public face of the party to whom the media and local leaders will reach out. The chair is unpaid - it's a volunteer position.

The chair needs to raise enough money to keep the headquarters open and supplied with what's necessary to work elections. Some fundraising capability is critical. In my opinion, this should be enough to stay in the black but most donations should be encouraged to go straight to candidates, who need it to win elections.

What is a leader? Lao Tzu said, "The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'" A leader enables people to achieve their goals. It seems right that a Republican leader should enable Republicans to achieve Republican goals.

Whatever duties there are and whatever meetings are held, a Republican chair must help the people achieve Republican goals, and those goals are defined by the majority of Republicans, not just by those in power.

One of my favorite quotes on motivational leadership is this: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

A leader is never a leader because of their title; a leader is someone people choose to follow. A great leader helps those who follow become capable of more than they would have otherwise.

If you watched President Trump's SOTU speech, he leads. He pushes Republicans to rise to the challenges of the day. He solves problems. He invites you to join him as he does.

What I know is that some of our county chairs have titles, and some are leaders who enable their people to achieve Republican victories.

They Want to Squash You

Business success happens like this: an entrepreneur find some product or service that the public wants, makes it, markets it, and captures a market for the product. Having found the recipe for success, everything the business does from that moment forward works to offer more of the product / service for less money. It pushes for efficiency. This creates distance between the business and any competitor.

But once the business reaches some sort of megalithic status, it then works to prevent nimble startups from usurping its turf. When a startup begins that threatens the space captured by the big corporation, the corp will respond in 1 of 3 ways:

1. Try to replicate the startup methodology, which is hard to do sometimes
2. Buy the startup, which is easy but somewhat costly
3. Leverage government to regulate the startup's existence or momentum

This applies in politics, too. When the newcomer with great ideas and voter momentum arrives on the scene, leadership (big corp) will work to shut down the startup (accelerating politician) by limiting their bills, removing them from committees, preventing their election. Pelosi has done that to AOC. Consider the stolen AG race in Arizona, where there is documented proof of discrepancies that are "eight times the 280-vote margin in the attorney general race."

The only way to defeat that is to start at the top and escape the gravity that tries to pull you down. This is why Elon is inevitably successful. It's very hard to regulate him out of existence. The Biden administration tried to use the EPA to slow down SpaceX. But it didn't work.

They tried to steal the second term of Donald J. Trump, but it very obviously didn't work.

You can think of other examples. The powerful try to squash the ambitions of those weaker than them all of the time. America is amazing because it starts with this premise: all men are created equal. We root for the underdog. We champion the guy who dusts himself off and tries again - or dodges a bullet and stands tall again, saying "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

The Left tried to shut you up and silence you, but we elected someone powerful enough to start at the top, and though the government works to thwart him, we give him continued momentum.

In any battle, the side that loses is the side that quits. I refuse to be squashed. So do you.

That's why we will win. We will live under no one's thumb.

Selling the Drive

Yesterday, I was in Montgomery County doing what is now becoming a weekly event: a training seminar. For three and a half hours, I walked them through grassroots preparation, candidate preparation, campaign preparation, and how to prepare to go against the opposition. (Photo below)

I spend a good amount of time referring to what I call the "land of milk and honey." Candidates, during the life of their campaign, need to pitch two things: why they're running to replace the incumbent (if there is one), and where they want to take the voter, should they be elected.

This doesn't just apply to candidates. It also applies to causes.

Any political ambition that you might have requires numbers. You have to organize to be successful. To organize, you have to attract people to your cause.

The key word there is "attract." It's crazy to me that some forget that. There is one candidate I know who is running for office right now who is bent on insulting everyone they can on their way to the election. Good luck with that...

When the Dodge dealer wants to sell his inventory of cars, he doesn't talk about how horrible Fords are. You've never seen that car commercial. Instead, he talks about how amazing it is to drive a Dodge. He sells the experience. The feeling. He aims to make you fall in love with the vehicle he wants to sell you.

If only candidates and causes would take that approach. You have to sell the experience, the destination. It's what I call the land of milk and honey. You must create in others not just the desire, but the burning desire, to follow you there.

But most candidates don't. They talk instead of how horrible the other person is. They forget that no one buys a Dodge because the buyer has become convinced that Ford is horrible. They buy the Dodge because they like the Dodge.

It's okay to talk about the truthful faults of the opponent. You need to do some of that. President Trump talked at length about Kamala Harris' shortcomings. But he talked more of his land milk and honey, which he labeled MAGA. He created a burning desire in people to follow him there. They did, and he won the election.

But if the majority of what he had done was talk about his opponent's flaws, he would not have won.

There is always a protest vote. As I told the audience yesterday, I could put my left shoe on the ballot against John Cornyn and my left shoe would pull 40% of the vote in a primary - because my left shoe is further to the right than John Cornyn is. But it wouldn't win the election. People vote for the winner, not against the loser.

We also discussed censure.

They asked me to walk through the inarguable approach to censure, which I did with them. They recorded it and planned to use it later in their CEC meeting. But I also warned them of the danger in a censure: no one is attracted to a censure. It's a protest, a valid protest. Protests are fine, but they don't win elections. To win an election, you need a land of milk and honey. Don't substitute censure for the beautiful destination to which you want to lead people. Be ready with the vivid description of that destination.

MAGA is divisive for those who hate a strong America or who just hate President Trump, Vice-President Vance, or Elon Musk. But overall, the message itself and the promise of its destination are attractive. People ignore the bumpy road on the way there because they dream of a life lived there.

To sell the car, you have to sell the drive. Otherwise, buyers might be in short supply.

Clearing the Barrel

Imagine that you have a 55-gallon barrel that's been sitting outside for years. People have walked by it. Rain has filled it up so that it's always full of water. To stare at it, it's just a barrel of water.

One day, you stick a garden hose into it and turn the water on full blast.

Over the years, people have dropped garbage into the barrel, but the garbage settled into the bottom. Dirt and debris lie still, deep below the surface of the water. Looking into the top of the water, you've never really seen the crud at the bottom. But now with the hose turned on, all of that is stirred up. Garbage, slimy crud, and other ugliness now floats at the top of what once appeared as undisturbed water.

It's gross.

President Donald J. Trump and his people are that hose in the barrel of our federal government. Together, they're stirring up the nastiest slime for all to see.

The fresh water that now flows into the barrel is purifying what's in the barrel, but it's a process. It's not clean all at once. You realize, as you watch the garbage spill out over the top edge of the barrel and onto the ground around it, that it will take some time to push the debris out and replace it with clean water.

The truth is that the water was never clean; we just never saw how dirty it really was. Now, we do. It's not Trump's fault. His people didn't dirty the water. It was nasty and unclean before he shoved a hose into it. But by shoving a hose into it, it's now obvious how unclean it was.

We're surprised at how dirty and nasty our government has become. The lawless have figured out how to have reign over the lawful for a long time. They used the system to acquire power and do their dirty deeds in secret. But the those deeds are coming to light, and they're fighting with all they have to prevent that from happening.

They're trying to push the hose out of the barrel.

I tell everyone in my seminar that there is no "polite" in politics. The two share a similar root word but have nothing in common. The joke that politics actually comes from "poly," meaning many, and "ticks," which are blood-sucking creatures makes people laugh for the truth of it. Our government is replete with parasites.

It takes time to heal an infested body. It takes time to clean a cruddy barrel by inserting clean water into it.

It takes patience. And persistence.

The truth is that the barrel will never be fully clean and clear. For the size of the federal government, some rogue elements will remain. We need to embrace and support this effort to push out the nasty grime. It will be nasty and grimy. It won't be polite or gentlemanly. It will be a brawl.

That's the fight. 250 years ago people died in their fight. In this fight, death isn't required. Just a strong stomach and the will to continue.

Removal Isn't So Easy, But Replacement Might Be Possible

As we watch these federal judges ignore the Constitution where it says in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1:

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."

It's called the "vested clause." President Trump has every right to manage the executive branch of the federal government as he sees fit. Judges don't have the authority to overrule him.

So, we have members of Congress now who want to remove these judges by impeachment. That's all great and fine, but removal from office requires a super-majority in the Senate, as Article 1 Section 3 tells us:

"...no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present."

Any impeachment of these federal judges will be along part lines, I guarantee - and we don't have two-thirds in the Senate. These judges might be impeached, but not convicted and therefore not removed.

Which leaves it to the supreme court, and it isn't moving at all on these issues yet.

Which way will Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett go? Will two join the Constitution-ignoring liberals?

We get the government we allow. Here is the list of who is up for re-election in the Senate in 2026:

Democrats
Booker, Cory A. (D-NJ)
Coons, Christopher A. (D-DE)
Durbin, Richard J. (D-IL)
Hickenlooper, John W. (D-CO)
Lujan, Ben Ray (D-NM)
Markey, Edward J. (D-MA)
Merkley, Jeff (D-OR)
Ossoff, Jon (D-GA)
Peters, Gary C. (D-MI)
Reed, Jack (D-RI)
Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH)
Smith, Tina (D-MN)
Warner, Mark R. (D-VA)

Republicans
Capito, Shelley Moore (R-WV)
Cassidy, Bill (R-LA)
Collins, Susan M. (R-ME)
Cornyn, John (R-TX)
Cotton, Tom (R-AR)
Daines, Steve (R-MT)
Ernst, Joni (R-IA)
Graham, Lindsey (R-SC)
Hagerty, Bill (R-TN)
Hyde-Smith, Cindy (R-MS)
Lummis, Cynthia M. (R-WY)
Marshall, Roger (R-KS)
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) (retirement announced)
Mullin, Markwayne (R-OK)
Ricketts, Pete (R-NE)
Risch, James E. (R-ID)
Rounds, Mike (R-SD)
Sullivan, Dan (R-AK)
Tillis, Thom (R-NC)
Tuberville, Tommy (R-AL)

Can we achieve a two-thirds majority? Possibly, but only if we replace every Democrat.

I like a good goal, don't you? Why not aim for the moon?

In a United States where there is no tax on tips, seniors have tax-free social security, an improved economy, and true border security nationwide, we can likely achieve more than we expect we could. The Democrats have no message and lose ground daily while fighting to continue waste, fraud, and abuse at your expense.

Let's go all in.

What Do You Expect?

Managing expectations is a skillful art. Too often, we get out over our skis.

"Newly sworn-in FBI director Kash Patel is weighing releasing the complete Jefferey Epstein flight logs, after promising to do so if confirmed by the Senate to the position."

The crazy thing about this new government accountability stuff... if you say you're going to do something, then people actually expect you're going to do it.

We've all wondered for some time who was on Epstein's flight logs. Bill Gates? Bill Clinton? Tom Hanks? Ellen DeGeneres? Rumor, gossip, innuendo... but more, we want to know because we want those who harmed children and got away with it to not get away with it. Jail - actual jail. For those who never get jailed...

X was abuzz with why the delay when this was promised on Day One. Who are they protecting? Are they scrubbing the list? Have we been conned again? These are all valid questions being thrown around.

Or how about this...

President Trump said he could end the Russia-Ukraine conflict in a day. That turns out not to be true, but perhaps this week, a month later.

In Texas, we were told no Democrat chairs. Full-speed conservatism from Burrows. But that's not at all true.

We the People are cynical. We're accustomed to being let down. That has become our expectation. In effect, we're told to expect steak and we're served a hot dog instead. It happens all of the time.

When I work with candidates, I work to ensure that they are careful with their words. It's easy to tell someone something in an unguarded moment while we're operating on auto pilot, or when we want to see their eyes light up with delight at setting their expectation to something they crave... but it's dangerous to do so.

"But you told us you would..." and then even if we deliver, the delivery comes with a caveat and is met with disappointment.

I expect that the Epstein list will be released. I expect that our President will resolve the conflict. I believe in him and his team, but I also know that right now, Susie Wiles (Trump's Chief of Staff) needs to get a handle on how the team releases information and promises. That would prevent conflicts like these:

On Feb 11 & Feb 19, house oversight sent a letter to the DOJ asking for status on releasing the Epstein files as well as JFK etc.

The DOJ has not responded.

Reaching out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG.@AGPamBondi what is the status of the…

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) February 25, 2025

Long ago in the business world, a colleague taught me the Scotty Principle - as in Scotty, from Star Trek.

Kirk: Scotty, how long until we repair those engines?
Scotty: Captain, it'll be 48 hours.
Kirk: I need them now!

And then a few minutes later, Scotty pulled a miracle and the engines were fixed.

Under-promise, over-deliver is always a good idea, in theory. But it's hard to pull it off when you're trying to do the impossible or what's never been done before.

Complicating all of this is the fact that Americans are an impatient lot. We want our Epstein files and we want them now! Justice! Jail them all!

Tension built requires release. And if not release, then management. Otherwise, tension can break things.

Politics comes with a lot of tension, and social media only ratchets up the tension with anger and rumor.

Politics lately comes with a lot of new expectation of results.

The only answer to it all is really great communication, and few Republicans have any skill with that at all.

The Tea Party's Last Laugh

On April 15, 2009, I was one of four organizers of the inaugural Tea Party in Des Moines, Iowa. Charlie, Doug, Rochelle, and I began our work prior to that, along with hundreds of other organizers across the country, to protest a socialist government that had been installed in these United States.

In February of 2009, Newsweek had its cover of a red hand shaking a blue hand, headlining We are All Socialists Now, and it infuriated me. That's not what America is. Socialism leads to poverty. My children would inherit an America that was worse off than what I inherited from my parents. I was angry, and I was resolved to fight it.

4 years earlier, I was a vocal and written supporter of the Pork Busters movement, an effort to get rid of pork barrel spending, as it was known. Government debt leads to taxation. If you want less taxation, then you spend less, which also reduces the risk of inflation. I'd helped with Republican campaigns using my IT skills at first, and then with my marketing skills. It's been a fight for me spanning two decades, correcting this wayward government.

So, on that day in April 2009, we met. 3,500 Iowans on the capitol lawn before the gold dome itself. If you click the image, you'll see it larger. It's a collage of six images as I stood on the capitol steps that day.

I was the anchor speaker, and as I tussled with the Iowa Republican Senators who tried to hijack our day, and watched the media and other politicians mill about curiously as to what this was, I knew that our signs of protest weren't going to change much. I knew it was going to be a prolonged fight. I said as much in my brief speech that day, discussing "What's Next" to the crowd assembled.

And then we took our picture in front of the Declaration of Independence sign we'd created for the event and where over 2,500 people had scrawled their John Hancock. We were excited.

Afterward, the mostly losses and occasional wins piled up. Obamacare is still with us. Debt is higher than ever. We got one term of President Trump, only to have the deep state tackle him and steal his second-term election from him and us.

During the time of Joe Biden, people were jailed for their political beliefs. I personally know some visited by the FBI. Social media went from being social media to being censured media.

But when in battle, the loser is the one who quits first. We didn't quit. We persisted. President Trump was soundly re-elected and we're winning.

Yesterday, a good friend of mine texted me in the evening.

"CUTESY TIME IS OVER."

What? I replied...

In short order, I learned that Dan Bongino is now the deputy director of the FBI.

The Tea Party is about to have the last laugh. America is on a path toward restoration. We're getting rid of pork, and fraud, and waste, and abuse. The fight will continue and it will be rocky, but yes - elections work and when we persist, we can win.

We organize, or we die. Our momentum builds and we organize more and more each day.

This fight has been worth all these years because my family - my children and grandchildren - are worth it and I pray that before I die, I will hand them a stronger America than what I inherited. I owe them that, and that's why I have fought and why I continue to fight.

Let's go.