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I say throw 'em all out and get some normal people in there that have some common sense.
Thanks for the ping. This is good news. Now we have to convince a few of our Republican legislators that right-to-work should be passed and that they should forget about eliminating the electoral college. I can’t believe we have Republicans that think the President should be determined by the overall popular vote.
I don't know much about Martin but I was impressed with his appearance in my county during the last campaign. That's not an endorsement beyond saying that he's an excellent speaker who says good things.
I do need to say something about how good his speech was. From a social issues perspective, he was so fiery and used traditional evangelical terminology so well that I was surprised to find out that he's Roman Catholic. That's not in any way a criticism of his Catholicism — on the issues like abortion and cultural decay on which he was speaking, Roman Catholics and evangelicals are in full agreement. What it says is that Martin clearly knows how to appeal to an audience which is similar but not identical to himself. A lot of evangelicals would struggle to give an effective pro-life speech to a predominantly Roman Catholic audience, but Martin did so well at connecting with his audience that he could have been mistaken for a part-time Baptist preacher.
On a broader issue, I'm surprised to see the stance of the Missouri congressional delegation, and even more surprised to see them lose in their efforts to keep Martin out. Taking a virtually unanimous position like that, and then losing, is not a good indicator that the congressional delegation is in touch with grassroots party activists.
Something clearly went wrong here with a disconnect between the Missouri congressional delegation and the party activists who elect the state chairman. People with far better inside knowledge than me will need to explain that. I simply don't have an explanation, unless perhaps it is that Martin is such an effective speaker in public and persuader in private that he won people over due to his communication competence. If so, that's a good thing.