Fortune magazine has a great piece on Sen. McCain’s Healthcare plan.  It is important that as a party we take the hint from public opinion polls: Americans want a plan to solve the healthcare crisis!  We have an excellent opportunity here to define the context of real solutions: are we going to have free market healthcare, where doctors and patients make decisions? or are we going to bow to D.C. beauracrats.  We need to be talking about this, and we need to be loud.

Facebook now allows you to use Republican Party as a political designation for your profile.  Show you colors today!

I’m here at the Minnesota College Republican convention in Minneapolis, MN.  We are into day two of the convention.  Last night they began the event with a welcome dinner which included speeches by their State Party Chairman, the Minority leaders of both their state house and state senate and several candidates for U.S. Congress. This morning they’ve been addressed by several more speakers, and are getting ready now to elect new state wide leadership for the organization. 

With the STORM network readying to launch, we are extremely excited to launch a new and powerful SMS recruitment system nationwide. Now signing up for your local CR chapter isn’t tied to a recruitment table or event, every CR across the country is empowered to sign up their friends and peers with nothing more then a smile and a cell phone.

If you have someone who wants to get signed up for College Republicans is as easy as texting CRNC Full Name Email (school email preferred)  and Zip to 30364

Chapters across the country have a great opportunity to find some new faces in new places (pardon the rhyme). Email this code out to your members and ask them to invite one student from a class they have to sign up using their cell phone.Then, on Feb 4th when Storm launches you’ll have a head start with some new, excited activists on campus.

Hits the high-notes, check it out.

I’m in Chicago today, at the Hilton Towers, attending the ICRF convention. So far its been a fantastic event, good attendance, a great panel this morning, and a lot of interesting speakers this afternoon.

I just finished up my spiel, and despite some technical difficulty early on I think it was largely well received. Questions centered on the STORM network, and hopefully we’ll get some of these kids applying to be field reps in the fall. They have some great activists out here, its an exciting time to be an IL CR.

Update -

Elections have just wrapped up.  Congratulations are due to Meagan Szydloski, who led her slate to a unanimous victory.

The assembled delegates have new moved on to assembling their plan if action for the year ahead.

CR Nation has a good post, mentioned below by Ethan, on recruitment on campus.

It’s worth the read, and I’d like to add a few little tips and reminders just to keep the conversation going and maybe add a little spark to your recruiting efforts on campus.

1) Spring recruitment is often something that is discounted in importance by many chapters because the fall recruiting wave was either so successful that we choose to ride the wave through until the next year, or so uh…bad…that we give up and assume things won’t be different in the spring. It’s vitally important that we don’t make this mistake for a few reasons. First, there are many new students that show up in the spring after transferring schools that would not otherwise know about your organization if you didn’t tell them. Two, as is the case right now, campuses come alive as we approach campaign season and now is an excellent chance to capture the people who catch the political fever first. Lastly, we’re going to need as many people as possible in the fall and we do not have the luxury of waiting all summer long to begin building our ranks in the fall - we need them plugged in now!

2) No matter the season, we have to show some energy and enthusiasm while recruiting. Sitting behind the table, or recruiting via hopeful gazes doesn’t do much to build our chapters. Get up, move around, have some music playing, throw some things (preferably not very hard), and get some attention! Go get people and bring them to the table, or have two people walking around together with a clip board while two others are at the table. Don’t be afraid to joke around and have a good time. Remember: college students want to have fun, even while practicing politics.

3) On the CR Nation list, they list some things to have at the table. Those are all good ideas, but I would like to emphasize the flier for your next meeting. Some new members might not get entered into your email list right away, or are simply forgetful, and this is a great way to leave them with a little reminder about the meeting coming up tomorrow. Make sure to have a funny slogan, all the details, and a reason to come (pizza is a good start).

4) Recruit at events! When people are streaming in to see your speaker, are sitting in the rows before the movie, or are leaving the BBQ you had setup - grab their info!

5) Recruit often! One table a semester doesn’t get everyone. Move the table around for the next time your recruit, and have one up at least once a month but try to get as close to once a week as possible.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for right now…

If you have suggestions about tips to include email them on over csmith AT crnc.org

In a shocking (although sadly not so) article in Sunday’s New York Times, two reporters, Deborah Sontag and Lizatte Alvarez, launched into typical talking points about bloodthirsty soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as maniacal killers.

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The NYT patched together 121 of these stories to paint the picture of rabid young men returning to America as crazed murderers - following the leftist portrait of American soldiers who are either psychopaths to begin with or are made so by the military.

The problem here is that 121 veteran-murderers, although sad, is a tremendously small amount as Ralph Peters explains in a counter-article in the NY Post:

Had the Times’ “journalists” and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would’ve found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.
The Times’ public editor, Clark Hoyt, should crunch the numbers. I’m even willing to spot the Times a few percentage points (either way). But the hard statistics from the Justice Department tell a far different tale from the Times’ anti-military propaganda.
A very conservative estimate of how many different service members have passed through Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since 2003 is 350,000 (and no, that’s not double-counting those with repeated tours of duty).
Now consider the Justice Department’s numbers for murders committed by all Americans aged 18 to 34 - the key group for our men and women in uniform. To match the homicide rate of their peers, our troops would’ve had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007.
In other words, the Times unwittingly makes the case that military service reduces the likelihood of a young man or woman committing a murder by 80 percent.

I don’t know whether to assume the reporters are simply bad at their jobs because they are lazy and incompetent, or because they ignore basic journalistic standards and impose their leftist propaganda upon their audience, but either way they owe our veterans a very serious apology.

Please tell the NYT editors how you feel by here!

Well, we’re finally here - only moments from the Big Show in my home state (and what a great state it is by the way!) of Iowa.

For Christmas, I had the opportunity to spend a few precious days in Iowa and beyond it being a nice chance to relax with some family and friends, it was an incredible political experience. For outsiders to understand the intensity with which Iowa voters pay attention to the caucuses would be an impossibility. Iowans cherish their role in the election process, appreciate its importance, and approach voting for their candidates with an amazing amount of respect for the import of their decision. Iowans have a deep sense of responsiblity, and make their decisions grudgingly and never without a thorough examination of every candidate and every position.

At the same time the sheer volume of campaign activity was enough to take you back. Staying at my parents home in extremely-suburban Des Moines, we were inundated with mail, phone calls, and commercials on a near constant basis. By my count, not a single commercial break went by without a political ad, and there were many times when the only commercials running were from the candidates or their surrogate support organizations. Amazing in itself, it was doubly so because it was in the run-up to the Christmas shopping season - a time where the airwaves are normally dominated by Tickle-Me Elmo, not Chris Dodd.

Tonight, in but a few minutes actually, Iowans will kick off the most amazing political process on the globe - the selection of an American president. May they make wise decisions, for the whole world may depend on it.

If you have a regularly updated official CR Federation or Chapter blog, we’ll include your link on our site if you email it to csmith *at* crnc dot org (sorry, but I hate SPAM as much as the next guy).