Question #2:  The NC GOP is supposed to be the Party of "traditional values," one of which is simple honesty. However, a former NC GOP Chairman is in prison, and the NC Republican Party currently hires professional fundraisers to raise money from our Party's members by lying. Like many of you, I personally received a fundraising phone call for the NC GOP in which I was told that my membership in the NC Republican Party was up for annual renewal, and that the renewal would cost me $65. That is all blatant lies: NC GOP membership does not expire, and does not cost money.

Democrats lie incessantly. We are supposed to be different!

It is my strongly held opinion that no need, no matter how dire, is worth compromising our integrity. Consequently, I ask you to pledge that, for as long as you are chairman, it will be the unalterable policy of the North Carolina Republican Party that the Party shall never make, nor allow to be made in its good name, any letter, call, press release, or other statement, whether for fundraising or other purpose, which is intentionally or knowingly untrue, or deliberately misleading. For example, no fundraising letter or call shall misrepresent a plea for a donations as being a fee for membership in the North Carolina Republican Party, nor misrepresent the past contribution history of a potential donor.

Will you make that pledge?

Question #3:  The Republican Party is America's "conservative" party. We are the Party of limited government, the Party of robust capitalism, the Party of strict & honest Constitutional interpretation, the Party of individual liberty, and the Party of strong national defense.

But, most of all, we are the party of traditional ethical and moral values. In fact, the Republican Party was founded as a "social issue" party, created by Christian "radicals" in a moral crusade, to fight the gravest social injustice of that age: slavery. (The Democratic Party is the ancestral home of Jim Crow and the KKK.)

The 1828 Webster's defined "politics" as "...that part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a nation or state, for the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; comprehending the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals..." Likewise, Lord Acton famously wrote, "Liberty is not the freedom to do what you wish; it is the freedom to do what you ought."

Today, the NC GOP is still the Party of social justice, with a platform that calls on our political leaders to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, and which strongly proclaims our belief in equality under the law for all Americans.

Question #4:  The NC GOP Executive Committee, though officially in charge of the Party, is terribly dysfunctional. Some of the reasons are intractable; e.g., its huge size (nearly 600 members), and the great distance that some of its members must travel to meetings. Also, it meets only 2-4 times per year, and the meetings too often are curtailed by lack or loss of quorum, or (twice in recent memory) because the meeting room was reserved for insufficient time.

But one of the reasons for the State Executive Committee's dysfunctionality can be easily remedied. The problem is that Executive Committee members currently have no way to communicate among one another, outside of the infrequent meetings. The State Party maintains a list of Executive Committee members' contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers, but does not permit members of the Executive Committee to see or use those email addresses or phone numbers.

Question #5:  (This is related to Question #4.) There is a widespread feeling of irrelevance among State Executive Committee members. That's one of the reasons we have trouble meeting a 25% quorum requirement. The Executive Committee is supposed to be in charge of making policy for the Party (within the confines of the Plan of Organization and Platform), but almost never does.

This is a comment that I received from a longtime Executive Committee member:

"Here is something that bothers me about our exec. comm. meetings. They are so structured and so dull and take up so much time with the 5 star report, etc. that I often feel I leave that place with nothing of importance being discussed. ... I know in the past that the leadership really did not want to hear much from the members. Discussion was discouraged at meetings. Debate and new ideas were stifled. It is a little bit like the Democrats in the legislature... I don't ever feel like I have been involved in the actual running of the party as an Executive Committee member."

So the question is, are you satisfied with the current functioning of the NC GOP State Executive Committee, and, if not, what do you think should be done to improve it? Some ideas I've heard (in addition to the email listserver of Question #4) are:

Question #6:  A frequently heard complaint within the GOP is that it is hard to tell the difference between many of our Republican candidates and officeholders and the Democrats. To put it bluntly, we have a "RINO problem."

The question is, what, if anything, can the State Party and Chairman do about it? Picking our nominees is the job of primary voters, not Party leaders (except when a nominee quits or dies before the general election). The party leadership should stay neutral in primaries except in the most extraordinary circumstances (e.g., a David Duke nutcase, or a Richard Morgan traitor to the Party).

When the primary is over there needs to be a neutral broker of Party resources who can pull the opposing sides back together, to go on to defeat the Democrats. That's the job of the Party Chairman, but it is only possible if he has been uninvolved in the primary.

So what can be done about our RINO problem? One delegate had an idea. He wrote (this is paraphrased), "The question I would like to ask the candidates for Chairman concerns our primary process. In NC, unaffiliated voters can vote in the Republican primary! Why? Our arms are open, so join our Party if you want to vote in our primaries. Unaffiliated voters should have no right to vote in our primaries. Would you support restricting our primaries to registered Republicans?"

I'm not sure what to think of this idea. What do you think of it?