A conservative at the victory party

Justin from Anchor Rising was part of the media/blog crew at the Biltmore last night, and he seemed resigned to an Obama victory even when very little of the results were in. It was a bad night for local Republicans, as I forecast last week, and Justin's analysis is spot-on.

It's time to admit that the RI GOP's brand is not only useless, it's poison. The one state-level victory (knocking out Montalbano) came from an Independent, and the two towns of which which I'm aware that moved in the right direction (Tiverton and East Providence) have non-partisan elections. Consequently, the Republican Party must be deliberate in seeing itself as a grassroots organization.

That means a sabbatical from networking and message development. The party should gather all of the reform and right-of-center players in the state in a room and hammer out a platform, issue by issue, prioritized at the state level and emphasizing fiscal conservatism.

It also means recruitment and town-by-town growth. Internally and with all potential candidates, the strong preference should be candidates willing to run at the municipal level, and that's where most of its resources should go. The RI GOP's situation is so bad that party leaders should seriously consider running their candidates as endorsed independents.