Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, thank you for being here and for considering me for the position of Chair of the MNGOP.  I promise I will be brief and I will be blunt.  I will be brief because I know that most of you believe you have better things to do than to be here and I will be blunt because I have no time for, nor intention of, giving you anything but the hard truth.  You should know that I'm only taking this thankless job because nobody else wants it, and that anybody that DID want it would thereby admit to a glaring mental disorder that ought to disqualify them.

I can promise to do my best, but that is pretty meaningless because I truly believe that all of the chairs of recent memory have done their best and it has rarely been good enough to achieve electoral victory. Which, by the way and for those paying attention, is the absolute necessity for advancing our conservative principles.  There is no good to winning on principle but losing the election.

 

I'm not going to make any general promises, either, because we all know by now what we have to do – streamline party management, improve our messaging, engage in outreach, execute the basics of campaigns, pull all of our factions together and raise gobs of money to do all those things.  Something has kept us from accomplishing them in years past, and I doubt just having a new Chair is going to change that.  It isn't the WHAT that you need to hear, it is the HOW, and I can't promise you those specifics because I have only the vaguest ideas of what they might be. 

Even if I did know specifically what to do, I am mindful that even the best captain cannot sail into a strong headwind single-handedly.  But instead of working together to save the ship, we have the whole crew squabbling amongst themselves to decide who gets to take over the ship next.  In other words, getting elected to lead does not guarantee that others will elect to follow and, in some quarters, such internal squabbling NEVER yields to common cause.  I can only say that I will work with ANYBODY that has a good plan on how to defeat Democrats and their crazy ideas, so long as you are willing to work with everybody else who wants the same thing.  I believe the worst Republican is better than the best Democrat and you need to believe it, too.  Then we’re all on the same side, and only then do we have a chance. 

So, vote for me or don’t.  If all you are going to do is vote and go home, it isn’t going to matter much because we’re going to continue to be ruled by dizzy Democrats, and the only promise I will make to you is that I don’t want that.  The rest is still in your hands.