Reply #13: Other: Republican Party was almost dead.

[ieoeja]

It's the early 70s and Democrats have ruled the House for forty years. There's a Republican in the White House. But between founding the EPA, openly embracing Keynesian economic policies and mocking the John Birch society while launching Detente putting an end to the decades long seige of the Soviet Union, Nixon is one of the most liberal Republicans around. Then that same president caps it all off with Watergate. Conservative had become synonymous with bigotry and incompetence.

It is no wonder prominent conservatives like William F. Buckley were calling for an end to the Republican Party so a new conservative party could emerge in its place.

The haves were desperate. So they retrenched, invented "think-tanks", established grants for conservatives willing to enter journalism, etc.

The Democratic Party is nowhere near that level of desperation even now. We're down what: 3 Senate seats and 15 House seats? Under these circumstances, McAuliffe and the beltway boys were quite willing to continue sitting on their hands. Unfortunately for them an upswelling of grassroot activism pushed them out of the way. And so our retrenching has just now begun.

This is why the RNC has full time offices in all 50 states while the DNC just opened their first 4 state offices this year.