Reply #19: But we will have to put up candidates, and soon.

[leyton]

2006 is not that far away, and then it's off to Iowa and New Hampshire. If we wait around too long to develop our message and our plans, then we risk losing our opportunity to do so at all. I would love for us to be able to wait until August and September of 2008 before coming out with our plan for governing this country, but by then our candidate will be under such heavy fire in the form of character assassinations that he or she will not have as much opportunity to articulate that plan as he or she would like. I'll bet John Kerry wasn't planning on fighting back the Swift Boaters in August, I'll bet he was planning on pushing his message. But because the Democratic party didn't have a firm and consistent message from the beginning of 2004, people ended up not knowing what sort of President Kerry would be. And we lost.

And I am not so sure that they are going to self-destruct. If the Republican party falls apart in the next four years, I will eat these words and throw a party. But so far I think it's in a lot better shape than the Democrats, and they've shown that they can be a lot more disciplined.