Why we cannot have nice things.

Brian beat me in the race to post something about the Letter to the Editor written in today’s Baltimore Sun by the chairman of the Republican National Committee Reince Preibus.  As Brian noted, the Maryland Republican Party had no idea this was being submitted before the RNC chair decided to comment on Maryland’s Governor’s race.  Worse yet, our chairman and executive director did not know about the piece until we in the new media, specifically our friend Jackie Wellfonder, mentioned it in our regular new media conference calls.

I knew our state party leadership would be blindsided by this and said as much.

@BrianGriffiths I don’t get your deference. We will probably be the ones to break it the MDGOP that @reince is big timing them? Pathetic.
— GregoryKline (@GregoryKline) October 30, 2013

And while I agree with Brian, and the senior staff of our state party, that letting the Attorney General twist in the wind with no help from us is a fine strategy, that misses the significance of what Reince Preibus did.

Trending: Thank You

This seemingly passing incident is a revelation about what is really wrong with our state party. I mean, why would the Chairman of the RNC just wade into a race in another state without even the courtesy of a heads up to the state’s GOP leadership?

Why?  Here is the hard truth.

@BrianGriffiths I guess the RNC doesn’t take our state party chairman seriously.
— GregoryKline (@GregoryKline) October 30, 2013

And in fairness, it is not just our Chairman but the entire leadership of our state party.  Can you imagine a RNC chair doing this to Michael Steele, John Kane or even Alex Mooney? Neither can I.

Our state party leadership has taken such a low media profile, is so overwhelmed by their own problems and so seemingly invisible to most Republicans around the state, that Reince Preibus probably thought he was doing us a favor by kicking a statewide democratic candidate while he was down.

It is not bad enough that we have Maryland Republican leaders raising money for other states while our candidates in this year’s elections are largely ignored, now the RNC chair just has to emphasize how invisible our state party organization is?

The reality is that if you go to mdgop.org. our state party’s website, you would not even know Doug Gansler was running.  That is the problem.  Maryland Republicans, outside of the most ardent activists and central committee members, have no idea what our party is doing or what positions we are taking.

Our state party leaders do practically no media of their own.  No talk radio. No regular op-eds.

As just a candidate for state party chair I could pick up a phone and get an hour on WBAL.  C4 offered previous chairs a weekly segment, which they refused.  Other outlets would love to hear regularly from our state party about what is going on but it seems no effort is made to take advantage of the few free media opportunities our state party has.

If it was not the case, if we had a real coordinated media presence as a party, maybe Reince Preibus knows it is a strategic blunder to do the O’Malley machine’s bidding by piling on Gansler and that Letter to the Editor opportunity could have been used to talk about why Gansler is really being attacked.

Enough is enough.  Something has to change.



Send this to a friend