Defeated Republican incumbents are calling for disbanding the National Republican Campaign Committee, Republican National Committeee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in a loosely organized press conference today.
"We need to get the government off our backs!" says Richard Pombo (R-CA). "The RNC and NRCC taxed my campaign funds and I wasn't able to run effectively. Republicans will do a lot better without our own internal party government on our backs."
Citing ineffective and "terrible" governance of these organizations, particularly Rep Tom Reynolds (R-NY) whose mismangement of the NRCC almost cost him his own seat and Ken Mehlman of the RNC. Attendees did have some faint praise for Senator Elizabeth Dole of the NRSC, for her anemic fundraising. "I suspect she gets it, which is why she did so little funding for this quasi-liberal organization within the Republican party," said defeated Senator Rick Santorum. "We need more Liddy Doles and less tax-and-spend Republicans."
Jean Schmitt (R-OH) facing a possible recount loss agreed. "What good is it to pull our funding away to some inefficient centralized group like the NRCC? I can make outrageous dishonest attack ads and run dirty robocall voter suppression tactics far more efficiently. I don't need some centralized body trying to intimidate minority voters for me, like some nanny state."
An RNC spokesman countered by saying:
"NRCC and RNC dues are totally different from taxes. Sure, we obligate our members to pay from their campaign funds at a percentage of their intake, but taxes are just wrong and bad, because they pay for roads and schools, roads Democrats can drive on to vote against us and schools where they learn facts which make our policies look bad - our dues pay for more Republicans to lower taxes and close schools, so they're good! Besides, it's not like we're asking them to part with money they earned honestly, we are talking about campaign contributions made to Republicans after all...let's be real here."
The NRCC did not return calls but faxed a statement (signed in what appears to be blood) saying:
We understand that for Republicans to have these centralized bodies that effectively tax their members to form a centralized pool of money which is then used to concentrate efforts and assist less well funded Republican challengers might seem like a contradiction with our governing philosophy which calls for screwing the poor and drowning government in a bathtub, but...well we're not sure where we're going with this. Hey look, Bill Clinton got a blow-job, so all Republican hypocrisy is ok forever!
Defeated Senator Mike Dewine (R-OH) was visibly taken aback when a reporter read the NRCC statement to him. "Well, that is a good point. I mean, we always say government doesn't work, and then we hypocritically use classic big-government approaches including welfare for our poorer candidates, which is obviously a contradiction to our primary philosophy of social Darwinism...but on the other hand, Bill Clinton did get a blow-job in the Oval Office and John Kerry did flub a joke. Maybe I'll have to rethink this whole 'philosophical integrity' thing."
The press conference broke down very quickly after that as the loose collection of disgruntled Republicans could not agree who was leading their coalition, or even that it was a coalition as some argued any formalized structure would be tantamount to endorsing a philosophy of big-government, which they blamed for their election losses. Others noted that they would never succeed in their fight against the RNC and other formal Republican committees without a formalized structure. They did agree to elect a new RNC chair whose primary mission would be to destroy the RNC.
"Oh yeah, that's probably an effective way forward," commented Grover Norquist, recently defeated in a run for Lt-Governor. "It won't be easy, we'll have to starve the beast. The new RNC chair should run up a tremendous deficit, until the crippling debt curtails any RNC action and convinces a majority in the Republican party to disband it. Hopefully the 2008 Republican National Convention will be the last. Let the little Republicans stand on their own, it's clearly what our philisophical roots call for, and failing to adhere to it has cost us the election."