>By Chairman Chris Healy

It is time for all Republican leaders, from Hartford to Sacramento, but especially Washington, D.C., to zip their lips, pull up their socks, grab your baseball bats and get back on the field of battle.

As a Northeastern Republican with solid conservative credentials, I believe the basic tenets of our party will resonate with the voters of this country. The problem is our own people in Congress and their hired hands on K Street, have not lived up to them over the past four years and learned nothing from 2006. Many are friends of mine, but we locals need to intervene here and offer political quinine to Potomac fever.

We all get the joke out here on Main Street. For too long, Republicans in power have become accustomed to power and its trappings, its pork and living in a dream world where they think everyone agrees with them. The public and our base Republicans have grown angry and weary of this fact. Congress spent too much, grew the government to its greatest size ever and failed to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden.

The public expects Republicans to cut taxes and to win wars. We are the “grown up’s party” for a reason. President Bush has not sold the war or the positive impact of his tax cuts on a daily basis and paid for it in the polls.

While Republicans agree with the surge and know the stakes for leaving, the voices against our policy are winning the public debate. The good news is the public is somewhat split on the options and they give Sen. McCain high marks for his positions on making sure we get the job done.

But, politics is an amorphous state of affairs and the party that is always breaking new ground and offering new ideas keeps its head above water.

Republicans used to be about that – welfare reform, entitlement reform school choice, NAFTA, you name it, we were the party that drove the agenda, saved Bill Clinton from himself and backed the Bush tax cuts that created seven years of growth.

Newt Gingrich is right – we are not offering hope and not being bold. We need to stop cowering in the corner and hiding under the kitchen table. We are going to win this Presidential campaign with John McCain as our nominee and we better start getting used to fact that Sen. McCain is the best possible candidate we can have at this moment in time.

First, McCain has been on the right side of the issues of spending reform and an end to the pork that Republicans have grown accustomed to. He is against the current Farm Bill, which is a sop to agribusiness that don’t need more subsidies while adding more in long-term spending. His position on keeping our nation safe is without peer and McCain and Gingrich know we must educate the public of the growing danger of nuclear terrorism against a major city.

Voters hold their Presidential vote closely. They don’t give it away. Barack Obama will be exposed as a left-wing, lightweight poser in time. McCain embodies what we want in a leader, tough, experienced, not afraid to break some China, but able to work with others to get things done. McCain has worked with people he doesn’t agree with, something Obama has never accomplished – much to the consternation of some conservative purists. It’s time for them “to grow up,” as Barry Goldwater said once, and put their shoulders to wheel for John McCain.

As for Congress, stand up and be counted. Stop using Washington-speak. Start talking to local reporters and stop playing into the NY-DC media maze. Lose the professional talking heads we send to MSNBC and CNN and put state chairmen and local party officials on national TV to explain how the Democrats are ruining our economy and how it affects us at the local level. Localize each Congressional election on what Obama and a Democratic Congress will mean to every taxpayers in dollars and cents.

Stop voting for stupid spending bills like the Farm Bill. When a mega-liberal like Rosa DeLauro calls passage of the Farm Bill, “sweet” every Republican who voted for that legislation should be ashamed of themselves.

Start voting as a team and keep tying the Democrats up. The Democrats will eventually turn on each other. And get out of Washington now and start meeting with voters and explaining what the Republican Party is and will be – like we are the only party that will kill the bad guys overseas that can wipe out a city with a briefcase; we are the only party that will allow children to be educated based on what parent and teachers want, not bureaucrats and that we are the only party that will not let the government take more of your salary or your pension.

But most importantly, talk to people like you need them rather than they need you. Tell them what Republicans are going to do to offer hope on the economy and confidence on security. Make it real and appeal to the American trait of what can be done, not what can’t be.

Take no quarter. Admit we lost our way, but that we got the message and have a plan and the alternative would be devastating for national security and economic prosperity.

Fight, or die.