After the conclusion of 2006’s nail-biter election between then-Congressman Rob Simmons and now-Congressman Joe Courtney, campaign manager Chris Healy and I sat down one day and talked about the status of the Republican Party in Connecticut.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist, thankfully, to figure out what was wrong.

At the national level, the movement that had started as a Republican Revolution in 1994 was taken out back behind the woodshed and shot in 2006.  Here in Connecticut, the confluence of the War in Iraq with the corruption of Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, and John Rowland had repelled voters from the GOP camp. 

We had heard it on the telephone calls we made during the campaign.  How many times did people say, “Gosh, well I really like Rob Simmons, but I can’t pull the lever for him this year.  I hate the war.  I can’t stand the President.  I’m sorry for Rob but it has to come out of someone’s hide…”?  Despite liking both Reps. Johnson and Simmons, Connecticut didn’t vote for them in 2006.

The remedies for our problems, as Healy and I discussed that day, were later boiled down into a paper we co-authored entitled “Fight or Die!”.  Healy came up with the title – it’s a line in some French war movie he saw in college (film major).  The point was that you can choose to fight and perhaps die, or just simply die.  Our paper recommended the former.

The previous Chairman of the State Party, George Gallo, and his team, had done a tremendous job of developing the infrastructure and tactics necessary to win elections.  On Chairman Gallo’s watch, the State Party had put millions of dollars worth of architecture into the field for Republican candidates – making phone calls, organizing door-to-door walks, and getting out the vote.  We’d seen the operation first hand and knew that all that was required in that regard was to keep that infrastructure going without screwing it up too much.  

Instead, Fight or Die! pushed several key points – as a Party, we needed a more robust communications strategy that would be in the press on a daily basis, holding the Democrats accountable.  We then needed to develop the new tools available for delivering those messages to the public.

After writing Fight or Die!,  Healy and I went our separate ways.  I shipped off for Europe to see the sights and put politics behind me for awhile.  I didn’t find out that Healy had been elected to be Chairman of the State Party until I sat down at an Internet cafe in Rome several days later and checked out the Hartford Courant. 

There was already an e-mail from him waiting in my inbox.  Except for the Executive Assistant, Lynn, and her dog, the office was an empty shrine to things that were once great, but now gone.  Barely two weeks later and back in Connecticut, my car was piled high with clothes, a computer, and boxes of odds and ends as I arrived at Healy’s door.  I stayed in his spare bedroom until I could find my own place.

From then on, we worked tirelessly to challenge the Democrats and improve the Republican Party in this State.  Healy scored the first big win when he challenged Speaker Jim Amann on raising money for his nonprofit from the very lobbyists who sought to influence him on the biggest issues of the day.   

We started this blog, The Everyday Republican, so that we could communicate more effectively and get the message out into the public without relying on newspapers or TV cameras to do it for us.  We overhauled the CTGOP website and increased the size of the e-mail list nearly tenfold.  We were among the first  State Parties in the nation to use Twitter and Facebook to mobilize GOP activists and energize the party.  We did what we sought to do – innovate.

But like all things, even the most concerted of efforts could not change the cyclical dynamics that were already at play.  With his nomination, 2008 became the year of Barack Obama and the year that America did something nice for itself, in tearing down another barrier in the struggle for equality among races. 

If there was any shame to the Obama success, it was only in the fact that it came at the expense of so many fine Republican candidates – like John McCain, David Cappiello, Sean Sullivan, and Congressman Christopher Shays.

But like all cycles, there was a beginning and there will, inevitably, be an end.  Already, American frustration is building with an ideology that seems only to offer bigger government, less freedom, and higher taxes as solutions to the nation’s troubles.  This current cycle will end, and when it does a new one will take its place – and CTGOP will be ready to capitalize on it when it does.

And so it is here too.  The State Party re-invents itself every so often – as it should.  Starting Monday, that process will begin again with my departure from the State Party and the arrival of new people to start anew.  Thank you all very much for reading – I’ve enjoyed it immensely.