Key Platform and Media Concepts for 2010 and 2012

Here are some critical touchpoints for candidates, fundraisers, advisors, volunteers, media reps, etc. in the 2010/2012 battlefields:

1. America is fallible, but good. Our contributions to the world are unequivocally important and positive. Can we get better? Yes, but we need to make the good better, not make the good different.

2. Leadership is not arrogance. Arrogance is an attitude not a behavior. Asking cruel regimes to treat their people well is not arrogance. Insisting that democracy is the best option is not arrogance.

3. Robust security is not something that our enemies get to have an opinion on (or to help plan). Our allies must demonstrate a tangible commitment to our ideals, otherwise, they are not our allies. Our enemies must demonstrate caution. Period.

4. Health care is for doctors and patients.

5. A government cannot provide for every need of every person without becoming tyrannical. This is historical fact, not prophetic intuition.

6. When a company or business fails, another will fill the void with innovation in price and product. The government is not required to intervene, otherwise... see #5

7. Every citizen must operate from a transcendent and humane ethic. A people without a gentle, disciplined internal locus of control will bring down on themselves a clumsy and cruel external control. If we cannot be good, we cannot be free.

8. The second amendment is sacred, it is the hidden guarantor of the other amendments. It cannot be restricted, deconstructed, or minimized without dire consequence. The violence problem in America is not about hardware. A million guns in the hands of a good person threaten no one. A butter knife in the hand of an evil person is a threat to everyone.

9. Faith informs politics. Jesus does not have a political party. I'll only mention this once for the good of the order. This is not about compromise, but let's watch the vibe.

10. The education of our children must be public, not secular. It must teach history as it is, not as communist, secular-revisionists wish it were. The fact that a teacher brought me a public school text book that omitted Christian text from the Mayflower Compact is a threat to national security. If we are not honest with our children, they will perish in the face of even a moderately educated enemy. Martin Luther King Jr. and recycling do not make up a sufficiently robust curriculum. But, neo-cons be warned, increasing testing standards alone, without changing content, is an exercise in futility.

Good luck to you all!

Seth