RNC Update

There is a new player on the field since I last updated on the race for RNC Chair and his name is Katon Dawson. Dawson is the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. Here is an "ideas" piece he wrote for Politico. Read the whole thing -- as the kids say -- but here is a highlight:

The election has come and gone, and we’ve all seen the reports of the Republican Party’s untimely demise. Some say Republicans were too conservative, that we’ve become a regional party and that we’re clinging to an old playbook. As a Republican, I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth, and we are alive and kicking.

That doesn’t mean the Republican Party isn’t in need of new ideas, new messengers and a new focus in order to move forward as a party. Losing elections brings change, and change is coming to the Republican Party. What really cost Republicans at the ballot box during the past two election cycles was forgetting a lesson many of us learned from our parents - say what you mean and mean what you say.

As a small business owner, I know first-hand the power of this principle. You can’t say you offer superior customer service when complaints are piling up against you at the better business bureau. You can’t say you offer the best value in town when your products are defective. It’s not good enough to talk the talk; you’ve got to walk the walk.

This is why the Republican Party finds itself in the minority in Washington and in many of the 3,141 counties in America. Our elected officials, candidates and party leaders dutifully repeated the principles of our party, but once in office, too many abandoned those principles. Whether it was abandoning our commitment to fiscal responsibility, turning a blind eye to serious character flaws in some of our candidates, or providing a handout to big business at the expense of the American taxpayers, we seemed to lose the courage of our convictions. As President Reagan’s speechwriter Peggy Noonan has been quoted, “part of courage is simple consistency.”

Emphasis added as a special message for our friends in the Ohio GOP. It ought to be a familiar message -- as I have delivered personally several times -- but it might have more impact coming from a fresh voice.

Another name that I am seeing floating around is Chip Saltzman. Chip is chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party and was Mike Huckabee's campaign manager. He is running a very Huckabee-like stealth campaign near as I can tell...