Why Political Parties Suck

Today I shall vent about the problems with the Republican Party. I am sure the Democratic party has similar problems, but I shall only blog about what I know. I will not go into the details of how the party is being taken over by the religious right, and how that will lead to its ultimate demise. No, rather we shall discuss particular problems I am seeing first had with my involvement in current campaigns.

The Harris County Republican Party is broken. First it has a track record of not talking to candidates, at least two candidates I know of are not getting their phone calls returned and I'm willing to bet the actual number is higher. Second, and more importantly, there are many useless precinct chairs. People become precinct chairs in order to support the party and help get Republicans elected. However, many precinct chairs do not want to play. They do not show up to executive committee meetings, return candidates' phone calls, or bother to get involved. I'd be curious to see how many do not even bother to vote in the primaries!

Speaking of organizations that are disappointing me, the Houston Young Republicans are getting up there on the list. A group of people who care about getting Republicans elected, but less than 20% show up to meetings, and of those who even do that, few if any are workings with any political campaigns in the area. In fact, more members of HYR traveled out of state to help Republican Candidates than help candidates right here in Houston. To top it off HYR is spending more efforts to hype up a Happy Hour that only current members attend than to advertise an event with free food and drink, designed to encourage more political involvement in the community. To me it seems that priorities are not in order here.

No wonder Republicans are loosing elections, people who say they care the most do not even get involved. People will complain that I'm "airing dirty laundry"... but guess what, I'm tired of this, and nothing will change while things are kept hushed up! Hopefully this will embarrass people enough to change their ways.