I would like to begin this article by noting that I am a conservative of the Tea Party persuasion. I do not lean conservative, I am a full blooded conservative. If you are not a conservative, please hit the back button right now because you will not be happy with me as you read on and I really don't want you unhappy with me.

I am very fortunate to be in a business where my political views or the political views of our customers do not come into play. Compulife is a "nuts and bolts" business, we deal in facts and numbers that are not based upon subjective viewpoints. Oh sure, there is a little subjectivity. For example, we have a category for 10 year term that is separate from 20 year term because we believe that 10 year term is an apple and 20 year term is an orange. Apples should be compared to apples, and oranges should be compared to oranges. If an agent wants to compare apples and oranges, then we have tools to help the agent do that, but the software does not draw conclusions as to which is better. Decisions like that are the job of the agent and their client and we respect that insurance regulators have licensed the agent to sell life insurance; not us.

Politics, on the other hand, is a good deal more subjective. It is why people can seem to argue about politics forever. One man sets out his case at length, and another man sets out a different case at length. There are many times when neither can seem to agree with the other. With that in mind let me remind you that I am a conservative and the rest of what I have to say here will be relevant to conservatives and would not make others happy. So if you are not a conservative, please click the back button now.

OK, so you are not sure if you are a conservative and have kept reading. The first question is "Are you a conservative?". What is a conservative? I tried to sum that up at a web site that will be the focus of this article. At that web site I have a page which talks about "What Conservatives Believe". Click on the link below and a new Window will open with that page. When you are done reading, close that window and you will be back here. Here it is:

So what did you think of the article? Does that sum it up for you? If you have comments or questions on that I would like to hear from you. Email me at:

Here is why I want to hear from you. I established www.takeovergop.com as a place where conservatives can go to learn about how they can get involved in grass roots politics at the county level. We'll talk more about that further, but the first question is do you agree with "What Conservatives Believe"? If not I would like your input because I want the site to appeal broadly to all conservatives.

Now you will note that the site does not deal with social conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage. Are those issues important, they are to me. But that is not the purpose of the site. The site is designed to help people understand how to get involved in the Republican Party at the grass roots level. More important, it is to encourage and help Tea Party conservatives get involved at the local level. Other issues are for other sites.

As conservatives we had great success on November 2, 2010. It was impressive how the Tea Party movement was able to get people involved in the political process. We owe a great deal to Rick Santelli, who is widely credited with lighting the fuse that became the Tea Party movement. You can see Rick's famous rant here:

The Tea Party movement's success was displayed with real political victories. Here in Kentucky we elected and are sending to Washington Rand Paul. In Florida, Marco Rubio rode a clear, consistent conservative message all the way to Washington, beating an establishment Republican governor who, when faced with losing the primary, had to run as an Independent in order to have a chance in the general election. Rubio dominated the election results. And look what Toomey pulled off in Pennsylvania. It was a great night with over 60 more seats in the House and more than 40 solid conservatives in the Senate.

So my hat is off to the success of the Tea Party. But the logical question is, what's next?

There is no doubt that 2012 will be an important election year. His majesty, the socialist king Barack Obama, is facing the voters and the country needs to replace Obama. Added to that task is the fact that in 2012 the Senate has 21 Democrats who must defend their current seats, versus only 10 Republicans. 2 Independents are also up for grabs in 2012. Of course all the House seats will be back up for election and there were some closes races where conservatives lost by a hair. Given the Democrats decision to again go with Pelosi as leader, we are likely to be victorious in a lot of House races that were lost by close margins.

While I don't want to discourage anyone from getting busy with all that, I would like to argue that there is much more important work that conservative voters need to focus on, and to do so during 2011. We are rapidly approaching a period of time in which local party elections are held in which the people who run the Republican Party are going to be up for elections.

The vast majority of Republicans have NO CLUE about these local party elections. Most have no idea when they take place or how it all works. But these local party elections are VERY important, because they will determine the nature of the party moving forward and into 2012.

As you no doubt know, and as you have seen in the 2010 elections, there is an element of the Republican party that is not all that conservative. I like to describe these people as political hacks and insiders. If the Republican Party is to become a conservative party, these people need to be replaced. We need new blood running the party, and that new blood needs to be rooted in conservative principals.

That is why I created the web site:

The objective of the site is simple. It is to act as a source of information guiding people to become involved in local Republican politics, and to create a network to get conservatives in their precincts and counties coordinated so that they can show up at local elections and clear out the dead wood in the Republican Party.

This all begins with learning about your state's Republican Party Rules. These determine who runs the party in your state, and how the people running the party in your state are elected. To that end I created this web page:

At this point I do not yet have the rules for every state's GOP party but I want them all. To that end I am asking for your help. Begin by going to the list and see if your state's party rules are posted. If not, can you help me get those rules, either a link or PDF file copy. You can send that to:

Next, I need someone from each state to take an interest in their rules. Someone needs to read those rules and translate them for other people in their states. I have already done that for my state: Kentucky. You can see what I did here:

I am willing to do the work of constructing your state's web page, or to link to a web page site that is already doing this. But people from their own states need to take the lead, and to do the homework for their state. If you can help with this, you will need to read your state's rules and work with me to get those explained on the site.

Alternately, do you know someone in your state who is already doing this work? I was recently contacted by individuals in Arizona and California and have added them as "local chapters" to the State list. They already have web sites for those states, where they are informing conservatives how to get involved. If you can help connect me with someone in your state, I would very much appreciate it. Have them contact me at:

Consider the potential impact of helping more and more conservatives understand how their local party functions and how to take it over. I knew none of this until I sat down with my own state's rules and worked to understand them. When the party elections in Kentucky occurred in 2008, I did not show up at my precinct polling place to vote because I didn't know anything about it. In fact, I learned later that NO ONE SHOWED UP, absolutely no one.

Then, when they held the County wide election one week later, another election that I knew nothing about, only about 30 people showed up. 30 people! There are 12,000 Republicans in my county and only 30 of them showed up. Those 30 people determined who would run the Republican Party for our county for the next 4 years. Those 30 people also elected the people who would represent our party at the Congressional District Convention and at the State Convention that year. Get this - our County had so many Republican seats for those two conventions, that the 30 people who showed up at the County election couldn't fill half the allotted convention seats.

That how I got introduced to the process. One of the people on the County committee wanted to fill those vacant seats and began asking around as to who would be good people to take to the conventions. My name got mentioned and I was recruited. The same 30 people who were at the original election agreed to the appointment; and there I was, a delegate to both the district and state conventions.

Now I realize that some counties are in much better shape than others, but believe it or not, when we got to the district and state conventions there were a large number of counties who had not representatives at all; no one showed up. I suspect that in many of those counties there is no local Republican Party.

Now get this, the state wide convention is where you elect the state delegates to the national convention. If you elect conservatives, then you have conservatives at the national convention. If you elect the same old hacks and insiders, that's what ends up at the national convention. And that is how we get rid of the dead wood. Fill the seats at the district and state conventions with real conservatives, and make sure it's real conservatives going to the national convention.

Imagine what would happen if Tea Party people all got involved and all ran to be their respective precinct leaders. Then imagine if Tea Party people all got involved and ran to be their respective county leaders. You would then have Tea Party people as delegates to State conventions and you would be sending Tea Party people to the National Convention.

Do you see where I am going with this?

This does not require you to run for some high demand political office. It requires you to get informed and to participate at the local level. If you are interested in working with me, to help those in your state have a resource tool that will help them make the Republican Party a conservative party, then I'd like to hear from you:

And as a side note, did I mention that as life insurance agents, it's a great idea to "network" with new people?