What can you do next for Dave Brat?

Jamie, thanks for all your good work. I’m recommending to folks locally that they donate direct to the campaigns of those they support. This is harder to do in practice than it seems, however.
For people that are out-of-state, something simple can be a very tricky thing; not all the local candidate-names are familiar! One good thing that freedomworks/SCF/etc help with is putting the names of good candidates in lights. That is why McDaniel in MS and Shannon in Oklahoma received millions of dollars, for instance. Of course, that attention also pastes a big target on their foreheads, for the estab-folks to see. Brat won with local direct tea support, the best kind. McDaniel lost by a heartbeat; Shannon by a considerable margin. However, the money really *does* matter, especially when you get past the primary (activist-oriented) and get to November (*much* more media-controlled).

In combination, this presents tea-loving folks with a conundrum. If a wealthy person wants to donate to the tea candidates, they have to know the names. Somebody with love of freedom like Thiel in CA and Huffines in TX and Guzzardi in PA can donate to a *lot* of campaigns. But there is no central location for them to get the information they need: that the principled candidate is Brat in VA#7. Wealthy or not, there is always a limit; the list of names would have to be graded/ranked, giving some indication of how much bang for the buck each candidate offers.
Even for people with not much money to give, having a list like that is very useful, but sorted geographically, so that tea-supporters know where to donate their shoe-leather! Because we are a grassroots phenomenon, it seems difficult to accomplish any kind of centralized list like this… but hey, wikipedia does it (founded by ayn-types) so perhaps we can as well. The big groups like SCF, run by DeMint … and now also by Cuccinelli if I understand properly … put the focus on a handful of races nationally, the ones where we have the “best” chances mathematically. I’m starting to think that’s the wrong strategy: instead of putting millions into McDaniel and Shannon, maybe it would have been wiser to put thousands into county-level-precinct races, and tens of thousands into state-legislature races, and hundreds of thousands into House races. To do that, we need to start organizing a list of names, methinks.
Of course, in 2016 my hope is that we’ll have the money to do both! 🙂 I’d like to see plenty of liberty-loving senators with *more* money than the estab candidate in 2016, rather than always fighting to come from behind. I’d also like to see tea-donations at the precinct-captain-level, which is essential for the budget-votes and for the slate-stopping and for presidential-delegates.
As far as 2014 goes, my specific request is this: please post a list of folks that are worth supporting (with cash and/or shoe-leather depending on the donor), in your known-and-trusted personal opinion. A grassroots ranking of local races. Assign candidates a letter-grade that tells us how they are on each of economics/bigGovt issues, liberty/Constitution issues, social issues (abortion/marriage/immigration), and international issues (2ndAmend/4thAmend/military/vets). Don’t neglect the dems, either — they won’t be getting A+ across the board, certanily, but some of them are supporters of the 4th Amendment for instance, and some are more wild about tax-and-spend than others. For that matter, don’t neglect candidates who lost their 2014 primaries: there will be more races in the future, and many of the same folks will run again.
If local liberty-leaders, trusted locally *and* known more widely, will perform these sorts of rating-services for local races, I think we’ll get to a point where the “central” list of names and rankings takes care of itself: simply aggregate and normalize the various grassroots-level rankings. Specifically, although I had heard the name Radtke during the 2012 senate race, it was too hard to figure out all the races *in time* to get the support where it needed to go. 2014 was better, for the “major” contests: the tea-candidates in the senate races were well-known, long in advance. This was a dual-edged sword: because there were only a handful of those “major” contests, the estab folks were able to bring fiat-cash of quantitative-easing-provenance to bear. In 2016, what I’d like to see is an avalanche of Dave Brat candidates, backed by local activists who demand better, and get results. The estab money might beat back ten high-profile candidates… but not at the same time they are facing one hundred Dave Brats in previously-assumed-“safe” seats! And thousands more at the county level.
Sorry about the long post. Hope it was worth slogging through. Best of luck with the Brat Pack this summer, looking forward to seeing his vote in the speaker-of-the-house elections in 2015.

I’m ALL IN for November. We’ve got to keep this ball rolling!

My shoes have enough leather to get through November:-) I am all in for this campaign and may we be able to recreate it 434 more times all across the nation.

As one of those real grassroots worker (and not AstroTurf, Nancy Pelosi) I TOTALLY agree with the two things that are needed, donations and people willing to actually get involved and do something. We don’t need people who just want to come around and hang out and talk about how bad things are. We need the workers, that means making phone calls, working in the office and going out door knocking and putting up signs. Not sitting at home yelling at the news media, that does nothing and just posting on the social media is not enough. Get involved and be willing to try and do things that you have not done before, be willing to go outside of your comfort zone and take back your country!

Donated and Phone Banked prior to the primary – will be doing more of both before November.

This Hoosier Patriot applauds all the Patriots in the 7th District of Virginia. Thank You!! WAY TO GO!!

I’m in. John and I worked the Shenandoah precinct door knocking and knob hanging. Dave won the precinct by 100 votes.