Letter to a challenger!
I received an email from a challenger in Tennessee seeking correspondence with Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy. Below is the reply of VOID's president.
Dear Sir,
While our organization, Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy, is non-partisan and endorses no specific party's candidates, we urge Americans on our national web site and in our local grassroots organizations to motivate eligible voters who are dissatisfied with Congress' record, to vote for challengers instead of incumbents. Our local groups will work to register voters who, in the past, felt there vote would not matter or, who were not inclined to vote for a Democrat or Republican.
Evidence suggests many millions of previous non-voters actually want to vote. They just haven't had a ballot candidate or agenda they felt they could vote for. Many have told us that our organization finally gives them reason and hope to vote again. That reason and hope is to unseat enough incumbents to force politicians to recognize that results matter again.
The hope is growing that we can force politicians to give up empty promises and meaningless campaign slogans and replace them with the agenda's a vast majority of Americans agree upon. Items like secure borders, eliminating deficits and bringing down the debt, saving Social Security instead of burying it under mountains of national debt. Stop runaway medical cost inflation. Restoring war as an option of last resort or response to direct attack, and not a tool of diplomacy and foreign expansion of power. And chief among these American agendas is bi-partisanship that solves more problems than partisan turf wars in Congress create.
Our staff and volunteers come from all political persuasions including Democrat and Republican. We have given up the concept that politics is a team sport in which more than half the nation's people must lose in order for one political party to be victorious. We have given up the concept that one party is
better than the other, when the results continue to show the nation's future dimming, regardless of which party is in the majority. We are working together across party lines to force out enough incumbents in both parties to insure that our Congress will work across party lines again, and solve more problems than it creates.
The only support we ask of any citizen or challenger candidate who agrees with our objectives is to pass the word of our organization and mission on to others. The faster the anti-incumbent voter block grows, the faster we can get our country back on track again, and our government working for the people again instead of lobbyists, earmark hungry special interests, and the many wealthy campaign donors whose motives are unhealthy for our nation and its people.
We wish you the best of possible outcomes in your campaign. Within the boundaries of our charter, we will support your campaign by raising the awareness in the minds of the voters that challengers to incumbents are our best hope for achieving more responsible, more ethical, and more transparent government which is held accountable to the voters.
We are aware however, of the corrupting influence of the power and party system within Congress that corrupts well intentioned and idealistic freshman such as yourself into cogs of the inefficient and crushing wheel of the partisan power machine. Therefore, until we see that wheel of corruption in Congress broken, and its hub and spokes giving it strengh and power discarded, we shall remain adamantly anti-incumbent and grow our numbers across the nation.
Winning a Congressional seat is far easier than keeping one's ideals and integrity intact after being elected. We hope and pray you will be one of the few, who will be able to resist the temptations and deals which will work to rob your constituents of a representative who keeps the nation's future and the people's desire for security, prosperity, and liberty as the first and foremost priority.
Sincerely,
Comments
Well said, as always, David. While VOID may like to support individual candidates, we cannot in good concience do so until we can break the power-hungry system that corrupts seemingly ideal candidates.
Posted by: Stephanie Crist | April 7, 2006 11:10 PM
Incumbent Politicians have left us with no other choice.
Voters are very, very patient, as evidenced by their tolerance of so much fiscal and moral bankruptcy in government.
However, voters will, someday, hopefully, remember what it was they were supposed to be doing all along. What we are doing now is not working.
Voters need more choices; more challengers.
Hopefully, more challengers will understand the common sense of advocating the one simple, responsible thing voters were supposed to be doing all along, and give the voters more choices, and more challengers.
Please Stop Repeat Offenders.
Don't Re-Elect Them !
Posted by: d.a.n | April 15, 2006 9:20 PM
How is it that the tax payers are bailing out Bear Stearns for making bad bussiness decisions, decisions that netted them millions of dollars,when all that would be neccessary would be a rate freeze on A.R.M. loans to enable people to continue to service the debt and stay in their homes, but no Mr. Bush has to run to the rescue of big bussiness at our expense.
Bear stearns doled out 6 BILLION in bonuses for 2007 while investers were loosing approximatly 8 billion. How can free enterprise get away with this.
Bill Crawford
Posted by: william r. crawford | April 4, 2008 9:47 AM