Dereliction of Duty

The more this campaign season marches toward caucus day, the more I see evidence of a brokenness in much of the electorate. I've now made hundreds of phone calls, sent thousands of emails and knocked on many doors. While I continue to be impressed with many of our volunteers and staff, I am also continually disappointed in the apathy I hear from voters that are not involved in a campaign or in politics in general. There is a general dereliction of duty when it comes to Americans and their civic responsibilities.

Case in point. I made a phone call the other day to a random voter through our calling application and was greeted with the phrase, "I don't get involved until the general election." I asked him if he cared to have a voice in who he voted for next November. His exact words were, "It doesn't matter." I bid him good day. I really wanted to ask him if he cared about our country and if he cared about the future. It does matter! Is it any surprise that those of us that aren't on the political left have been saddled with terrible presidential candidate after terrible presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan left office. Need I remind you that we nominated the man who inspired Obamacare four years ago.

I find many people who take a wait and see attitude with politics, like it won't have any effect on them. Especially in an early state like Iowa, nothing could be further from the truth. A candidate that finishes outside of the top three here on caucus night will likely be done in the race for president. A candidate that wins can use the victory as a springboard toward the greater goal of becoming the nominee. When can a group as small as 130,000 people make a difference in the way the country is steered? That time is now and the place is here.

Yesterday, the Ted Cruz 2016 campaign office in Urbandale, Iowa, made over four thousand phone calls to prospective voters. If you include those of us that don't live around the Des Moines area, that number approaches five thousand with the call at home application. That is nearly four percent of the likely caucus goers in one day of calling. Just think what we could do if ten more people in each county were on board as volunteers.

I don't say any of this to diminish the amazing work put in by the volunteers, but many volunteers are only there for association purposes or to pad a resume. That can't be the approach. That mustn't be the approach. The proper approach should be this: How am I going to contribute to liberty's gain by helping elect the best presidential candidate in generations? That should be the question every volunteer asks themselves.

Today, the pastor of the church I attend, Joseph Brown, preached a sermon about not wasting time that we could be using for the advancement of a cause greater than our own self interest. He quoted facts and figures from studies about TV and social media usage and tied them back to a passage in Ephesians. Some of us use social media for advertising and campaign purposes (namely, me) but some of us use that social media time to do nothing to advance the cause of liberty or to bring people toward the church. Why? If we, as free thinking people, put our time toward something that would help ensure liberty for our following generations, wouldn't that be a more noble goal for our media use than that of gossiping about some person who is famous for simply being famous? Pastor Brown didn't even tell the congregants that social media or TV were bad, but that we could use them for the right purposes. The message was timely.

There's an old business adage that twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. I'm finding that to be entirely true, if not a little generous. The point I'm trying to make with all of this is everybody can do more. If you don't live in an early state, contact me and ask me how you can help make phone calls into Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada. We have a mobile application that will do almost all of the work for you(it doesn't cost you anything either). If you live in a border state to one of these early states, contact me and ask me about setting up door knocking crews to go door to door in a city or town right across your state border. The door knocking is done by a smart phone app too. It takes almost no time to learn. Write letters to your local newspaper editor. Call into your local talk radio shows. Post messages on social media that will help our cause and highlight our campaign's strengths. All of this adds up and costs little to no money.

In closing, I'll refer back to Pastor Brown's sermon. He said that the only true currency we have is time. All of us have the same amount per each day we have on the earth. How are we going to spend our currency?

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