A nod to Cato for the following excerpt of a comment in response to one of Eric's posts.

Locally there's a real vacuum in the GOP Leadership...there are not enough conservatives in the Legislature to effectively do anything. GOP is this state once had a power sharing deal because they had an equal number of seats, now they're regulated to the back bench.

The GOP won exactly one statewide election this year (and Rob McKenna is more of a RINO than a Conservative) and it's highly unlikely the GOP will unseat Patty Murray in 2010. The GOP should bide it's time and start finding new leadership to fill the void when the Dem's screw up (as all political parties with unchecked power inevitably do).
Posted by: Cato on December 9, 2008 07:45 AM

This vacuum has been a concern to me since things started sliding in 2006. I read through the voters' pamphlet, and after seeing some of the candidates up for election, I felt like screaming -- aren't there any better candidates? Some of the Republicans I saw were sacrificial lambs or cannon fodder more than real candidates. And some of them were in districts formerly held by Republicans, so it can't be impossible to elect a Republican.

Nationally, I take the view that Republicans lost power not because the country is so liberal, but because the Republicans stopped acting like Republicans, and they rolled over for slaughter by the media and special interest groups. The same is true for why Republicans can't gain power here in WA.

My belief is that we can win statewide offices by gaining ground in the legislative districts. One district at a time, we elect good Republicans for city, county, and legislative offices. This becomes a sort of "minor league" for statewide offices.

As someone who is interested in running for state government sometime in the near future, I'm asking:

#1, What does a good Republican candidate look like?
#2, How can we unite the party sufficiently to accomplish our goals?