I attended the Allen County Teenage Republicans meeting this morning and listened to Mark Souder's speech

I know I am not a Republican. I know I am not in my teens. I wanted to go and see if the local Republican Party would come out to support Jeff Fraser and I wanted to hear Mark Souder speak. I took a couple of aspirin before he spoke because I knew Mark Souder would give me a headache...

Mark spoke, and spoke, and spoke. In fact over 95% of the entire event was Mark speaking...

All of my regular readers need to sit down for a minute; I actually agreed with Mark Souder on two of the many things he said.

Mark said that he feels the the upcoming Republican Caucus is a critical moment for The Republican Party and he is right... It is important. The Republicans need to reform and become the Party they promised to become way back in 1994; unfortunately for The Republicans, it will not happen.

One interesting thing is that Mark kept referring to "establishment Republicans." After this term Mark will have been in Congress for 12 years, he is an "establishment Republican."

I feel that the ONLY hope the Republican Party has for meaningful change is to elect Shadegg; who is actually the Candidate Souder supports. Wonders keep happening, me agreeing with Mark Souder again...

Mark Souder made some very interesting comments about how Washington politics actually work, and that segment of his speech was actually quite interesting and insightful. Then he went into a bunch of other topics including:

1. He thinks America should be a two Party system, imagine that.
2. He thinks The Republican Party must change and in his words "Not be the angry white man's party." What this means is he wants to spend more money on minorities...
3. He actually accused the Mayor of Fort Wayne's office of accepting illegal contributions from contractors. It was somewhat slanderous. I hope someone in the press caught this and prints it. It was pretty bad... He was talking about how bad the campaign finance problems are in this country when he switched gears and said that we need to look into the Mayor's office and union contributions to various Democrats...
4. He tried to defend earmarks, and his defense was truly inept and shows how out of touch he is with small government conservatives. Let there be no doubt; he is a LARGE government Republican, as I have said all along. Basically Mark Souder said that earmarks have grown because the newly elected Republicans come from small rural areas and it is the only way they can bring money back to their Congressional Districts. Believe it or not, he said this with a straight face, I was appalled.
5. He ranted about The Clinton administration and how evil it was, pretty much the same old Mark Souder stuff.
6. He ranted a lot about money that Indian tribes are putting into the political process. He said that Indian casinos were the most profitable business in America and insisted that it needs scrutiny.
7. He also spent some time insulting The Journal Gazette.

Jeff Fraser did the welcome and the wind up. His comments were short and to the point (Mark Souder should learn something from Jeff).

"Free Fraser" shirts were available at the event. I picked on up.

I wonder if I should start wearing it to NACS Board meetings?

Mitch Harper from Indiana Parley was present at the event.

State Senator Tom Wyss was also present. As you can imagine we talked about seat belt laws...