If a conservative club doesn't exist in your community, consider establishing your own club. If the NFRA is active in your state, you can apply to the National Federation to get started. If it isn't, you can form a "plain-vanilla" Republican Club. Such a Club is an official part of the Republican Party that, once it’s chartered, gives its members a direct, albeit limited, say in Republican Party affairs. You can use such a Club to influence voters in your community, to help build a “farm team” of future conservative Republican candidates, and to wage war on local liberals. And, most important of all, it's a grassroots avenue to taking control of the Republican Party away from liberals.

There is a chain of command that may differ in detail from state to state. In California, for example, there are 80 Assembly Districts, corresponding to the state’s 80 members of the California State Assembly (Legislature). Each Assembly District has a Central Committee, which can recommend chartering a Club. Their recommendation goes to the County Central Committee, which issues the charter.

When you apply for a charter, be persistent. Be a nag if they drag their feet. Go to meetings of the charter-issuing entity and demand to be heard. Shame them into action if you have to. Remind them that they are working against the Republican Party if they delay recognition of Republican activists. If someone says you’re too extreme and that you might be representing only conservatives (which you should neither confirm nor deny), remind them that all great political parties must be a “big tent” and represent diverse views. Keep applying pressure to them until they give you what you want. Keep in mind that they are volunteers and that most volunteers dislike dealing with controversy -- the pay just isn’t high enough!

The primary responsibilities of a Republican Club are threefold…

• Get Out the Vote -- getting Republican voters to the polls on election day
• Voter registration
• Finding and assisting candidates for local offices

The Republican Party usually does not want Republican Clubs to debate issues or adopt policy positions. That is reserved to candidates and Party officials further up the chain of command. The Party will also require you to support all of its candidates.

These restrictions needn’t stand in your way of fighting Republican liberals and building up conservative Republicans. The Party can’t prevent you from being polite but standoffish to liberal Republicans and extremely receptive to conservative Republicans. In time, word will spread that liberals aren’t welcome while conservatives are. And you won’t be in violation of your charter as long as you don’t deny liberals access, however limited, to your podium. After all, it’s up to your members to decide which candidates they will actively support and the most the Republican Party can demand is that you not trash liberal Republicans in public.

You must always be on guard against liberal influence from within your Club that will parrot the worn out line about how conservatives can’t win in your area. Remember that people are always looking for leaders, and you can get your way by providing positive and honest leadership. Volunteer organizations are easy to control. In such operations, control ultimately rests with the hardest workers and the most dominant personalities. Be sure to learn enough about “Robert’s Rules of Order” for conducting meetings to prevent liberals from diluting your purpose. If they have a majority, your Club’s mission to rebuild the Republican Party is doomed and you must either change their minds or disband the Club.

The territory that a Republican Club represents is not exclusive. To the contrary, the Republican Party would like to have one on every block. If there is a liberal Republican Club in your community, don’t be surprised if they try to stop you by claiming that it’s their turf. Ignore them and select your own boundaries. If your state is an exception and grants exclusive territory, consider having your group of conservatives all join the obstructionist liberal Club and take it over by voting the liberals out. If that isn’t feasible, consider forming a conservative Club independent of the Republican Party.

IMPORTANT! If a liberal Republican Club continues to oppose your efforts -- especially if it ridicules or criticizes your efforts in public -- put them out of business by raiding their membership and recruiting their members to your Club.

To have an impact on your community and ultimately on the Republican Party, you must publicize your Club’s activities. Submit press releases to all of your community’s newspapers whenever you have a meeting or special event. Your meetings will have a powerful impact if they feature elected officials and well-known spokesmen for conservative causes. The more active you are, the easier it will be to attract top-notch speakers -- that’s one of the most immediate payoffs for your activism. And keep in mind that, unless your state’s Republican Party is totally inept, word of strong activism travels quickly up the chain of command.

Make sure your organization doesn’t spend its time debating the Club’s bylaws. Have your founding members establish a simple set of bylaws that conform to conditions of your charter and not much else. The bylaws are your Club’s constitution. If your Club spends time fine-tuning the bylaws, it will become a bureaucracy and will make meetings boring and thereby drive members away rather than drawing them in. Your bylaws can fit on a single sheet of paper, which states:

• The purpose of the Club: Get-Out-the-Vote, voter registration and candidate recruitment/support
• Qualifications for membership: Registered Republican and perhaps Independent (with limited voting rights)
• Details of how and when Club officers are elected: Annually with term limits, for example
• Endorsement power: This is usually okay except when two Republicans are running in a primary election. Include the right to endorse in primaries. If the charter-issuing authority says no you will have to change the bylaws. If they are silent (even if by their own negligence), it will help you defeat liberals.
• Conditions required to change the bylaws: Make it as hard as possible - two-thirds vote of total membership is a good criterion.

Your state’s Republican party may have specific items you will have to add, such as a pledge to support all Republican candidates and provision for removal of members who fail to so. If so, make it very difficult to remove a member. But remember that this is a double-edged sword. If you make it hard to remove a conservative who works against a liberal, you are also making it hard to remove a liberal who works against a conservative.

Strive to find a bright, comfortable meeting place. The worst thing you can do is bring people to a dingy meeting place that is cold and menacing. Private homes are the best of all. However, be aware that having a large number of people in a private home inevitably involves a spilled drink or plate of food. If you use a private home, make sure your Club has a Cleanup Committee to take care of the mess.

By keeping the dues low, you will encourage membership growth. A Republican Club with a membership of 50-100 members can charge “a dime a day” ($36.50 per year) and finance everything it needs to do.

Set up committees to guide your Club’s activities. The following six will cover the majority of things the Club should be involved in.

• Get Out the Vote: This is the Club’s most important committee.
• Rapid response writing: Counter liberal illogic and hate that appears in print.
• Events and Republican image enhancement: Coordinate meeting-speaker solicitation, participation in parades, voter-registration drives and charitable events.
• Membership: Constantly work at adding new members.
• Opposition Research: Provide material that conservative candidates can use against their opponents.
• Special Operations: Keep this one hush-hush as spies will enter your Club as your influence and effectiveness increases -- a special operation might be trying to locate a conservative newspaper publisher to buy out a local liberal paper in your community. This committee might also serve the purpose of recruiting strictly conservative candidates and organizing opposition to liberal candidates.

One of the most important things a Republican Club can do is determine the outcome of low-turnout local elections, which is typical of school-board and city-council elections. Here are two specific examples that the Republican Club I founded in the area just west of Pasadena, California accomplished within the first few months of its existence. Keep in mind that there were 50-60 members during this time.

• An election was being held to replace a retiring member of the Pasadena City College Governing Board. The Board had five members, three Republicans and two pro-union Democrats. The retiring member was a Republican. If another pro-union member was elected, history of similar takeovers in California shows that the college would have lost many of its best teachers and its effectiveness within two years. A Republican candidate came forward who didn’t have any contacts in the city where our Club resided, and our city was a Republican-rich part of the area he would represent. We conducted a very successful Get-Out-the-Vote effort in our neighborhood using precinct lists provided by the Republican Party. He won in a close election and gave the credit to our Club for electing him. We had indeed provided the votes needed to elect him.
• An election was held to fill a vacant seat on the Los Angeles City Council. Two Democrats were fighting for the seat, one a very liberal, young rising Democrat star and the other a former Republican who was far less liberal. One evening a Republican came to our monthly meeting and announced that he was also running. We conducted a crash telephone campaign for him, posted his yard signs and did a Get-Out-the-Vote effort. Out of nowhere, he received 10% of the vote, which was enough to deny the liberal a majority of the vote and force a runoff election. The more moderate Democrat won the ensuing runoff, thus dealing a young rising Democrat star his second consecutive setback.

To maximize your Club’s effectiveness in helping conservative candidates, encourage some of your Club’s key workers to go to the Leadership Institute's excellent and very affordable courses on a wide range of topics related to political campaigns. Their programs include the Grassroots Campaign School, Candidate Development School, Public Speaking Workshops and many others. Click on the link below to visit their site.

This will educate you in the intricacies of political campaigns and maximize your chances of being a useful asset to conservative candidates.

Finally, you can dramatically improve Republican turnout in your community by having your Republican Club open an official Republican Headquarters. If you have sufficient assets, a full-time Headquarters is the best of all. In good times, the Republican Party will sometimes provide funds to pay some of your bills. However, operating a Republican Headquarters for a few months leading up an election is still very effective.

The most important function of a Republican Headquarters is it’s Get-Out-the-Vote activities. The Headquarters is the local “war room” for the Republican Party. Approximately 80% of the effort should be focused on the Get-Out-the-Vote effort. The other 20% is to pass out yard signs, candidate literature, bumper stickers, etc. Statistical studies show that communities with an aggressive Republican Headquarters show a substantial (20% or more) increase in Republican voter turnout.