What kind of R are you?
by Dallas YR ~ March 22nd, 2010. Filed under: Information.
When I first started to get involved with politics in Dallas County, I’d never heard the term “3R” before. Finally, someone at GOP headquarters explained to me that they pay special attention to 3 and 4Rs.
The number in front of the R is how many times you’ve voted in a Republican Primary.
If you only recently voted in the primaries, or like me, aren’t even old enough to be more than a 2R, realize that you need to work a little bit harder to stand out to the Republican party, at large.
On one hand, the 3/4R system shows how important it is to vote in primaries. But on the other hand, it should send up a little red flag to Young Republicans: What am I doing to make the party take me seriously? How much do my opinions matter if I’m just showing up to a standard election every four years? I’m not saying your opinions somehow don’t matter, I’m just saying, when you want to tell the party how to do things have you made yourself relevant enough that they should listen to you? Are you volunteering? Are you making phone calls? Are you working with candidates who do support your beliefs?
We can’t all be 4Rs, but we can certainly make our voices heard by action. As we recover from primaries, take a moment to think about where you want to see the Republican Party go in your lifetime. Then think about what you, personally, can do to take it there.
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Interested to see if this is a weighted scoring system as it applies to the number of R’s one might acquire to be considered Republican. I ask this in a two fold response: 1) Active Duty military personnel have scarce opportunities to be engaged in primary elections and vote. The installation voting representative usually pushes voter turnout during presidential election years 2) my father is a life long Democrat along with many others in my family but voted for the 1st time he voted in the Republican Primary, where does he fall in the system? I know the party is big in pushing a candidate who is within the party but we might want to consider if that is always the right choice. I mean take yourself for example, are you not qualified to run for office and make better decisions than the Democrats we have in office now or do you have to wait and accumulate enough R’s to be qualified. We cannot have our cake and eat it to which is to say that we claim to be Conservative and stand up for the Constitution only to have our inner party politics trump the qualifications to run for office stated in the U.S. Constitution.
March 25th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
I think the system is weighted, in a sense. Its weighted in how seriously the party takes you. The party cannot stop you from running, the primaries showed that when Tammy Barnes, well-known to be a Democrat ran as a Republican against Cliff Boyd for the District Clerk position.
The system is mostly so the Party knows who to contact for money and who to talk to during block walks. My concern is that young people don’t know this and then they show up with concerns to the party and they party is less likely to listen because they haven’t “proven” themselves in some way.
March 27th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
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