Blackwell Acolyte Distraught at Steele Endorsement, Victory

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At a critical juncture in the voting for the new RNC Chair, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, one of the most conservative figures in the race, realized he was behind and endorsed eventual winner Michael Steele, who was the most moderate. The move left one Blackwell devotee, a conservative Ohio-based blogger named Matthew Naugle, stunned and angry. I have emailed with Naugle before about the GOP’s push to modernize it’s approach to technology. Here are his thoughts on Blackwell’s endorsement and Steele’s victory:

…all the technology in the world is meaningless without the right conservative message.

I run Ken Blackwell’s Facebook page and Twitter page. I was also Ken Blackwell’s campaign blogger and web guy in 2006. Ken Blackwell is my hero- my idol- my Goldwater…… but I couldn’t be more disappointed in his endorsement today. No candidate was more un-Blackwell than Michael Steele.

Steele is new to the language of conservatism, and he was certainly the most liberal candidate running. He expressed his view that the Supreme Court should follow what stare decisis is on Roe V. Wade, has run GOPAC into the ground, and was actively involved with Christine Todd Whitman’s Republican Leadership Council.

The Republican Party, with a John McCain candidacy, tried to win on a “big tent” platform and in the process lost its soul. Now, with the election of Steele, they have lost their mind.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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