"IF YOU'RE NOT IN THAT BUNKER.. YOU'RE ON THE OTHER SIDE."

I'm sure you've heard the Laura Ingraham quote by now. "If you can't beat Barack Obama with this record then shut down the party. Shut it down, start new. With new people. This is a gimme election."

Let me tell you why this is ridiculous.

First, the election is about more than the presidency. The party that she wants shut down is the party that still has a good chance to take the Senate and maintain control of the house, not to MENTION the Presidential election that is still 56 days away. Let Laura Ingraham and George Will throw in the towel, we don't need them and we don't need this reactionary defeatist garbage. Laura Ingraham wasn't on the front lines when the republicans took the house and made gains in the Senate in 2010. The conservative movement, tea party movement, whatever you want to call it has never been led by pundits. It's an organic movement fueled by normal average Americans that expect better and fight for it.

Restoring Honor Rally- August 2010- 500k Conservatives Gather in DC

Second, our candidate is only as strong as his supporters. Obama has one of the worst records of any President ever to run for reelection, but his supporters don't seem to mind. They've chugged the kool-aid and are all on board for whatever lies and distortions their guy plans to run on. If Romney didn't get a "bump" after the convention it's not because his speech wasn't good enough. It's not because he didn't hit hard enough. It's because WE didn't carry the enthusiasm to the streets like his drones and shills in the media and everywhere else did. And that's what we're up against. Everyone knows (and fundraising also shows) that Obama does not enjoy the enthusiasm gap he had in '08, but the media will relentlessly portray it that way. We've SEEN polls showing that  Romney is KILLING it with Independents, which is really where the election is decided. But too many members of our own elite right wing pundits are telling us that the polls are bad for Romney and we should be afraid. They're not telling us to work harder, to make more phone calls and to knock more doors. They're telling us "if you can't win, shut down the party." As someone who HAS made phone-calls, knocked doors, organized phone banks, driven to neighboring states to help with caucuses and canvassing, and given whatever little bit I could in donations, here's what I have to say to those people: shut up.

Romney w/ Volunteers in Spring 2011. See anyone familiar?

We know how important this election is. We picked a candidate who is best suited to fix the economy. He's not going to light his hair on fire or wear war-paint to an anti-abortion rally like we might expect from a Rick Santorum. He doesn't have the authoritative, encyclopaedic knowledge of the supply-side Reagan years that Gingrich had. But he is a better all-around candidate than the others, and he is a FIXER when we need a fixer the most. And now he has wunderkind Paul Ryan to add the economy expertise on the ticket. The players are set and the fight is largely on our shoulders now. They have the debates and less than two months of campaigning to refine a message and reach out to as many voters as possible, but it's up to us to reach further and spread it wider. To reiterate something I said before: If you haven't made phone calls, knocked doors, donated any money that you have the means to donate, registered friends and family to vote, and actually argued the issues of this election, I couldn't care less what you have to say about our candidate or his chances in this thing. Like Andrew Breitbart said ""If you're not in that bunker because you're not satisfied with this candidate, more than shame on you, you're on the other side.” Time to get in the bunker. As Joel Pollak wrote yesterday, "We have not yet begun to fight."

Breitbart says all of this better than I could. And look at the people in the crowd. They are normal, everyday people like you and me. But they are fired up. We need that back. And we need it now.